Samuel Johnson: Selected Works [The Yale Edition] 9780300258004

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Samuel Johnson

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SAMUEL J O H� NSON S elected Works Edited by Robert D e Maria, Jr. Stephen Fix Howard D. Weinbrot

T h e Ya l e E d i t i o n

New Haven and London

Published with assistance from the Annie Burr Lewis Fund. Copyright © 2021 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, busi­ ness, or promotional use. For information, please e-­mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Designed by Nancy Ovedovitz. Set in Bulmer & Centaur type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc., Durham, North Carolina. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020932030 ISBN 978-­0 -­300-­11303-­7 (hardcover : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Editorial Committee of The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson

Robert DeMaria, Jr., General Editor and Chair Stephen Fix, Secretary

Thomas F. Bonnell James Engell Gerald M. Goldberg Benjamin B. Hoover Thomas Kaminski Bruce Redford Loren Rothschild Howard D. Weinbrot

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Contents

Biographical Sketch xiii Chronology xxi Short Titles and Abbreviations xxiii Suggestions for Further Reading xxv A Note on the Text xxix Acknowledgments xxxi

Periodical Essays B eg i nn i n g s an d E n d i n g s  3 Rambler, No. 1, Difficulty of the first address 3 Rambler, No. 2, The necessity and danger of looking into futurity 8 Rambler, No. 207, The folly of continuing too long upon the stage 12 Rambler, No. 208, The Rambler’s reception 16 Idler, No. 103, Horror of the last 20

T he Con d u c t o f Li f e: Pa ssi o n s a n d H a bi t s  22 Rambler, No. 24, The duties of common life 22 Rambler, No. 32, Patience under suffering 26 Rambler, No. 47, Alleviating sorrow 30 Rambler, No. 72, The necessity of good humor 34 Idler, No. 23, On friendship 38 Rambler, No. 134, Miseries of idleness 40 Idler, No. 27, The power of habits 44

T he Con d u c t o f Li f e: M o r a l Ch o ic e s  46 Rambler, No. 8, The thoughts to be brought under regulation as they respect the past, present, and future 46

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Rambler, No. 28, On self-­delusion 51 Rambler, No. 31, Defense of error is culpable 55 Adventurer, No. 50, On lying 60 Rambler, No. 76, How bad men are reconciled to themselves 64 Rambler, No. 131, Desire of gain 67

Li teratu r e, L e ar n i n g, an d Au t h or s h ip  70 Rambler, No. 14, Authors and writing 70 Rambler, No. 16, Literary eminence 75 Rambler, No. 125, “Definition is not the province of man” 79 Rambler, No. 137, The necessity of literary courage 84 Adventurer, No. 107, Different opinions equally plausible 88 Adventurer, No. 115, The age of authors 92 Adventurer, No. 138, The author’s happiness and unhappiness 96 Idler, No. 63, The progress of language 100

M ar r i age, M e n, an d Wo me n  102 Rambler, No. 18, Marriage and misery 102 Rambler, No. 35, A marriage of prudence without affection 107 Rambler, No. 45, Disagreements in marriage 111 Idler, No. 12, Why marriages are advertised 115

Cr it ica l T he o ry a n d Pr ac t ic e  118 Rambler, No. 4, The necessity of characters morally good 118 Rambler, Nos. 36 and 37, Pastoral poetry 123 and 127 Rambler, No. 60, Biography 132 Idler, Nos. 84 and 102, Autobiography 136 and 138 Rambler, No. 94, On the relation of sound and sense in poetry 140 Rambler, No. 168, Poetic language 147 Rambler, No. 158, The role of critics and rules of writing 151 Rambler, No. 176, Directions to authors attacked by critics 155

War a n d Im p e r i a l is m  158 Idler, No. 20, Two versions of the Battle of Louisbourg 158 Idler, [No. 22], A vulture views Europeans in North America 161 Idler, No. 81, An Indian in Quebec 164

viii C O N T E N T S

Fiction The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia 169 The Fountains: A Fairy Tale 254

Poetry London: A Poem in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal 266 To Miss ____ On her Playing upon the Harpsichord 275 An Epitaph on Claudy Phillips, A Musician 277 Prologue Spoken by Mr. Garrick at the Opening of the Theatre in Drury-­ Lane, 1747 278 The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated 281 A Short Song of Congratulation 293 On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet 295

Writings on Law and Society Rambler, No. 114, Capital punishment 298 Rambler, Nos. 170 and 171, On prostitution 302 and 306 From Boswell’s Life of Johnson, A legal brief against slavery 310

Political Writings From An Introduction to the Political State of Great Britain (1756) 315 Observations on the Present State of Affairs (1756) 322 The Bravery of the English Common Soldiers (1760) 330 Introduction to Proceedings of the Committee on French Prisoners (1760) 333 The Patriot (1774) 335

Religious Writings Sermon 1 (On Marriage) 344 Sermon 25 (On the Death of Elizabeth Johnson) 352 From A Review of Soame Jenyns’s A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil (1757) 359

CONTENTS ix

Prayers and Meditations 6 May 1752, after the death of Elizabeth Johnson 367 November 1752, “Before any new study” 367 3 April 1753, “I began the 2nd vol of my Dictionary” 368 18 September 1760, birthday prayer 368 18 October 1767, the death of Catherine Chambers 369 18 September 1769, “The sixtieth year of my life” 369 31 March 1771, “Kindle in my mind holy desires” 370 5 December 1784, “I am . . . about to commemorate for the last time” 370

A Dictionary of the English Language To Lord Chesterfield, 7 February 1755 376 The Plan of A Dictionary of the English Language (1747) 378 Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) 397 Know Thyself 418

Shakespeare Criticism The Preface to The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765) 425 Endnotes to Selected Plays 463 Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 463 King Lear 464 Romeo and Juliet 466 Hamlet 467 Othello 468

From A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland [ Johnson’s Introduction] 471 St. Andrews 472 Aberbrothick 475 Anoch 477 Ostig in Sky 481 Inch Kenneth 506

x C O N T E N T S

The Lives of the Poets Life of Savage 521 Life of Cowley 591 Life of Milton 643 Life of Pope 703 Life of Gray 791 Index 801 Words Glossed with Definitions from Johnson’s Dictionary 815

CONTENTS xi

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B i o g r a p h ic a l S k e t c h

For much of the time since Johnson became a renowned literary figure (some­ time after 1755 but well before his death in 1784), his life has been better known than his writing. His life story is compelling, despite the fact that information—­ particularly about the first half of his life—is scanty. The tale has often been told as a version of Cinderella (or the ugly duckling) who rises from humble origins to aston­ ish the world with overlooked excellence. There is some truth to this attractive tale, but recent biographers have also thrown light on Johnson’s early literary ambitions and his involvement from his earliest days in the economy of London’s print culture, including its creation of the modern figure of the author. Battles still are fought over various aspects of his life, including his politics and even his religion, which is the most important area of uncertainty for anyone trying to understand him. Johnson’s life story matters because he was a person of immense energy and intellect who suf­ fered from personal disadvantages, and because his story was told by James Boswell in one of the best biographies ever written—but also because its details are impor­ tant to an understanding of his works. A counterattack against the predominance of Johnson’s life over his works began early in the twentieth century—perhaps as early as Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh’s collection of Johnson’s essays and notes on Shakespeare (1908). The counterattack picked up steam after World War II with the rise of New Criticism and other approaches that emphasized close reading of texts, often to the exclusion of biographical context. The absence of a standard edition of Johnson’s works was clearly identified as an obstacle to this effort, and the Yale Edition, conceived in 1951, was very much designed to overcome that obstacle. The Edition was originally planned as twelve volumes to be completed in two years. In the end it has grown to twenty-­three volumes, and it has taken sixty years to complete. The Yale Edition is a monumental achievement, but it is far from perfect: it leaves out most of Johnson’s lexicographical work and much of his collaborative work. Although the Yale Edi­ tion never intended to be comprehensive, it also did not intend to prove, as it has, that perfecting Johnson’s bibliography is just as difficult as perfecting his biography.

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With all their respective difficulties, the stories of these two facets of Johnson—his life and works—are best told together. Johnson was born the son of a bookseller in the cathedral city of Lichfield in 1709. He had physical infirmities from an early age, including scrofula (tuberculo­ sis of the lymph glands), poor eyesight, and ill-­defined nervous disorders that made him awkward if not ugly. He compensated for these disabilities with a brilliant mind. He had a very strong memory and an aptitude for success in literature. By the time he went to Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1728, he seems to have been on a path to become a poet and scholar on the model of the great European humanists whom he admired all his life—men such as Joseph Scaliger, an editor, poet, and lexicographer to whom he would later humbly address a poem (see p. 418). Johnson was evidently rebellious at Oxford and stayed only thirteen months, driven away by lack of funds, psychological uneasiness, or both. While at Oxford he wrote some school exercises and contributed a Latin poem, his first publication, to an undergraduate festschrift, which came out in 1731.1 Home in Lichfield, enduring the death of his father and facing the fact that he had no inheritance to speak of, Johnson began working as a writer. He made con­ tributions to a newspaper in nearby Birmingham, which are unfortunately lost, and he translated a kind of travel diary originally written in Portuguese by a Jesuit priest who had made a missionary trip to Abyssinia (1735).2 He also at this time struggled with his mental health; proposed, to no applause, an edition of Latin poetry by the Italian humanist Poliziano; married a widow twenty years his senior; started a boarding school for young scholars; and began writing a play set at the fall of Con­ stantinople in 1453.3 None of these projects was either an immediate or unqualified success. In 1736 Johnson closed his school and set off for London with his most fa­ mous student, the soon-­to-­become star actor David Garrick, who many years later would bring Johnson’s tragedy Irene to the London stage. In London, Johnson used his father’s contacts in the book trade to some ex­ tent, but he directed his most important efforts to Edward Cave, publisher of the Gentleman’s Magazine from its inception in 1731, whom he had first contacted a few years earlier. For the Gentleman’s Magazine, Johnson wrote some poetry, includ­ ing commendatory verses in Latin and Greek; judged literary contests; and wrote book reviews or epitomes of books, editorials defending Cave against his competi­ tors, biographies, and various articles, often with a scholarly angle. In 1738 Cave re­ warded Johnson by publishing his verse satire London, an imitation of the Roman 1. Several of Johnson’s school exercises are included in Yale, XX, but most of his poetry, whenever writ­ ten, appears in Volume VI. 2. The translation—A Voyage to Abyssinia—is the substance of Yale, XV. 3. SJ’s play, Irene, is part of Yale, VI.

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poet Juvenal’s third satire. The poem was a success; it was even lauded by Alexander Pope, who published a verse satire of his own that year. Johnson was known mainly as the author of London until 1749 when he published his even greater verse satire, The Vanity of Human Wishes. Johnson made other contacts in London, including the well-­connected edi­ tor and antiquarian Thomas Birch, and the poet and translator Elizabeth Carter. Despite the efforts of Birch and others, however, Irene remained neither published nor performed, and Johnson continued translating to make a living. He translated a large part of Paolo Sarpi’s History of the Council of Trent before giving it up, but he succeeded in completing a translation of Jean-­Pierre de Crousaz’s Commentary on Mr. Pope’s Principles of Morality, or Essay on Man.4 A substantial part of Johnson’s work for the Gentleman’s Magazine involved writing reports on debates in Parliament from 1740 to 1743. Such reports were tech­ nically illegal, and Cave was actually prosecuted for publishing them, but there were ways to reduce the exposure of the press to legal redress. One way was to delay publication of the reports, holding them back sometimes as long as a year after the events. Another way—more interesting from a literary point of view—was to cloak them in a thin disguise. Johnson’s productions were called “Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia” and had all the verbal trappings of Gulliver’s first voyage, in­ cluding sprugs for pounds sterling, Lilliput for England, and Blefusco for France. Johnson’s debates, some of which were later collected as speeches by great orators such as William Pitt the elder, together make up his largest body of prose and occupy three volumes in the Yale Edition (Vols. XI–­XIII). After the Debates, Johnson worked outside of Cave’s shop on a huge catalogue of the printed books in the library of Edward Harley, whose manuscripts became the basis of the British Museum’s collection after it was founded in 1753. In 1744, with the Harleian Catalogue behind him, Johnson published his first major biography, the Life of Mr. Richard Savage, a talented poet and an old acquaintance who had lived a largely dissolute life persistently claiming that he was the son of the 4th Earl Rivers. The Life of Savage made for good reading, but at the start of 1746, at the age of thirty-­six, Johnson was still largely a hack writer—a brilliant hack, perhaps, but still condemned to doing piece work for publishers. Johnson’s career changed dra­ matically in June 1746, however, when he signed the contract to write A Dictionary of the English Language. Critics were quick to call this too “a bookseller’s job,” but it was a job on a grand scale. It involved many of the most important booksellers in London, and it aimed to produce a national literary landmark to rival the great French and Italian dictionaries produced by their national academies. Johnson was 4. The remains of Johnson’s work on Sarpi are in Yale, XIX; the translation of Crousaz is in Volume XVII.



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paid well, and with his £1575 commission he rented a large house off Fleet Street, hired amanuenses, and bought the paper and pens he needed to produce the great book. There were, alas, delays, and all of Johnson’s money was gone by the time the book was finished. The first method of compiling the Dictionary had to be aban­ doned because the copy was too sloppy for the compositors; one disgruntled amanu­ ensis ran off with his work; and there was illness in the family. By 1750 progress on the Dictionary was at a standstill, and Johnson embarked on another project, one that would bring in weekly pay. On Tuesdays and Saturdays from 1750 to 1752, he wrote a periodical essay as “Mr. Rambler” in a publication of that name. Elevated in part by his immersion in lexicography, the Rambler essays are Johnson’s most philo­ sophical works, both in language and in content. Often beginning with an old saw or commonplace, he investigates religion, morality, politics, friendship, and other timeless concerns. There are some lighter Ramblers, and quite a few adopt the easy form of the oriental tale, which was then growing in popularity, but the greatest of Johnson’s essays (Numbers 2 and 28, for example) are among the most rigorous short workouts for inquiring minds ever written. About the time he concluded the Rambler in 1752, Johnson faced his most dif­ ficult personal crisis: the death of his wife. We know very little about Johnson’s wife; none of her letters survive, and contemporary accounts are spare. We do know, how­ ever, that the couple was often apart, and that Elizabeth (“Tetty”) was ill for much of the time during their marriage. His friends seem not to have had a high opinion of her. Nevertheless, when she died, Johnson was almost mad with grief and guilt. He wrote a remarkably heartfelt, eloquent funeral sermon for his wife, which the minis­ ter refused to deliver because it was too flattering to the deceased, yet Johnson never summoned the courage to visit his wife’s gravesite in Bromley. By 1753, however, Johnson was ready to return to work. He quickly com­ piled the second volume of his Dictionary, and the great work was published on 15 April 1755.5 It was certainly the best English dictionary ever produced, and both its quality and its bulk were impressive. Johnson may have defined somewhat fewer words (about 50,000) than his predecessors, but he defined them much more care­ fully—distinguishing their various senses with great acumen—and he illustrated their usage with about 116,000 quotations culled from his vast reading in English writing, mainly from the time of Sir Philip Sidney to that of Alexander Pope. The great book appeared in two large folios; Johnson was hailed as “Dictionary John­ son” in England and received plaudits from the academies of both France and Italy. 5. The Plan and the Preface, as well as the preliminary Grammar and History of English, are included in Yale, XVIII. The Dictionary itself is not included in the Yale Edition.

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He also received an honorary M.A. from Oxford. He was famous and decorated, but he was still poor, and in 1756 he had to be bailed out of debtor’s prison by his friend, the novelist Samuel Richardson. In 1756 the Seven Years’ War—arguably the first world war—began, and John­ son was again politically active. As editor and chief contributor to the newly formed Literary Magazine, he wrote against the war, often using the format of the book re­ view and sometimes the historical survey.6 In 1758 Johnson undertook another two-­ year stint as a periodical essayist, this time as the Idler. Under that name he wrote shorter, lighter, more topical essays than his Ramblers. Many Idlers concern daily life in London, and many respond to recent political events, including those in the ongoing war.7 In 1759, partly to raise money for his mother’s funeral at home in Lichfield, Johnson wrote his longest work of fiction, an oriental tale called Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, or the Choice of Life. In this work the young prince Rasselas and his sis­ ter Nekayah embark on a journey to see the world and decide on a course of life. They encounter people who have chosen various paths, philosophies, and occupa­ tions, and they examine each in an attempt to discover how they themselves wish to live. Rasselas is in some ways a parody of a book of wisdom, because it finds no pat answers to life’s big questions, but it has been read for its wisdom, translated into scores of languages, and reprinted more often than any of Johnson’s other works. Johnson wrote so much in the 1750s that it is hard to imagine he had time for anything else. In fact, he was wracked with guilt and doubt. He was restless and somewhat shiftless, more than once moving house and living without the comforts of the large house in which he wrote the Dictionary and housed a ragtag group of acquaintances, including the freed slave Francis Barber, the blind Anna Williams, and the poor-­man’s doctor Robert Levet. In the early 1760s, for example, he rented rooms in Middle Temple Lane far too small to accommodate lodgers: he was largely alone, and, though he was famous, he was getting by on occasional writing jobs. Everything changed again for Johnson in 1762 when he was granted a pension of £300 per year by George III through his prime minister, Lord Bute. Johnson was ridiculed in the press for accepting a pension from a government that he had opposed. Moreover, critics were quick to point out, he had specifically and gratu­ itously complained about the sort of benefit he accepted when in his Dictionary he had defined pension as something “generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.” Johnson withstood the criticism, having 6. Johnson’s major political writings in the Literary Magazine appear in Yale, X; many of his book re­ views are parts of Yale, XX; his most famous review, however, is in Yale, XVII, because it fits thematically with his work on Crousaz. 7. The Idler, along with Johnson’s contributions to the Adventurer, fills Yale, II.



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been told he was given the pension not for what he would do in future but for what he had already done for his country. Flush with his newfound security, he went with his friend Joshua Reynolds on a holiday to the painter’s native Devonshire. On this tour Johnson drank excessively, perhaps for the last time; listened to a famous preacher named Zachariah Mudge, whose character he would later write; and sup­ ported, with comic fervor, the old dockyard town of Plymouth against its nouveau competitor Devonport. The pensioned Johnson is the one we know best, partly because he was fa­ mous and people noticed what he did, sought to meet him, and preserved his let­ ters. There were two people in particular who solidified the image of post-­pension Johnson for futurity. They were James Boswell, then a young lawyer and journalist eager to meet great men, and Hester Lynch Thrale, the intellectual young wife of a successful London brewer with political aspirations. Johnson met Boswell in 1763 and the Thrales in 1765. Boswell wrote his best biography; Thrale became his most intimate friend. In the early years of his friendship with Boswell, Johnson returned to work on his edition of the plays of William Shakespeare. He had begun the project in 1745 by issuing proposals and a specimen of the work to come, Observations on Macbeth. Obviously, the Dictionary intervened; as soon as he finished that, however, he issued new proposals (1756), but still there were delays; he still had to earn a living, and the subscription fees he collected for his edition of Shakespeare were not enough. After the pension Johnson was free to complete the edition, and he did so in pretty short order, bringing out the eight-­volume work in 1765.8 His grand Preface to the edition is a landmark in the history of literary criticism, and, like so many of Johnson’s works, also an expression of his own literary sensibility. Although he lav­ ishly praises Shakespeare as the “poet of nature,” he also finds fault with his work. Johnson’s down-­to-­earth empirical approach does not allow for idolizing or idealiz­ ing any author, not even Shakespeare or Milton. For post-­Romantic readers, like all of us, the sobriety of his approach is bracing and refreshing. There was some decrease in Johnson’s literary production after 1765, but his activity is still amazing. From 1766 to 1770 Johnson involved himself in helping his friend Robert Chambers write the second Vinerian Law Lectures.9 In 1770 Johnson wrote the first of four political pamphlets on behalf of the government. Although he was in these works a hired pen, he was also able to stick to many of his long-­ standing political commitments, such as an abhorrence of war, anti-­Whiggism, and a hatred of slavery. His last pamphlet, Taxation No Tyranny (1775), was a response 8. Yale, VII–­VIII contain Johnson’s prefatory matter, his commentary, and assessments of the plays. 9. This work is not part of the Yale Edition, but has been edited by Thomas Curley as A Course of Lectures on the English Law, 2 vols. (1986).

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to positions asserted by the Declaration and Resolves of the Continental Congress in 1774. He pushed back against their enthusiastic cries for liberty and their asser­ tions that restrictions of liberty in the colonies would lead to a curtailment of liberty in England, with the trenchant remark: “If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of the negroes?”10 It may have been something about the exuberance of Taxation No Tyranny that put an end to the court’s requests for writing from Johnson. They required him to cut some of his fiercest remarks in the proofs of this pamphlet and never bothered him again. Meanwhile, in 1773 Johnson brought out revised editions of both his Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare. He had help with both, but both projects also entailed an immense amount of work on his part. When the revisions were finished, Johnson rewarded himself and Boswell with a long-­contemplated trip to the Hebri­ des. The two covered a good deal of Scotland, walking, riding, and getting into and out of small boats. Both wrote memoirs of the journey, though Boswell held his back from publication until after Johnson’s death. In his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), Johnson resolutely resists the kind of exaggeration endemic to travel writing.11 He is not immune to the charms of remote places, especially those such as Iona that have important historical associations, but he is empirical about the size of sites like Fingal’s Cave, and he is skeptical about traditional tales and special powers, such as the second sight. In 1775 Johnson made his only journey outside the British Isles. He went to France with the Thrales, traveling only as far south as Paris. He kept a journal but never worked it up into a book. He was on the verge of a second jaunt to the conti­ nent with the Thrales the next year. This was to be a trip to Italy, including Rome, which he considered the most important place in the world to visit. Their friend Giuseppe Baretti had mapped the itinerary; the luggage was shipped to the port; all was in readiness when word came of the death of the Thrales’ son, and the trip was canceled. Johnson needed the Thrales’ help to travel because he could not afford it himself. His pension of £300, a sum that he once termed “splendid,” was buying less, and Johnson was evidently having trouble supporting his household because he applied in 1776 for a grace-­and-­favor residence in Hampton Court. His request was denied, and he carried on in his old ways, doing some literary work for pay to make ends meet. Johnson’s last bookseller’s job turned out to be for many readers his best loved. On commission from a host of London booksellers, he wrote prefaces to a fifty-­six-­ volume collection called the Works of the English Poets. His Prefaces Critical and Biographical occupied ten additional volumes when the whole set was complete in 10. The late political pamphlets are in Yale, X. 11. Johnson’s Journey is in Yale, IX.



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1781. In that year too Johnson’s Prefaces were published separately in four octavo volumes and titled the Lives of the Poets. Johnson included his Life of Savage (first published in 1744); he had Herbert Croft write the Life of Edward Young; and he drew on some of his own earlier publications here and there, but most of the work was new. Characteristically, Johnson did little fresh research for these volumes (al­ though he deployed friends to execute tasks in the British Museum); in effect he re­ viewed his reading of a lifetime in English poetry and commented on it in a manner that seems free from professional or academic constraint of any kind. He used his remarkable memory, reaching back to conversations with men older than himself, such as his father, to bring to life the writers who held the stage in London in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He writes about the works and lives of the English poets from Milton to Gray as parts of a whole, connected by the brief “character” that he inserts in each of the “lives.” Unlike Plutarchan biographers of his period, including Boswell, Johnson does not see character as destiny. He treats these lives and these works as the results of human efforts, affected, like human life, by happenstance and accident rather than as determined by fate of any kind. Like Horace in the famous tag, Johnson found nothing human alien to himself, and he found nothing human to be divine or ideal. The last years of Johnson’s life were marked by illness and the loss of dear friends. He wrote one of his best poems on the death of his longtime tenant Robert Levet, which includes the lines, “As we toil on from day to day . . . Our social com­ forts drop away.” Johnson lost Levet in 1782, and the next year he lost Anna Wil­ liams. In that year too he lost his dearest friend, Hester Thrale, who, after the death of her hard-­drinking, apparently brutal husband, fell in love with her music teacher, Gabriel Piozzi. It was a shock to Johnson and to many of Thrale’s friends. There was an eleventh-­hour reconciliation between Johnson and his old intimate, but they were never close again after her new engagement. Illness of various kinds finally overcame Johnson in December of 1784. He had made his peace with the memory of his parents, even leaving instructions for an in­ scribed stone to be laid in their honor, and bid farewell to most of his friends. John­ son’s death became a famous, painful chapter in Boswell’s Life, but it animated the biographer’s wish to preserve as much of Johnson’s life as he could. A more diligent researcher than Johnson, Boswell gathered reports and letters from all who knew him, and assembled a biography that has indeed kept Johnson alive in the imagina­ tions of readers. The hope of the Yale Edition and of this selection is to keep John­ son’s works equally alive to a twenty-­first-­century audience.

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Chronology

1709

Samuel Johnson born in Lichfield to Michael and Sarah Johnson on 18 September 1712 Touched for the “King’s Evil” (scrofula) in London by Queen Anne 1717 Enters Lichfield Grammar School 1728 Enters Pembroke College, Oxford, where he remains for thirteen months 1729 Returns to Lichfield 1731 Death of Michael Johnson 1732–33 Writes for the Birmingham Journal 1733 Translates A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Jerome Lobo 1735 Marries Elizabeth Jervis Porter 1736 Starts school at Edial; drafts Irene 1737 Goes to London with Garrick; only brother Nathanael dies 1738 London; the life of Paolo Sarpi, part of the abandoned translation of the History of the Council of Trent 1739 Marmor Norfolciense; Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage; translates J. P. de Crousaz’s Commentary on Pope’s Essay on Man 1740–41 Lives of Admiral Blake, Sir Francis Drake, and John Philip Barretier 1741–43 Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia 1743 Catalogue of the Harleian Library 1744 The Life of Richard Savage 1745 Observations on Macbeth 1746 Signs contract to write A Dictionary of the English Language 1747 Plan of a Dictionary 1748 Contributions to The Preceptor 1749 The Vanity of Human Wishes

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The Rambler Life of Cheynel Death of Elizabeth Porter Johnson Frank Barber comes to Johnson’s household; contributions to The Adventurer 1754 Life of Edward Cave 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language 1756–57 Contributions to The Literary Magazine; the life of Frederick the Great 1757 Review of Soame Jenyns’s On the Nature and Origin of Evil 1758–60 The Idler 1759 Rasselas 1760 Bravery of English Common Soldiers 1761 Life of Roger Ascham 1762 Awarded a pension of £300 per year by George III 1763 Meets James Boswell 1765 Meets Hester Thrale; publishes The Plays of William Shakespeare 1766 “The Fountains” 1770 The False Alarm 1771 Thoughts on Falkland’s Islands 1773 Tours Scotland with Boswell; revises Dictionary; revises Shakespeare 1774 The Patriot 1775 A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland 1777 The Convict’s Address and other writings for William Dodd 1778 Dedication for Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Seven Discourses on painting 1779–81 Prefaces Critical and Biographical to the Works of the English Poets 1781 The Lives of the Poets published independently 1784 Death on 13 December 1785 Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides 1787 The Works of Samuel Johnson, ed. John Hawkins 1791 Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. 1750–52 1751 1752 1753

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S h o r t Ti t l e s a n d Abb r e v i a t i o n s

Bibliography

Bond Boswell, Life

Dictionary JB ODNB OED SJ SJ Letters Yale

Fleeman, J. D., A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson Treating His Published Works from the Beginnings to 1984, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000. The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond, 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965. Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, revised and enlarged by L. F. Powell, 6 vols., 1934–50; vols. V–­VI (2d ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964. A Dictionary of the English Language, 2 vols. London: Dodsley, Strahan, et al., 1755; 4th ed., 1773. James Boswell (1740–1795). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online. Oxford English Dictionary online. Samuel Johnson (1709–1784). The Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. Bruce Redford, 5 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992–94. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, 23 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958–2018.

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Suggestions for Further Reading

Johnson’s Works A Course of Lectures on the English Law, ed. Thomas Curley, 2 vols. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986. A Dictionary of the English Language, 2 vols. London: Dodsley, Strahan, et al., 1755; 4th ed., 1773; there are reprints and online versions but no scholarly edition as of 2020. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, ed. J. David Fleeman. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. The Latin and Greek Poems of Samuel Johnson: Text, Translation, and Commentary, ed. Barry Baldwin. London: Duckworth, 1995. The Latin Poems, trans. and ed. Niall Rudd. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005. The Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. Bruce Redford, 5 vols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992–94. The Life of Richard Savage, ed. Clarence Tracy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, ed. Roger Lonsdale, 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006. The Poems of Samuel Johnson, ed. David Nichol Smith and Edward L. McAdam. 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974. The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, 23 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958–2018. The Yale Digital Edition is available at YaleJohnson.com. I, Diaries, Prayers, and Annals, ed. E. L. McAdam, Jr., with Donald and Mary Hyde, 1958. II, The Idler and Adventurer, ed. W. J. Bate, John Bullitt, and L. F. Powell, 1963. III–­V, The Rambler, ed. W. J. Bate and Albrecht B. Strauss, 1969. VI, Poems, ed. E. L. McAdam, Jr., with George Milne, 1964. VII–­VIII, Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. Arthur Sherbo, 1968. IX, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, ed. Mary Lascelles, 1971.

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X, Political Writings, ed. Donald J. Greene, 1977. XI–­XIII, Debates in Parliament, ed. Thomas Kaminski and Benjamin Beard Hoover, with text edited by O M Brack, Jr., 2012. XIV, Sermons, ed. Jean Hagstrum and James Gray, 1978. XV, A Voyage to Abyssinia, ed. Joel Gold, 1985. XVI, Rasselas and Other Tales, ed. Gwin J. Kolb, 1990. XVII, A Commentary on Mr. Pope’s Principles of Morality, Or Essay on Man, ed. O M Brack, Jr., 2004. XVIII, Johnson on the English Language, ed. Gwin J. Kolb and Robert DeMaria, Jr., 2005. XIX, Biographical Writings: Soldiers, Scholars, and Friends, ed. O M Brack, Jr. and Robert DeMaria, Jr., 2016. XX, Johnson on Demand: Reviews, Prefaces, and Ghost-­Writings, ed. O M Brack, Jr., and Robert DeMaria, Jr., 2018. XXI–­XXIII, The Lives of the Poets, ed. John H. Middendorf et al., 2010.

Bibliographical Studies Clifford, James, and Greene, Donald J., eds. Samuel Johnson: A Survey and Bibliography of Critical Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970. Eddy, Donald D., ed. Samuel Johnson and Periodical Literature: A Collection of Facsimile Editions of Newspapers, Magazines, and Periodical Essays Written by or Associated with Samuel Johnson, 17 vols. New York: Garland, 1978–79. Fleeman, J. D., A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson Treating His Published Works from the Beginnings to 1984, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000. Greene, Donald. Samuel Johnson’s Library. An Annotated Guide. English Literary Studies, No. 1. University of Victoria, 1975. Greene, Donald, and Vance, John A. Samuel Johnson Bibliography, 1970–1985. Victoria: University of Victoria Press, 1987. Hazen, Allen T. Samuel Johnson’s Prefaces and Dedications. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937. Reddick, Allen T. The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, 1746–1773. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; rev. 1996. Sledd, James H., and Kolb, Gwin J. Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary: Essays in the Biography of a Book. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955.

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Biographical Studies Bate, Walter Jackson. Samuel Johnson. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1977. Brack, O M, Jr., and Kelley, Robert E., eds. The Early Biographies of Samuel Johnson. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1974. Boswell, James. Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, revised and enlarged by L. F. Powell, 6 vols., 1934–50; vols. V–­VI (2d ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964. ———. Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript, ed. Marshall Waingrow, Bruce Redford, and Thomas Bonnell, 4 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994–2020. Clifford, James. Dictionary Johnson: The Middle Years of Samuel Johnson. New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1979. ———. Young Sam Johnson. New York: McGraw-­Hill, 1955. DeMaria, Robert, Jr. The Life of Samuel Johnson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. Hawkins, Sir John. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1787), ed. O M Brack, Jr. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009. Kaminski, Thomas. The Early Career of Samuel Johnson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Lipking, Lawrence. Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Nokes, David. Samuel Johnson: A Life. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2010. Reade, Aleyn Lyell. Johnsonian Gleanings, 11 vols. Privately printed, 1909–52. Rogers, Pat. The Samuel Johnson Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. Wiltshire, John. Samuel Johnson in the Medical World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Interpretative Studies Brownell, Morris R. Samuel Johnson’s Attitude to the Arts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Clingham, Greg, and Smallwood, Philip, eds. Samuel Johnson After 300 Years. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. DeMaria, Robert, Jr. Johnson’s Dictionary and the Language of Learning. Oxford: Clarendon Press; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. ———. Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Deutsch, Helen. Loving Dr. Johnson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.



S U G G E S T I O N S F O R F U RT H E R R E A D I N G 

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Folkenflik, Robert. Samuel Johnson, Biographer. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. Fussell, Paul. Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing. New York: Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich, 1971. Gray, James. Johnson’s Sermons. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. Greene, Donald J. The Politics of Samuel Johnson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960; rev. 1990. Grundy, Isobel. Samuel Johnson and the Scale of Greatness. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986. Hudson, Nicholas. Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-­Century Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. ———. Samuel Johnson and the Making of Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Johnston, Freya. Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking, 1709–1791. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Johnston, Freya, and Mugglestone, Lynda. Samuel Johnson: The Arc of the Pendulum. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Kernan, Alvin. Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Print. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987; rev. 1989. Korshin, Paul, ed. Johnson After Two Hundred Years. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. Lynch, Jack, ed. Samuel Johnson in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Mugglestone, Lynda. Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Weinbrot, Howard. Aspects of Johnson: Essays on His Arts, Mind, Afterlife, and Politics. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. ———, ed. Samuel Johnson: New Contexts for a New Century. San Marino: Huntington Library, 2014. ———, “Samuel Johnson’s Practical Sermon in Context: Spousal Whiggery and the Book of Common Prayer,” Modern Philology 114.2 (2016): 310–36. Wimsatt, William K. Philosophic Words: A Study of Style and Meaning in the Rambler and Dictionary of Samuel Johnson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948.

Journals The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual, ed. Jack Lynch and John Scanlan. New York: AMS Press, 1987– . The Johnsonian News Letter, ed. Robert DeMaria, Jr., New Canaan, Connecticut: Penny Press, 1941– .

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A Note on the Text

With the exception of one short piece taken from Boswell’s Life of Johnson and one letter, borrowed from the Hyde Edition of The Letters of Samuel Johnson, we have restricted ourselves to selections of the texts included in the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Although it occupies twenty-­three volumes, the Yale Edition does not include everything that Johnson wrote. The body of the Dictionary is the largest and most obvious work excluded, but there are also the letters, the Vinerian Law Lectures (which he wrote in collaboration with Robert Chambers), and a host of works to which he made contributions that are hard to circumscribe, and a host of others for which his authorship is uncertain but plausible.1 The Yale Edition is not complete (no edition of Johnson’s works ever will be), and it is also not entirely consistent in its handling of his texts. Most of the volumes, however, attempt to represent Johnson’s final wishes for his texts. In most cases, the various editors have taken the first printed edition as copy-­text and substituted changes that appear to be authorial from later editions. The Rambler is a major exception; its copy-­text is the fourth edition (1756), the first to incorporate Johnson’s revisions. Except in cases where there is no printed text or none that Johnson could have seen, manuscript texts have not been used for copy-­text.2 In editing parts of the Lives of the Poets, manuscripts and marked proof sheets were considered in establishing the text, but they do not provide the basis of the text. We have not included here the textual notes that make so important a part of the full Yale Edition. We are happy to be able to refer our readers to the free online version of the Yale Edition to see all the textual notes (YaleJohnson.com) and, of course, to see the many works in the Edi­ tion that do not appear in this volume. Choice of copy-­text apart, the Yale volumes are fairly consistent in following the original guidelines set by the Editorial Committee in 1956. These dictate that we 1. A volume called Contributions to the Works of Others is in progress. A list of works not in the Yale Edi­ tion, including works doubtfully ascribed to Johnson, is also under way and will appear as an additional resource on the Yale Digital Edition site (YaleJohnson.com). 2. The majority of such texts appear in Volume I, Diaries, Prayers, and Annals, although there are also several items in Volume XX, Johnson on Demand, that exist only in manuscript.

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modernize capitalization and italicization; use quotation marks, instead of italics, to indicate reported speech or writing; and retain original spelling, except where a well-­known name is spelled in a variety of ways. Volume XVIII, Johnson on the English Language, is an outlier as far as these rules go, the editors having decided on a format closer to exact reproduction because of the importance of typographical distinctions in Johnson’s lexicographical works. The commentary for the texts presented here is largely selected from the com­ mentary in the Yale Edition, but with many significant differences. References to standard texts have been updated; more consistent translation of foreign languages has been added; many notes have been added to explain words or things that the original Yale editors did not believe it was necessary to explain. Birth and death dates for people referred to in the notes have also been added. It was necessary to add many notes to some texts, but it was also necessary to subtract notes. We have tried to strike a balance between being helpful and being intrusive. We have glossed many words and phrases that might not be familiar to a twenty-­first-­century audi­ ence. We have, like the full edition itself, restrained ourselves from making inter­ pretive remarks. Many notes in the Yale Edition are devoted to fleshing out, as well as possible, Johnson’s process of composition. His sources are often noted, there­ fore, as are parallels in his other works, but we have kept such notes to a minimum here because they are of more interest to experts than to students and teachers. The full commentary of course is available in the digital edition, which we hope many readers will use in concert with the present volume (YaleJohnson.com).

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Ac k n o w l e d g m e n t s

Begun in 1955 and completed in 2018, the twenty-­three-­volume Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson is the most comprehensive scholarly edition of Johnson’s works ever undertaken and the first such attempt since 1825. It has long been the plan of the Editorial Committee overseeing the edition to publish a one-­volume anthology of Johnson’s works, drawing on the authoritative texts and—in many cases—the annotations of the scholarly edition, and presenting them in a format that would make them particularly useful to students, teachers, and general readers. It has been our pleasure to edit this anthology, but we could not have done so without the active collaboration of many colleagues over many years. We wish first to acknowledge the contribution of Bruce Redford, who at an earlier stage of this project played a key role in shaping the contours and contents of this book. James Engell, too, offered detailed advice and guidance at every stage of the project. Many other members of the Editorial Committee were helpful with suggestions about sec­ tions of the anthology drawn from scholarly volumes they were involved in editing. We are particularly indebted to Walter Jackson Bate (periodical essays), Gwin Kolb (the Dictionary and Johnson’s fictional writings), and John H. Middendorf (The Lives of the Poets). We are also greatly indebted to the editors of the other scholarly volumes on whose work we have freely drawn in this anthology. The full list appears in the entry for the Yale Edition in Suggestions for Further Reading (p. xxv above). We are also grateful to the current members of the Editorial Committee, a full list of whom appears on p. v above. Beyond the editors of volumes in the Yale Edition and members of the Edito­ rial Committee of the edition, we have many other debts. This anthology was greatly improved by the detailed, wonderfully thoughtful attention paid to the manuscript by two anonymous outside readers selected by Yale University Press. They helped us correct errors and made several consequential suggestions about the contents. As their work is anonymous, only they will see how important it has been to the suc­ cessful completion of this book. As it has done for many years, Vassar College gave us much help by supplying Robert DeMaria, Jr., with many excellent research assistants, including several who

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worked especially hard on this book: Nathan Muscato, Angela Rhoads, Elizabeth Shand, Nicholas Barone, Ciara Murray Jordan, and Isabel Bielat. Like the last ten volumes in the Yale Edition, this volume passed before the sharp eyes of the superb production editor at Yale University Press, Margaret Otzel, and the equally superb copy-­editor, Joyce Ippolito. In addition, the book benefited importantly from the generous work of John Carlson, Yale’s digital production edi­ tor. The editor and assistant editor who oversee the entire edition were also crucial to its successful completion: Sarah Miller and Ash Lago. In this last paragraph of acknowledgments to the last volume of the Yale Edi­ tion, Robert DeMaria, Jr., wishes once more to thank Joanne DeMaria, who proof­ read a great many of the texts and notes presented here, offered a great deal of ad­ vice, and supported this work in all kinds of ways with patience and intelligence. Robert DeMaria, Jr., Vassar College Stephen Fix, Williams College Howard D. Weinbrot, University of Wisconsin, Madison

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Samuel Johnson

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Periodical Essays

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For a considerable part of his long and varied literary career, Johnson was both a journal­ ist and a serious scholar. At times he pursued his vocation as a scholar in alternation with his avocation as a journalist; in some cases he found ways of combining the two. Not long after contributing a learned Latin poem to his Pembroke College Miscellany (1731), he was working for the Birmingham Journal. The pieces he wrote for that publication are now re­ grettably lost, but by 1734 Johnson was both pursuing scholarship (proposing an edition of the Latin poetry of Poliziano) and turning his attention again to journalism. In that year he approached Edward Cave, proprietor of the Gentleman’s Magazine, with suggestions to im­ prove his publication, particularly its poetry section. When he went to London, the Gentleman’s Magazine, headquartered in St. John’s Gate, Islington, became his home. Johnson wrote a few Latin and Greek poems for the magazine, but he mostly toiled at more mun­ dane tasks: he wrote book reviews; reported on doings in Parliament; translated; introduced bound annual compilations of the Gentleman’s Magazine; wrote “letters to the editor”; and edited others’ work. One thing he did not do for the Gentleman’s Magazine was write peri­ odical essays, since it was not designed as a venue for that well-­established genre. In its most famous and influential form, the eighteenth-­century periodical essay takes up the entire publication in which it appears. Defoe’s Review (1704–13) is an important early example, but the periodical essay par excellence appears in the Tatler (1709–11) and the Spectator (1711–14). Many of these famous essays were written by Johnson’s fellow Lichfiel­ dian, Joseph Addison. Like every literary person in England, Johnson knew these essays well. His first opportunity to perform in the genre did not present itself, however, until 1750, when he was in the midst of writing the Dictionary. He evidently paused from that work, which had hit some bumps in the road, to write two essays a week for two years for the Rambler. Each issue is a folio sheet and a half, so Johnson’s essays are generally a little longer than a Spectator essay, which could at most cover both sides of a single half-­sheet. The Rambler also had much less advertising than the Spectator, and it did not have any real correspondents, though Johnson assumes the role of correspondent often enough. Of the 208 essays, Johnson wrote 201, making room only for a few friends to sub­ stitute for him. When not assuming the name of a fictional correspondent, Johnson per­ forms as Mr. Rambler. His authorship was pseudonymous, but the secret was not carefully

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guarded. Mr. Rambler is philosophical and often grave. He seems much older than John­ son, who was only forty when he began the work. His vocabulary is peppered with Latin­ ate, often scientific terminology, and his sentences are often long and periodic. Although he sometimes discusses matters of particular interest to Londoners, such as the value of sum­ mer retreats, his usual subjects are ethical, and his analyses of human behavior often amount to what we might call a psychology of human nature. After the Rambler ceased publication in 1752, Johnson agreed to write other essays along the same lines for the same publisher in the Adventurer, which ran from 1752 to 1755. Johnson’s twenty-­nine contributions to the Adventurer are much like his Ramblers in style and subject. A few years later Johnson engaged to write the essays published as the Idler in the Universal Chronicle, for which he also wrote several other small pieces. From 1758 to 1760 he wrote ninety-­two Idlers and perhaps some parts of others. These essays are more ac­ cessible than those in the Rambler: the diction is more common; the subjects often lighter; and the sentences as well as the entire essays are shorter. Although he did not abandon writ­ ing for journals after this period, nor even after he received his pension in 1762, Johnson never again produced regular essays of the kind that appeared in the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler. The selected periodical essays that follow here are grouped by general topics. As a group, these essays display Johnson’s brilliance in this short form, which traces its heritage not only to Joseph Addison but also to such older essayists as Francis Bacon and Michel de Montaigne. Writing for a periodical publication obliged Johnson to be more topical in his essays than his learned forerunners, but he is every bit their equal in the power of his style and in the durability of the truths that he displays.

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Beginnings and Endings

R A M B L E R , No. 1 Tuesday, 20 March 1750 Cur tamen hoc libeat potius decurrere campo, Per quem magnus equos Auruncae flexit alumnus, Si vacat, et placidi rationem admittitis, edam. —Juvenal, i.19–21 Why to expatiate in this beaten field, Why arms, oft us’d in vain, I mean to wield; If time permit, and candour will attend, Some satisfaction this essay may lend. —Elphinston1

The difficulty of the first address on any new occasion, is felt by every man in his transactions with the world, and confessed by the settled and regular forms of salutation which necessity has introduced into all languages. Judgment was wearied with the perplexity of being forced upon choice, where there was no motive to pref­ erence; and it was found convenient that some easy method of introduction should be established, which, if it wanted the allurement of novelty, might enjoy the secu­ rity of prescription. Perhaps few authors have presented themselves before the public, without wishing that such ceremonial modes of entrance had been anciently established, as might have freed them from those dangers which the desire of pleasing is certain to produce, and precluded the vain expedients of softening censure by apologies, or rousing attention by abruptness. 1. James Elphinston (1721–1809), Scots educator. The translations of the mottoes were added when the series was finished; they were printed separately at first, along with the contents and title pages, then at the back of the collected edition of 1752, and finally underneath the mottoes in the revised, fourth edition of 1756, which the Yale Edition follows.

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The epic writers have found the proemial2 part of the poem such an addition to their undertaking, that they have almost unanimously adopted the first lines of Homer,3 and the reader needs only be informed of the subject to know in what man­ ner the poem will begin. But this solemn repetition is hitherto the peculiar distinction of heroic poetry; it has never been legally extended to the lower orders of literature, but seems to be considered as an hereditary privilege, to be enjoyed only by those who claim it from their alliance to the genius of Homer. The rules which the injudicious use of this prerogative suggested to Horace, may indeed be applied to the direction of candidates for inferior fame; it may be proper for all to remember, that they ought not to raise expectation which it is not in their power to satisfy, and that it is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame, than flame sinking into smoke.4 This precept has been long received both from regard to the authority of Horace and its conformity to the general opinion of the world, yet there have been always some, that thought it no deviation from modesty to recommend their own labours, and imagined themselves entitled by indisputable merit to an exemption from general restraints, and to elevations not allowed in common life. They, perhaps, believed that when, like Thucydides, they bequeathed to mankind κτῆμα ἐς ἀεὶ, “an estate for ever,” it was an additional favour to inform them of its value.5 It may, indeed, be no less dangerous to claim, on certain occasions, too little than too much. There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which we often yield, as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect the confidence of others, who too apparently distrusts himself. Plutarch, in his enumeration of the various occasions, on which a man may without just offence proclaim his own excellencies,6 has omitted the case of an au­ thor entering the world; unless it may be comprehended under his general position, that a man may lawfully praise himself for those qualities which cannot be known but from his own mouth; as when he is among strangers, and can have no opportu­ nity of an actual exertion of his powers.7 That the case of an author is parallel will 2. Introductory. 3. In the first two lines of the Iliad, the poet implores the goddess to sing of the anger of Achilles. 4. Horace, Ars Poetica, ll. 143–44. 5. History of the Peloponnesian Wars, i.22.4: in this famous passage, Thucydides says he has told the truth about past and future events, and his work will be of permanent value (“an estate forever”) because human nature is always one and the same. 6. Plutarch, “On Praising Oneself Inoffensively,” Moralia, 539b–­547 f. 7. The reference is unclear, but perhaps SJ means the part of the Moralia, where Plutarch authorizes boasting to silence public and private enemies (section 16).

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scarcely be granted, because he necessarily discovers the degree of his merit to his judges, when he appears at his trial. But it should be remembered, that unless his judges are inclined to favour him, they will hardly be persuaded to hear the cause. In love, the state which fills the heart with a degree of solicitude next that of an author, it has been held a maxim, that success is most easily obtained by indirect and unperceived approaches; he who too soon professes himself a lover, raises ob­ stacles to his own wishes, and those whom disappointments have taught experience, endeavour to conceal their passion till they believe their mistress wishes for the dis­ covery.8 The same method, if it were practicable to writers, would save many com­ plaints of the severity of the age, and the caprices of criticism. If a man could glide imperceptibly into the favour of the publick, and only proclaim his pretensions to literary honours when he is sure of not being rejected, he might commence author with better hopes, as his failings might escape contempt, though he shall never at­ tain much regard. But since the world supposes every man that writes ambitious of applause, as some ladies have taught themselves to believe that every man intends love, who ex­ presses civility, the miscarriage of any endeavour in learning raises an unbounded contempt, indulged by most minds without scruple, as an honest triumph over un­ just claims, and exorbitant expectations. The artifices of those who put themselves in this hazardous state, have therefore been multiplied in proportion to their fear as well as their ambition; and are to be looked upon with more indulgence, as they are incited at once by the two great movers of the human mind, the desire of good, and the fear of evil. For who can wonder that, allured on one side, and frightened on the other, some should endeavour to gain favour by bribing the judge with an appear­ ance of respect which they do not feel, to excite compassion by confessing weakness of which they are not convinced, and others to attract regard by a shew of openness and magnanimity, by a daring profession of their own deserts,9 and a publick chal­ lenge of honours and rewards. The ostentatious and haughty display of themselves has been the usual refuge of diurnal writers,10 in vindication of whose practice it may be said, that what it wants in prudence is supplied by sincerity, and who at least may plead, that if their boasts deceive any into the perusal of their performances, they defraud them of but little time.

8. Cf. the proverb “Follow love and it will flee thee; / Flee love and it will follow thee.” See Morris P. Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1950), p. 394. 9. Desert: “Proportional merit; claim to reward” (Dictionary, sense 2). 10. Diurnal (i.e., daily) writers are journalists or periodical essayists.



PERIODICALS: BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS

5

———Quid enim? Concurritur — horae Momento cita mors venit, aut victoria laeta. —Horace, Satires i.1.7–8 The battle join, and, in a moment’s flight, Death, or a joyful conquest, ends the fight. —Francis11

The question concerning the merit of the day is soon decided, and we are not con­ demned to toil thro’ half a folio, to be convinced that the writer has broke his p­ romise. It is one among many reasons for which I purpose to endeavour the entertain­ ment of my countrymen by a short essay on Tuesday and Saturday, that I hope not much to tire those whom I shall not happen to please; and if I am not commended for the beauty of my works, to be at least pardoned for their brevity. But whether my expectations are most fixed on pardon or praise, I think it not necessary to discover; for having accurately weighed the reasons for arrogance and submission, I find them so nearly equiponderant, that my impatience to try the event of my first performance will not suffer me to attend any longer the trepidations of the balance.12 There are, indeed, many conveniencies almost peculiar to this method of pub­ lication, which may naturally flatter the author, whether he be confident or timo­ rous. The man to whom the extent of his knowledge, or the sprightliness of his imagination, has, in his own opinion, already secured the praises of the world, will­ ingly takes that way of displaying his abilities which will soonest give him an oppor­ tunity of hearing the voice of fame; it heightens his alacrity to think in how many places he shall hear what he is now writing, read with ecstasies to morrow. He will often please himself with reflecting, that the author of a large treatise must proceed with anxiety, lest, before the completion of his work, the attention of the publick may have changed its object; but that he who is confined to no single topick, may follow the national taste through all its variations, and catch the Aura popularis, the gale of favour,13 from what point soever it shall blow. Nor is the prospect less likely to ease the doubts of the cautious, and the ter­ rours of the fearful, for to such the shortness of every single paper is a powerful en­ couragement. He that questions his abilities to arrange the dissimilar parts of an ex­ tensive plan, or fears to be lost in a complicated system, may yet hope to adjust a few pages without perplexity; and if, when he turns over the repositories of his mem­ 11. The theme of Horace’s poem is that everyone is discontented with their lot. These lines are spoken by a sailor explaining why the life of an infantryman is better than his own. The translation is by Philip Francis (1746). 12. “Trepidations of the balance”: trembling of the scales before they settle on one side or the other. 13. “Gale of favour” translates the Latin phrase; gale meant only a strong breeze at this time.

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ory, he finds his collection too small for a volume, he may yet have enough to fur­ nish out an essay. He that would fear to lay out too much time upon an experiment of which he knows not the event, persuades himself that a few days will shew him what he is to expect from his learning and his genius. If he thinks his own judgment not sufficiently enlightned, he may, by attending the remarks which every paper will produce, rectify his opinions. If he should with too little premeditation encumber himself by an unwieldy subject, he can quit it without confessing his ignorance, and pass to other topicks less dangerous, or more tractable. And if he finds, with all his industry, and all his artifices, that he cannot deserve regard, or cannot attain it, he may let the design fall at once, and, without injury to others or himself, retire to amusements of greater pleasure, or to studies of better prospect.



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R A M B L E R , No. 2 Saturday, 24 March 1750 Stare loco nescit, pereunt vistigia mille Ante fugam, absentemque ferit gravis ungula campum. —Statius, Thebaid, vi.400–01 [first three words from Virgil, Georgics, iii.84] Th’ impatient courser pants in ev’ry vein, And pawing seems to beat the distant plain; Hills, vales, and floods, appear already crost, And, ere he starts, a thousand steps are lost. —Pope [Windsor Forest, ll. 151–54]

That the mind of man is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity; and that we forget the proper use of the time now in our power, to provide for the enjoyment of that which, perhaps, may never be granted us, has been frequently remarked; and as this practice is a commodious subject of raillery to the gay,1 and of declamation to the serious, it has been ridiculed with all the pleas­ antry of wit, and exaggerated with all the amplifications of rhetoric. Every instance, by which its absurdity might appear most flagrant, has been studiously collected; it has been marked with every epithet of contempt, and all the tropes and figures2 have been called forth against it. Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority; men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider sur­ vey, than others, and detected faults and follies, which escape vulgar observation. And the pleasure of wantoning in common topicks3 is so tempting to a writer, that he cannot easily resign it; a train of sentiments generally received enables him to shine without labour, and to conquer without a contest. It is so easy to laugh at the folly of him who lives only in idea, refuses immediate ease for distant pleasures, and, instead of enjoying the blessings of life, lets life glide away in preparations to enjoy them. It affords such opportunities of triumphant exultation, to exemplify the uncertainty of the human state, to rouse mortals from their dream, and inform them of the silent 1. “Airy; cheerful; merry; frolick” (Dictionary). 2. Tropes and figures: Metaphor and other kinds of verbal play that shift the usual meaning of a word. 3. Wanton: “To revel; to play” (Dictionary, sense 2); topicks: “Principles of persuasion” (Dictionary) or classes of arguments.

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celerity of time, that we may believe authors willing rather to transmit than examine so advantageous a principle, and more inclined to pursue a track so smooth and so flowery, than attentively to consider whether it leads to truth. This quality of looking forward into futurity seems the unavoidable condition of a being, whose motions are gradual, and whose life is progressive: as his powers are limited, he must use means for the attainment of his ends, and intend first what he performs last; as, by continual advances from his first stage of existence, he is per­ petually varying the horizon of his prospects, he must always discover new motives of action, new excitements of fear, and allurements of desire. The end therefore which at present calls forth our efforts, will be found, when it is once gained, to be only one of the means to some remoter end. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope. He that directs his steps to a certain point, must frequently turn his eyes to that place which he strives to reach; he that undergoes the fatigue of labour, must solace his weariness with the contemplation of its reward. In agriculture, one of the most simple and necessary employments, no man turns up the ground but because he thinks of the harvest, that harvest which blights may intercept, which inundations may sweep away, or which death or calamity may hinder him from reaping. Yet, as few maxims are widely received or long retained but for some confor­ mity with truth and nature, it must be confessed, that this caution against keeping our view too intent upon remote advantages is not without its propriety or use­ fulness, though it may have been recited with too much levity, or enforced with too little distinction: for, not to speak of that vehemence of desire which presses through right and wrong to its gratification, or that anxious inquietude which is justly chargeable with distrust of heaven, subjects too solemn for my present pur­ pose; it frequently happens that, by indulging early the raptures of success, we for­ get the measures necessary to secure it, and suffer the imagination to riot in the frui­ tion of some possible good, till the time of obtaining it has slipped away. There would however be few enterprises of great labour or hazard undertaken, if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages which we persuade ourselves to expect from them. When the knight of La Mancha4 gravely recounts to his com­ panion the adventures by which he is to signalize himself in such a manner that he shall be summoned to the support of empires, solicited to accept the heiress of the crown which he has preserved, have honours and riches to scatter about him, and an island to bestow on his worthy squire, very few readers, amidst their mirth or pity, can deny that they have admitted visions of the same kind; though they have not, perhaps, expected events equally strange, or by means equally inadequate. When we pity him, we reflect on our own disappointments; and when we laugh, our hearts 4. Don Quixote, the title hero of Cervantes’s great romance; see Part 1 (1605), Chapters 7, 15, 21.



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inform us that he is not more ridiculous than ourselves, except that he tells what we have only thought. The understanding of a man naturally sanguine, may, indeed, be easily vitiated by the luxurious indulgence of hope, however necessary to the production of every thing great or excellent, as some plants are destroyed by too open exposure to that sun which gives life and beauty to the vegetable world. Perhaps no class of the human species requires more to be cautioned against this anticipation of happiness, than those that aspire to the name of authors. A man of lively fancy no sooner finds a hint moving in his mind, than he makes momen­ taneous excursions to the press, and to the world, and, with a little encouragement from flattery, pushes forward into future ages, and prognosticates the honours to be paid him, when envy is extinct, and faction forgotten, and those, whom partiality now suffers to obscure him, shall have given way to other triflers of as short dura­ tion as themselves. Those, who have proceeded so far as to appeal to the tribunal of succeeding times, are not likely to be cured of their infatuation; but all endeavours ought to be used for the prevention of a disease, for which, when it has attained its height, per­ haps no remedy will be found in the gardens of philosophy, however she may boast her physick of the mind, her catharticks of vice, or lenitives of passion.5 I shall, therefore, while I am yet but lightly touched with the symptoms of the writer’s malady, endeavour to fortify myself against the infection, not without some weak hope, that my preservatives may extend their virtues to others, whose employ­ ment exposes them to the same danger: Laudis amore tumes? Sunt certa piacula, quae te Ter pure lecto poterunt recreare libello. —Horace, Epistles, i.1.36–37 Is fame your passion? Wisdom’s pow’rful charm, If thrice read over, shall its force disarm. —Francis

It is the sage advice of Epictetus, that a man should accustom himself often to think of what is most shocking and terrible, that by such reflections he may be pre­ served from too ardent wishes for seeming good, and from too much dejection in real evil.6 5. Physics, cathartics, and lenitives are medicinal remedies meant to purify, purge, and ease. Passion means any “violent commotion of the mind” (Dictionary). 6. Epictetus, Stoic philosopher (born c. 55 CE). SJ paraphrases his Enchiridion (The Manual), Ch. 21. Epictetus especially advises his readers to think on death.

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There is nothing more dreadful to an author than neglect, compared with which reproach, hatred, and opposition, are names of happiness; yet this worst, this meanest fate, every man who dares to write has reason to fear. I nunc, et versus tecum meditare canoros. —Horace, Epistles, ii.2.76 Go now, and meditate thy tuneful lays. —Elphinston

It may not be unfit for him who makes a new entrance into the lettered world, so far to suspect his own powers as to believe that he possibly may deserve neglect; that nature may not have qualified him much to enlarge or embellish knowledge, nor sent him forth entitled by indisputable superiority to regulate the conduct of the rest of mankind; that, though the world must be granted to be yet in ignorance, he is not destined to dispel the cloud, nor to shine out as one of the luminaries of life. For this suspicion, every catalogue of a library will furnish sufficient reason; as he will find it crouded with names of men, who, though now forgotten, were once no less enterprising or confident than himself, equally pleased with their own productions, equally caressed by their patrons, and flattered by their friends. But, though it should happen that an author is capable of excelling, yet his merit may pass without notice, huddled in the variety of things, and thrown into the general miscellany of life. He that endeavours after fame by writing, solicits the re­ gard of a multitude fluctuating in pleasures, or immersed in business, without time for intellectual amusements; he appeals to judges prepossessed by passions, or cor­ rupted by prejudices, which preclude their approbation of any new performance. Some are too indolent to read any thing, till its reputation is established; others too envious to promote that fame, which gives them pain by its increase. What is new is opposed, because most are unwilling to be taught; and what is known is rejected, because it is not sufficiently considered, that men more frequently require to be re­ minded than informed. The learned are afraid to declare their opinion early, lest they should put their reputation in hazard; the ignorant always imagine themselves giving some proof of delicacy, when they refuse to be pleased: and he that finds his way to reputation, through all these obstructions, must acknowledge that he is indebted to other causes besides his industry, his learning, or his wit.



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R A M B L E R , No. 207 Tuesday, 10 March 1752 Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne Peccet ad extremum ridendus. —Horace, Epistles, i.1.8–9 The voice of reason cries with winning force, Loose from the rapid car your aged horse, Lest, in the race derided, left behind, He drag his jaded limbs and burst his wind. —Francis

Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment, that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust; and the mali­ cious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to every other course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.1 Few moments are more pleasing than those in which the mind is concerting measures for a new undertaking. From the first hint that wakens the fancy, till the hour of actual execution, all is improvement and progress, triumph and felicity. Every hour brings additions to the original scheme, suggests some new expedient to secure success, or discovers consequential advantages not hitherto foreseen. While preparations are made, and materials accumulated, day glides after day through ely­ sian2 prospects, and the heart dances to the song of hope. Such is the pleasure of projecting, that many content themselves with a succes­ sion of visionary schemes, and wear out their allotted time in the calm amusement of contriving what they never attempt or hope to execute. Others, not able to feast their imagination with pure ideas, advance somewhat nearer to the grossness of action, with great diligence collect whatever is requisite to their design, and, after a thousand researches and consultations, are snatched away by death, as they stand in procinctu3 waiting for a proper opportunity to begin. If there were no other end of life, than to find some adequate solace for every day, I know not whether any condition could be preferred to that of the man who 1. A two-­line poem included in the Greek Anthology, a collection of short verse by various known and unknown authors (Book XI, Poem 381). 2. Pertaining to Elysium, the choicest location in the classical afterlife; hence, idyllic. 3. Girded up.

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involves himself in his own thoughts, and never suffers experience to shew him the vanity of speculation; for no sooner are notions reduced to practice, than tranquil­ lity and confidence forsake the breast; every day brings its task, and often without bringing abilities to perform it: difficulties embarrass, uncertainty perplexes, oppo­ sition retards, censure exasperates, or neglect depresses. We proceed, because we have begun; we complete our design, that the labour already spent may not be vain; but as expectation gradually dies away, the gay smile of alacrity disappears, we are compelled to implore severer powers, and trust the event to patience and constancy. When once our labour has begun, the comfort that enables us to endure it is the prospect of its end; for though in every long work there are some joyous inter­ vals of self-­applause, when the attention is recreated by unexpected facility, and the imagination soothed by incidental excellencies; yet the toil with which performance struggles after idea, is so irksome and disgusting, and so frequent is the necessity of resting below that perfection which we imagined within our reach, that seldom any man obtains more from his endeavours than a painful conviction of his defects, and a continual resuscitation of desires which he feels himself unable to gratify. So certainly is weariness the concomitant of our undertakings, that every man, in whatever he is engaged, consoles himself with the hope of change; if he has made his way by assiduity to publick employment, he talks among his friends of the de­ light of retreat; if by the necessity of solitary application he is secluded from the world, he listens with a beating heart to distant noises, longs to mingle with living beings, and resolves to take hereafter his fill of diversions, or display his abilities on the universal theatre, and enjoy the pleasure of distinction and applause. Every desire, however innocent, grows dangerous, as by long indulgence it be­ comes ascendant in the mind. When we have been much accustomed to consider any thing as capable of giving happiness, it is not easy to restrain our ardour, or for­ bear some precipitation in our advances, and irregularity in our pursuits. He that has cultivated the tree, watched the swelling bud and opening blossom, and pleased himself with computing how much every sun and shower add to its growth, scarcely stays till the fruit has obtained its maturity, but defeats his own cares by eagerness to reward them. When we have diligently laboured for any purpose, we are willing to believe that we have attained it, and, because we have already done much, too sud­ denly conclude that no more is to be done. All attraction is encreased by the approach of the attracting body.4 We never find ourselves so desirous to finish, as in the latter part of our work, or so impatient of delay, as when we know that delay cannot be long. This unseasonable importu­ nity of discontent may be partly imputed to langour and weariness, which must always oppress those more whose toil has been longer continued; but the greater 4. A paraphrase of the law of gravitation, most importantly developed in SJ’s time by Isaac Newton.



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part usually proceeds from frequent contemplation of that ease which is now con­ sidered as within reach, and which, when it has once flattered our hopes, we cannot suffer to be withheld. In some of the noblest compositions of wit,5 the conclusion falls below the vigour and spirit of the first books; and as a genius is not to be degraded by the im­ putation of human failings, the cause of this declension is commonly sought in the structure of the work, and plausible reasons are given why in the defective part less ornament was necessary, or less could be admitted. But, perhaps, the author would have confessed, that his fancy was tired, and his perseverance broken; that he knew his design to be unfinished, but that, when he saw the end so near, he could no longer refuse to be at rest. Against the instillations of this frigid opiate, the heart should be secured by all the considerations which once concurred to kindle the ardour of enterprize.6 What­ ever motive first incited action, has still greater force to stimulate perseverance; since he that might have lain still at first in blameless obscurity, cannot afterwards desist but with infamy and reproach. He, whom a doubtful promise of distant good, could encourage to set difficulties at defiance, ought not to remit his vigour, when he has almost obtained his recompense. To faint or loiter, when only the last efforts are re­ quired, is to steer the ship through tempests, and abandon it to the winds in sight of land; it is to break the ground and scatter the seed, and at last to neglect the harvest. The masters of rhetorick direct, that the most forcible arguments be produced in the latter part of an oration, lest they should be effaced or perplexed by superve­ nient7 images. This precept may be justly extended to the series of life: nothing is ended with honour, which does not conclude better than it begun. It is not sufficient to maintain the first vigour; for excellence loses its effect upon the mind by custom, as light after a time ceases to dazzle. Admiration must be continued by that novelty which first produced it, and how much soever is given, there must always be reason to imagine that more remains. We not only are most sensible of the last impressions, but such is the unwilling­ ness of mankind to admit transcendent merit, that, though it be difficult to obliterate the reproach of miscarriages by any subsequent achievement, however illustrious, yet the reputation raised by a long train of success, may be finally ruined by a single failure, for weakness or error will be always remembered by that malice and envy which it gratifies. For the prevention of that disgrace, which lassitude and negligence may bring 5. “Imagination; quickness of fancy” (Dictionary, sense 2). 6. Frigid: “Dull; without fire of fancy” (Dictionary, sense 4); the “opiate” of the desire to leave off here makes one frigid; ardour: “heat” (Dictionary, sense 1). 7. “Added; additional” (Dictionary). The “masters of rhetoric” are Cicero and Quintilian.

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at last upon the greatest performances, it is necessary to proportion carefully our labour to our strength. If the design comprises many parts, equally essential, and therefore not to be separated, the only time for caution is before we engage; the powers of the mind must be then impartially estimated, and it must be remembered, that not to complete the plan, is not to have begun it; and, that nothing is done, while any thing is omitted. But, if the task consists in the repetition of single acts, no one of which derives its efficacy from the rest, it may be attempted with less scruple,8 because there is always opportunity to retreat with honour. The danger is only lest we expect from the world the indulgence with which most are disposed to treat themselves; and in the hour of listlessness imagine, that the diligence of one day will atone for the idle­ ness of another, and that applause begun by approbation will be continued by habit. He that is himself weary will soon weary the public. Let him therefore lay down his employment, whatever it be, who can no longer exert his former activity or atten­ tion; let him not endeavour to struggle with censure, or obstinately infest the stage till a general hiss commands him to depart.

8. “Doubt . . . perplexity” (Dictionary, sense 1).



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R A M B L E R , No. 208 Saturday, 14 March 1752 Ἡράκλειτος ἐγω· τί μεὦ κἀτω ἕλκετ᾽ ἄμουσοι; Οὐχ᾽ ὑμῖν ἐπόνουν, τοῖς δέ μ᾽ ἐπισταμένοις. Εἶς ἐμοὶ ἄνθρωπος τρισμύριοι οἱ δ᾽ ἀνάριθμοι Οὐδείς· ταῦτ᾽ αὐδῶ καὶ παρὰ Περσεφόνῃ.1

Be gone, ye blockheads, Heraclitus cries, And leave my labours to the learn’d and wise: By wit, by knowledge, studious to be read, I scorn the multitude, alive and dead.

Time, which puts an end to all human pleasures and sorrows, has likewise con­ cluded the labours of the Rambler. Having supported, for two years, the anxious employment of a periodical writer, and multiplied my essays to four volumes, I have now determined to desist. The reasons of this resolution it is of little importance to declare, since justi­ fication is unnecessary when no objection is made. I am far from supposing, that the cessation of my performances will raise any inquiry, for I have never been much a favourite of the publick, nor can boast that, in the progress of my undertaking, I have been animated by the rewards of the liberal,2 the caresses of the great, or the praises of the eminent. But I have no design to gratify pride by submission, or malice by lamentation; nor think it reasonable to complain of neglect from those whose regard I never so­ licited. If I have not been distinguished by the distributors of literary honours, I have seldom descended to the arts by which favour is obtained. I have seen the meteors of fashions rise and fall, without any attempt to add a moment to their duration. I have never complied with temporary curiosity, nor enabled my readers to discuss the topick of the day; I have rarely exemplified my assertions by living characters; in my papers, no man could look for censures of his enemies, or praises of himself; and they only were expected to peruse them, whose passions left them leisure for abstracted truth, and whom virtue could please by its naked dignity. To some, however, I am indebted for encouragement, and to others for assis­ tance. The number of my friends was never great, but they have been such as would 1. Greek Anthology, vii.128, anonymous. 2. “Munificent; generous; bountiful” (Dictionary, sense 3).

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not suffer me to think that I was writing in vain, and I did not feel much dejection from the want of popularity. My obligations having not been frequent, my acknowledgments may be soon despatched. I can restore to all my correspondents their productions, with little diminution of the bulk of my volumes, though not without the loss of some pieces to which particular honours have been paid. The parts from which I claim no other praise than that of having given them an opportunity of appearing, are the four billets in the tenth paper, the second letter in the fifteenth, the thirtieth, the forty-­fourth, the ninety-­seventh, and the hundredth papers, and the second letter in the hundred and seventh.3 Having thus deprived myself of many excuses which candor might have ad­ mitted for the inequality of my compositions, being no longer able to allege the necessity of gratifying correspondents, the importunity with which publication was solicited, or obstinacy with which correction was rejected, I must remain account­ able for all my faults, and submit, without subterfuge, to the censures of criticism, which, however, I shall not endeavour to soften by a formal deprecation, or to over­ bear by the influence of a patron. The supplications of an author never yet reprieved him a moment from oblivion; and, though greatness has sometimes sheltered guilt, it can afford no protection to ignorance or dulness. Having hitherto attempted only the propagation of truth, I will not at last violate it by the confession of terrors which I do not feel: Having laboured to maintain the dignity of virtue, I will not now de­ grade it by the meanness of dedication. The seeming vanity with which I have sometimes spoken of myself, would per­ haps require an apology, were it not extenuated by the example of those who have published essays before me, and by the privilege which every nameless writer has been hitherto allowed. “A mask,” says Castiglione, “confers a right of acting and speaking with less restraint, even when the wearer happens to be known.”4 He that is discovered without his own consent, may claim some indulgence, and cannot be rigorously called to justify those sallies or frolicks which his disguise must prove him desirous to conceal. But I have been cautious lest this offence should be frequently or grossly com­ mitted; for, as one of the philosophers directs us to live with a friend, as with one that is some time to become an enemy, I have always thought it the duty of an anonymous author to write, as if he expected to be hereafter known.5

3. These were written by, respectively, Hester Mulso Chapone (1727–1801), David Garrick (1717–1779), Catherine Talbot (1721–1770), Elizabeth Carter (1717–1806), Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), and Joseph Simp­ son (1721–1768). 4. Baldasare Castiglione (1478–1529), Il cortegiano (The Courtier), Book II, Section 11. 5. Johnson wrote the Rambler anonymously, but many people were in on the secret. The “philosopher”



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I am willing to flatter myself with hopes, that, by collecting these papers, I am not preparing for my future life, either shame or repentance. That all are hap­ pily imagined, or accurately polished, that the same sentiments have not sometimes recurred, or the same expressions been too frequently repeated, I have not confi­ dence in my abilities sufficient to warrant. He that condemns himself to compose on a stated day, will often bring to his task an attention dissipated, a memory embar­ rassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body lan­ guishing with disease: He will labour on a barren topick, till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgment to examine or reduce. Whatever shall be the final sentence of mankind, I have at least endeavoured to deserve their kindness. I have laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combi­ nations. Something, perhaps, I have added to the elegance of its construction, and something to the harmony of its cadence. When common words were less pleasing to the ear, or less distinct in their signification, I have familiarized the terms of phi­ losophy6 by applying them to popular ideas, but have rarely admitted any words not authorized by former writers; for I believe that whoever knows the English tongue in its present extent, will be able to express his thoughts without further help from other nations. As it has been my principal design to inculcate wisdom or piety, I have allotted few papers to the idle sports of imagination. Some, perhaps, may be found, of which the highest excellence is harmless merriment, but scarcely any man is so steadily serious, as not to complain, that the severity of dictatorial instruction has been too seldom relieved, and that he is driven by the sternness of the Rambler’s philosophy to more chearful and airy companions. Next to the excursions of fancy are the disquisitions of criticism, which, in my opinion, is only to be ranked among the subordinate and instrumental arts. Arbi­ trary decision and general exclamation I have carefully avoided, by asserting noth­ ing without a reason, and establishing all my principles of judgment on unalterable and evident truth. In the pictures of life I have never been so studious of novelty or surprize, as to depart wholly from all resemblance; a fault which writers deservedly celebrated fre­ quently commit, that they may raise, as the occasion requires, either mirth or abhor­ rence.7 Some enlargement may be allowed to declamation, and some exaggeration to is Bias of Priene, one of the Seven Sages of Greece (sixth century BCE), to whom the maxim was ascribed, “To love as we will in future hate.” 6. Any of the sciences. 7. Cf. Rambler 4, on the novel (p. 118 below).

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burlesque; but as they deviate farther from reality, they become less useful, because their lessons will fail of application. The mind of the reader is carried away from the contemplation of his own manners; he finds in himself no likeness to the phantom before him; and though he laughs or rages, is not reformed. The essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my own inten­ tions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity, without any accommodation to the licentiousness and levity of the present age. I therefore look back on this part of my work with pleasure, which no blame or praise of man shall diminish or augment. I shall never envy the honours which wit and learning obtain in any other cause, if I can be numbered among the writers who have given ardour to virtue, and confidence to truth. Αὐτῶν ἐκ μακάρων ἀντάξιος εἴη ἀμοιβή.

Celestial pow’rs! that piety regard, From you my labours wait their last reward.8

8. Dionysius Periegetes (the guide), second or third century CE Greek author of a verse geography, of which this is the last line. This line appears, with a slight alteration, on the scroll in Johnson’s hands on his statue in St. Paul’s Cathedral.



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I D L E R , No. 103 Saturday, 5 April 1760 Respicere ad longae jussit spatia ultima vitae.1 —Juvenal, x.275

Much of the pain and pleasure of mankind arises from the conjectures which every one makes of the thoughts of others; we all enjoy praise which we do not hear, and resent contempt which we do not see. The Idler may therefore be forgiven, if he suffers his imagination to represent to him what his readers will say or think when they are informed that they have now his last paper in their hands. Value is more frequently raised by scarcity than by use. That which lay ne­ glected when it was common, rises in estimation as its quantity becomes less. We seldom learn the true want of what we have till it is discovered that we can have no more. This essay will, perhaps, be read with care even by those who have not yet at­ tended to any other; and he that finds this late attention recompensed, will not for­ bear to wish that he had bestowed it sooner. Though the Idler and his readers have contracted no close friendship they are perhaps both unwilling to part. There are few things not purely evil, of which we can say, without some emotion of uneasiness, “this is the last.” Those who never could agree together, shed tears when mutual discontent has determined them to final separation; of a place which has been frequently visited, tho’ without pleasure, the last look is taken with heaviness of heart; and the Idler, with all his chilness2 of tran­ quillity, is not wholly unaffected by the thought that his last essay is now before him. This secret horrour of the last is inseparable from a thinking being whose life is limited, and to whom death is dreadful. We always make a secret comparison be­ tween a part and the whole; the termination of any period of life reminds us that life itself has likewise its termination; when we have done any thing for the last time, we involuntarily reflect that a part of the days allotted us is past, and that as more is past there is less remaining. It is very happily and kindly provided, that in every life there are certain pauses and interruptions, which force consideration upon the careless, and seriousness 1. “Take a good look at the final portions of a long life” (Loeb edition). Juvenal (b. c. 60 CE) is known principally as the author of sixteen satires; SJ imitated the third and tenth in his most famous poems (see pp. 266 and 281 below). 2. “Coldness; want of warmth” (Dictionary).

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upon the light; points of time where one course of action ends and another begins; and by vicissitude of fortune, or alteration of employment, by change of place, or loss of friendship, we are forced to say of something, “this is the last.” An even and unvaried tenour of life always hides from our apprehension the approach of its end. Succession is not perceived but by variation; he that lives to-­ day as he lived yesterday, and expects that, as the present day is, such will be the morrow, easily conceives time as running in a circle and returning to itself. The un­ certainty of our duration is impressed commonly by dissimilitude of condition; it is only by finding life changeable that we are reminded of its shortness. This conviction, however forcible at every new impression, is every moment fading from the mind; and partly by the inevitable incursion of new images, and partly by voluntary exclusion of unwelcome thoughts, we are again exposed to the universal fallacy; and we must do another thing for the last time, before we consider that the time is nigh when we shall do no more. As the last Idler is published in that solemn week which the Christian world has always set apart for the examination of the conscience, the review of life, the extinction of earthly desires and the renovation of holy purposes, 3 I hope that my readers are already disposed to view every incident with seriousness, and improve it by meditation; and that when they see this series of trifles brought to a conclu­ sion, they will consider that by outliving the Idler, they have past weeks, months, and years which are now no longer in their power; that an end must in time be put to every thing great as to every thing little; that to life must come its last hour, and to this system of being its last day, the hour at which probation ceases, and repen­ tance will be vain; the day in which every work of the hand, and imagination of the heart shall be brought to judgment, and an everlasting futurity shall be determined by the past.

3. This essay was likely written on Good Friday, the most solemn day of the Christian year; it was pub­ lished on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter.



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T h e C o n d u c t o f Li f e : P a ssi o n s a n d H a bi t s

R A M B L E R , No. 24 Saturday, 9 June 1750 Nemo in sese tentat descendere. —Persius, Satires, iv.23 None, none descends into himself. —Dryden1

Among the precepts, or aphorisms, admitted by general consent, and incul­ cated by frequent repetition, there is none more famous among the masters of an­ tient wisdom, than that compendious lesson, Γνῶθι σεαυτὸν, “Be acquainted with thyself ”; ascribed by some to an oracle, and by others to Chilo of Lacedemon.2 This is, indeed, a dictate, which, in the whole extent of its meaning, may be said to comprise all the speculation requisite to a moral agent. For what more can be necessary to the regulation of life, than the knowledge of our original, our end, our duties, and our relation to other beings? It is however very improbable that the first author, whoever he was, intended to be understood in this unlimited and complicated sense; for of the inquiries, which, in so large an acceptation, it would seem to recommend, some are too extensive for the powers of man, and some require light from above,3 which was not yet indulged to the heathen world. 1. Aulus Persius Flaccus, a first-­century CE Roman satirist, was often linked with Juvenal. John Dryden translated all six of his extant satires as part of a volume including all of Juvenal’s satires (1693). 2. Greek Anthology, ix.366, attributes the saying to Chilon, one of the seven sages of Greece; other texts attribute the saying to other sages. It was inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, where the priestess was Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi. See SJ’s poem entitled Γνῶθι σεαυτον (p. 418 below). 3. Divine revelation.

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We might have had more satisfaction concerning the original import of this celebrated sentence, if history had informed us, whether it was uttered as a general instruction to mankind, or as a particular caution to some private inquirer; whether it was applied to some single occasion, or laid down as the universal rule of life. There will occur, upon the slightest consideration, many possible circum­ stances, in which this monition might very properly be inforced: for every error in human conduct must arise from ignorance in ourselves, either perpetual or tempo­ rary; and happen either because we do not know what is best and fittest, or because our knowledge is at the time of action not present to the mind. When a man employs himself upon remote and unnecessary subjects, and wastes his life upon questions, which cannot be resolved, and of which the solution would conduce very little to the advancement of happiness; when he lavishes his hours in calculating the weight of the terraqueous globe, or in adjusting successive systems of worlds beyond the reach of the telescope; he may be very properly re­ called from his excursions by this precept, and reminded that there is a nearer being with which it is his duty to be more acquainted; and from which, his attention has hitherto been withheld, by studies, to which he has no other motive, than vanity or curiosity. The great praise of Socrates is, that he drew the wits of Greece, by his instruc­ tion and example, from the vain pursuit of natural philosophy to moral inquiries, and turned their thoughts from stars and tides, and matter and motion, upon the various modes of virtue, and relations of life. All his lectures were but commentaries upon this saying; if we suppose the knowledge of ourselves recommended by Chilo, in opposition to other inquiries less suitable to the state of man. The great fault of men of learning is still, that they offend against this rule, and appear willing to study any thing rather than themselves; for which reason they are often despised by those, with whom they imagine themselves above comparison; despised, as useless to common purposes, as unable to conduct the most trivial af­ fairs, and unqualified to perform those offices by which the concatenation of society is preserved, and mutual tenderness excited and maintained. Gelidus4 is a man of great penetration, and deep researches. Having a mind naturally formed for the abstruser sciences, he can comprehend intricate combina­ tions without confusion, and being of a temper naturally cool and equal, he is sel­ dom interrupted by his passions in the pursuit of the longest chain of unexpected consequences. He has, therefore, a long time indulged hopes, that the solution of some problems, by which the professors of science have been hitherto baffled, is reserved for his genius and industry. He spends his time in the highest room of his 4. Latin, cold.



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house, into which none of his family are suffered to enter; and when he comes down to his dinner, or his rest, he walks about like a stranger that is there only for a day, without any tokens of regard or tenderness. He has totally divested himself of all human sensations; he has neither eye for beauty, nor ear for complaint; he neither rejoices at the good fortune of his nearest friend, nor mourns for any publick or pri­ vate calamity. Having once received a letter, and given it his servant to read, he was informed, that it was written by his brother, who, being shipwrecked, had swam naked to land, and was destitute of necessaries in a foreign country. Naked and des­ titute! says Gelidus, reach down the last volume of meteorological observations, ex­ tract an exact account of the wind, and note it carefully in the diary of the weather. The family of Gelidus once broke into his study, to shew him that a town at a small distance was on fire, and in a few moments a servant came up to tell him, that the flame had caught so many houses on both sides, that the inhabitants were con­ founded, and began to think of rather escaping with their lives, than saving their dwellings. What you tell me, says Gelidus, is very probable, for fire naturally acts in a circle. Thus lives this great philosopher, insensible to every spectacle of distress, and unmoved by the loudest call of social nature, for want of considering that men are designed for the succour and comfort of each other; that, though there are hours which may be laudably spent upon knowledge not immediately useful, yet the first attention is due to practical virtue; and that he may be justly driven out from the commerce of mankind, who has so far abstracted himself from the species, as to par­ take neither of the joys nor griefs of others, but neglects the endearments of his wife, and the caresses of his children, to count the drops of rain, note the changes of the wind, and calculate the eclipses of the moons of Jupiter. I shall reserve to some future paper the religious and important meaning of this epitome of wisdom, and only remark, that it may be applied to the gay and light, as well as to the grave and solemn parts of life; and that not only the philosopher may forfeit his pretences to real learning, but the wit, and the beauty, may miscarry in their schemes, by the want of this universal requisite, the knowledge of themselves. It is surely for no other reason, that we see such numbers resolutely struggling against nature, and contending for that which they never can attain, endeavouring to unite contradictions, and determined to excel in characters inconsistent with each other; that stock-­jobbers5 affect dress, gaiety, and elegance, and mathematicians labour to be wits; that the soldier teazes his acquaintance with questions in theology, and the academick hopes to divert the ladies by a recital of his gallantries. That ab­ surdity of pride could proceed only from ignorance of themselves, by which Garth 5. “A low wretch who gets money by buying and selling shares in the funds” (Dictionary).

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attempted criticism, and Congreve waved his title to dramatick reputation, and de­ sired to be considered only as a gentleman.6 Euphues,7 with great parts, and extensive knowledge, has a clouded aspect, and ungracious form; yet it has been his ambition, from his first entrance into life, to distinguish himself by particularities in his dress, to outvie beaus in embroidery,8 to import new trimmings, and to be foremost in the fashion. Euphues has turned on his exterior appearance, that attention, which would always have produced esteem had it been fixed upon his mind; and, though his virtues, and abilities, have pre­ served him from the contempt which he has so diligently solicited, he has, at least, raised one impediment to his reputation; since all can judge of his dress, but few of his understanding; and many who discern that he is a fop, are unwilling to believe that he can be wise. There is one instance in which the ladies are particularly unwilling to observe the rule of Chilo. They are desirous to hide from themselves the advances of age, and endeavour too frequently to supply the sprightliness and bloom of youth by artifi­ cial beauty, and forced vivacity. They hope to inflame the heart by glances which have lost their fire, or melt it by languor which is no longer delicate; they play over the airs which pleased at a time when they were expected only to please, and forget that airs in time ought to give place to virtues. They continue to trifle, because they could once trifle agreeably, till those who shared their early pleasures are withdrawn to more serious engagements; and are scarcely awakened from their dream of per­ petual youth, but by the scorn of those whom they endeavour to rival.

6. Cf. Johnson’s assessments in his Life of Samuel Garth, the physician turned poet (Yale, xxii.575), and his Life of William Congreve (XXII.746). 7. Greek, witty; also the name of a highly mannered prose work by John Lyly (1578). 8. To be more splendidly dressed than men “whose great care is to deck [their persons]” (Dictionary).



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R A M B L E R , No. 32 Saturday, 7 July 1750 Ὅσσά τε δαιμονίησι τύχαις βροτοὶ ἂλγε᾽ ἔχουσιν, Ὦν ἂν μοῖπαν ἔχης, πράως φέρε, μηδ᾽ ἀγανάκτει· Ἰᾶσθαι δὲ πρέπει κάθοσον δύνη. —Pythagoras, Aurea Carmina, ii.17–19

Of all the woes that load the mortal state, Whate’er thy portion, mildly meet thy fate; But ease it as thou can’st. ——— —Elphinston

So large a part of human life passes in a state contrary to our natural desires, that one of the principal topicks of moral instruction is the art of bearing calamities. And such is the certainty of evil, that it is the duty of every man to furnish his mind with those principles that may enable him to act under it with decency and propriety. The sect of ancient philosophers, that boasted to have carried this necessary science to the highest perfection, were the Stoics, or scholars of Zeno,1 whose wild enthusiastick virtue pretended to an exemption from the sensibilities of unenlight­ ened mortals, and who proclaimed themselves exalted, by the doctrines of their sect, above the reach of those miseries, which embitter life to the rest of the world. They therefore removed pain, poverty, loss of friends, exile, and violent death, from the catalogue of evils; and passed, in their haughty stile, a kind of irreversible decree, by which they forbad them to be counted any longer among the objects of terror or anxiety, or to give any disturbance to the tranquillity of a wise man. This edict was, I think, not universally observed, for though one of the more resolute, when he was tortured by a violent disease, cried out, that let pain harrass him to its utmost power, it should never force him to consider it as other than indif­ ferent and neutral; yet all had not stubbornness to hold out against their senses: for a weaker pupil of Zeno is recorded to have confessed in the anguish of the gout, that “he now found pain to be an evil.”2 It may however be questioned, whether these philosophers can be very prop­ 1. Zeno of Citium founded the Stoic school in Athens in the third century BCE. Rasselas encounters a Stoic philosopher in Chapter 18 (p. 200 below). 2. SJ may be substituting gout, from which he suffered, for ophthalmia, the disease that made Diony­ sius the Renegade depart from his Stoic precepts (see Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, vii.37, 166).

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erly numbered among the teachers of patience; for if pain be not an evil, there seems no instruction requisite how it may be borne; and therefore when they endeavour to arm their followers with arguments against it, they may be thought to have given up their first position. But, such inconsistencies are to be expected from the greatest understandings, when they endeavour to grow eminent by singularity, and employ their strength in establishing opinions opposite to nature. The controversy about the reality of external evils is now at an end. That life has many miseries, and that those miseries are, sometimes at least, equal to all the powers of fortitude, is now universally confessed; and therefore it is useful to con­ sider not only how we may escape them, but by what means those which either the accidents of affairs, or the infirmities of nature must bring upon us, may be mitigated and lightened; and how we may make those hours less wretched, which the condi­ tion of our present existence will not allow to be very happy. The cure for the greatest part of human miseries is not radical, but palliative. Infelicity is involved in corporeal nature, and interwoven with our being; all attempts therefore to decline it wholly are useless and vain: the armies of pain send their arrows against us on every side, the choice is only between those which are more or less sharp, or tinged with poison of greater or less malignity; and the strongest armour which reason can supply, will only blunt their points, but cannot repel them. The great remedy which heaven has put in our hands is patience, by which, though we cannot lessen the torments of the body, we can in a great measure pre­ serve the peace of the mind, and shall suffer only the natural and genuine force of an evil, without heightening its acrimony, or prolonging its effects. There is indeed nothing more unsuitable to the nature of man in any calamity than rage and turbulence, which, without examining whether they are not some­ times impious, are at least always offensive, and incline others rather to hate and de­ spise than to pity and assist us. If what we suffer has been brought upon us by our­ selves, it is observed by an ancient poet, that patience is eminently our duty, since no one should be angry at feeling that which he has deserved. Leniter ex merito quicquid patiare ferendum est —Ovid, Heroides, V.7 Let pain deserv’d without complaint be borne.

And surely, if we are conscious that we have not contributed to our own sufferings, if punishment fall upon innocence, or disappointment happens to industry and pru­ dence, patience, whether more necessary or not, is much easier, since our pain is then without aggravation, and we have not the bitterness of remorse to add to the asperity of misfortune.



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In those evils which are allotted to us by providence, such as deformity, priva­ tion of any of the senses, or old age, it is always to be remembered, that impatience can have no present effect, but to deprive us of the consolations which our condition admits, by driving away from us those by whose conversation or advice we might be amused or helped; and that with regard to futurity it is yet less to be justified, since, without lessening the pain, it cuts off the hope of that reward, which he by whom it is inflicted will confer upon them that bear it well. In all evils which admit a remedy, impatience is to be avoided, because it wastes that time and attention in complaints, that, if properly applied, might remove the cause. Turenne, among the acknowledgments which he used to pay in conversation to the memory of those by whom he had been instructed in the art of war, mentioned one with honour, who taught him not to spend his time in regretting any mistake which he had made, but to set himself immediately and vigorously to repair it.3 Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle; for the calamities of life, like the necessities of nature, are calls to labour and exercises of diligence. When we feel any pressure of distress, we are not to conclude that we can only obey the will of heaven by languishing under it, any more than when we perceive the pain of thirst we are to imagine that water is prohibited. Of misfortune it never can be certainly known whether, as proceeding from the hand of God, it is an act of favour or of punishment: but since all the ordinary dispensations of providence are to be interpreted according to the general analogy of things,4 we may conclude that we have a right to remove one inconvenience as well as another; that we are only to take care lest we purchase ease with guilt; and that our Maker’s purpose, whether of re­ ward or severity, will be answered by the labours which he lays us under the neces­ sity of performing. This duty is not more difficult in any state, than in diseases intensely painful, which may indeed suffer such exacerbations as seem to strain the powers of life to their utmost stretch, and leave very little of the attention vacant to precept or re­ proof. In this state the nature of man requires some indulgence, and every extrava­ gance but impiety may be easily forgiven him. Yet, lest we should think ourselves too soon entitled to the mournful privileges of irresistible misery, it is proper to reflect that the utmost anguish which human wit can contrive, or human malice can inflict, has been borne with constancy; and that if the pains of disease be, as I believe they are, sometimes greater than those of artificial torture, they are therefore in their own nature shorter, the vital frame is quickly broken, or the union between soul and body 3. Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne (1611–1675), French general and marshal. See A. Williams, Military Memoirs and Maxims of Marshall Turenne (2d ed., 1744), pp. viii–­ix. 4. The overall harmony of a world governed by Providence, or God’s will.

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is for a time suspended by insensibility, and we soon cease to feel our maladies when they once become too violent to be born. I think there is some reason for questioning whether the body and mind are not so proportioned, that the one can bear all which can be inflicted on the other, whether virtue cannot stand its ground as long as life, and whether a soul well principled will not be separated sooner than subdued. In calamities which operate chiefly on our passions, such as diminution of fortune, loss of friends, or declension of character, the chief danger of impatience is upon the first attack, and many expedients have been contrived, by which the blow may be broken. Of these the most general precept is, not to take pleasure in any thing, of which it is not in our power to secure the possession to ourselves. This counsel, when we consider the enjoyment of any terrestrial advantage, as opposite to a constant and habitual solicitude for future felicity, is undoubtedly just, and de­ livered by that authority which cannot be disputed; but in any other sense, is it not like advice, not to walk lest we should stumble, or not to see lest our eyes should light upon deformity? It seems to me reasonable to enjoy blessings with confidence as well as to resign them with submission, and to hope for the continuance of good which we possess without insolence or voluptuousness,5 as for the restitution of that which we lose without despondency or murmurs. The chief security against the fruitless anguish of impatience, must arise from frequent reflection on the wisdom and goodness of the God of nature, in whose hands are riches and poverty, honour and disgrace, pleasure and pain, and life and death. A settled conviction of the tendency of every thing to our good, and of the possibility of turning miseries into happiness, by receiving them rightly, will incline us to “bless the name of the Lord, whether he gives or takes away.”6

5. “Luxuriousness; addictedness to excess of pleasure” (Dictionary). 6. Job 1:21.



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R A M B L E R , No. 47 Tuesday, 28 August 1750 Quanquam his solatiis acquiescam, debilitor & frangor eadem illa humani­ tate quae me, ut hoc ipsum permitterem, induxit, non ideo tamen velim durior fieri: nec ignoro alios hujusmodi casus nihil amplius vocare quam damnum; eoque sibi magnos homines & sapientes videri. Qui an magni sapientesque sint, nescio: homines non sunt. Hominis est enim affici do­ lore, sentire: resistere tamen, & solatia admittere; non solatiis non egere. —Pliny, Epistles, viii.161 These proceedings have afforded me some comfort in my distress; notwith­ standing which, I am still dispirited, and unhinged by the same motives of humanity that induced me to grant such indulgences. However, I by no means wish to become less susceptible of tenderness. I know these kind of misfor­ tunes would be estimated by other persons only as common losses, and from such sensations they would conceive themselves great and wise men. I shall not determine either their greatness or their wisdom; but I am certain they have no humanity. It is the part of a man to be affected with grief; to feel sor­ row, at the same time, that he is to resist it, and to admit of comfort. —Earl of Orrery2

Of the passions with which the mind of man is agitated, it may be observed, that they naturally hasten towards their own extinction by inciting and quickening the attainment of their objects. Thus fear urges our flight, and desire animates our progress; and if there are some which perhaps may be indulged till they out-­grow the good appropriated to their satisfaction, as is frequently observed of avarice and ambition, yet their immediate tendency is to some means of happiness really exist­ ing, and generally within the prospect. The miser always imagines that there is a certain sum that will fill his heart to the brim; and every ambitious man, like king Pyrrhus,3 has an acquisition in his thoughts that is to terminate his labours, after which he shall pass the rest of his life in ease or gayety, in repose or devotion. 1. Pliny the Younger (c. 61–­c. 112 CE), nephew of the famous natural historian, published nine books of letters. This passage is from Book VIII, Letter XVI. 2. John Boyle, fifth earl of Cork and fifth earl of Orrery (1707–1762), Letters of Pliny the Younger (Dub­ lin, 1751), ii.213–14. 3. Pyrrhus of Epirus (319–272 BCE) imagines a life of leisure after recovering Macedonia and attaining the rule of Greece (Plutarch, Lives, 14.6, “Pyrrhus”).

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Sorrow is perhaps the only affection of the breast that can be excepted from this general remark, and it therefore deserves the particular attention of those who have assumed the arduous province of preserving the balance of the mental constitution. The other passions are diseases indeed, but they necessarily direct us to their proper cure. A man at once feels the pain, and knows the medicine, to which he is carried with greater haste as the evil which requires it is more excruciating, and cures him­ self by unerring instinct, as the wounded stags of Crete are related by Ælian to have recourse to vulnerary herbs.4 But for sorrow there is no remedy provided by nature; it is often occasioned by accidents irreparable, and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed their existence; it requires what it cannot hope, that the laws of the uni­ verse should be repealed; that the dead should return, or the past should be recalled. Sorrow is not that regret for negligence or error which may animate us to future care or activity, or that repentance of crimes for which, however irrevocable, our Creator has promised to accept it as an atonement; the pain which arises from these causes has very salutary effects, and is every hour extenuating itself by the repara­ tion of those miscarriages that produce it. Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future, an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a tormenting and harrassing want of some enjoyment or possession which we have lost, and which no endeavours can possibly regain. Into such anguish many have sunk upon some sudden diminution of their fortune, an unexpected blast of their reputation, or the loss of children or of friends. They have suffered all sensibility of pleasure to be de­ stroyed by a single blow, have given up for ever the hopes of substituting any other object in the room of that which they lament, resigned their lives to gloom and de­ spondency, and worn themselves out in unavailing misery. Yet so much is this passion the natural consequence of tenderness and endear­ ment, that, however painful and however useless, it is justly reproachful not to feel it on some occasions; and so widely and constantly has it always prevailed, that the laws of some nations, and the customs of others, have limited a time for the external appearances of grief caused by the dissolution of close alliances, and the breach of domestic union. It seems determined, by the general suffrage of mankind, that sorrow is to a certain point laudable, as the offspring of love, or at least pardonable as the effect of weakness; but that it ought not to be suffered to increase by indulgence, but must give way, after a stated time, to social duties, and the common avocations of life. It is at first unavoidable, and therefore must be allowed, whether with or without our choice; it may afterwards be admitted as a decent and affectionate testimony of kind­ 4. Claudius Aelianus (165/70–230/5 CE) in his Varia Historia, 1.10, reports that the goats of Crete eat a medicinal (“vulnerary”) herb when they are struck by the hunters’ spears.



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ness and esteem; something will be extorted by nature, and something may be given to the world. But all beyond the bursts of passion, or the forms of solemnity, is not only useless, but culpable; for we have no right to sacrifice, to the vain longings of affection, that time which providence allows us for the task of our station. Yet it too often happens that sorrow, thus lawfully entering, gains such a firm possession of the mind, that it is not afterwards to be ejected; the mournful ideas, first violently impressed, and afterwards willingly received, so much engross the attention, as to predominate in every thought, to darken gayety, and perplex ratioci­ nation. An habitual sadness seizes upon the soul, and the faculties are chained to a single object, which can never be contemplated but with hopeless uneasiness. From this state of dejection it is very difficult to rise to chearfulness and alac­ rity, and therefore many who have laid down rules of intellectual health,5 think pre­ servatives easier than remedies, and teach us not to trust ourselves with favourite enjoyments, not to indulge the luxury of fondness, but to keep our minds always suspended in such indifference, that we may change the objects about us without emotion. An exact compliance with this rule might, perhaps, contribute to tranquillity, but surely it would never produce happiness. He that regards none so much as to be afraid of losing them, must live for ever without the gentle pleasures of sympathy and confidence; he must feel no melting fondness, no warmth of benevolence, nor any of those honest joys which nature annexes to the power of pleasing. And as no man can justly claim more tenderness than he pays, he must forfeit his share in that officious and watchful kindness which love only can dictate, and those lenient6 endearments by which love only can soften life. He may justly be overlooked and neglected by such as have more warmth in their heart; for who would be the friend of him, whom, with whatever assiduity he may be courted, and with whatever services obliged, his prin­ ciples will not suffer to make equal returns, and who, when you have exhausted all the instances of good will, can only be prevailed on not to be an enemy? An attempt to preserve life in a state of neutrality and indifference, is unreason­ able and vain. If by excluding joy we could shut out grief, the scheme would deserve very serious attention; but since, however we may debar ourselves from happiness, misery will find its way at many inlets, and the assaults of pain will force our regard, though we may withhold it from the invitations of pleasure, we may surely endeav­ our to raise life above the middle point of apathy7 at one time, since it will neces­ sarily sink below it at another. But though it cannot be reasonable not to gain happiness for fear of losing it, 5. SJ is thinking of Stoic philosophers (see p. 26 above). 6. “Assuasive; softening; mitigating” (Dictionary). 7. “The quality of not feeling; exemption from passion; freedom from mental perturbation” (Dictionary).

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yet it must be confessed, that in proportion to the pleasure of possession, will be for some time our sorrow for the loss; it is therefore the province of the moralist to en­ quire whether such pains may not quickly give way to mitigation. Some have thought, that the most certain way to clear the heart from its embarrassment is to drag it by force into scenes of merriment. Others imagine, that such a transition is too violent, and recommend rather to sooth it into tranquillity, by making it acquainted with mis­ eries more dreadful and afflictive, and diverting to the calamities of others the regard which we are inclined to fix too closely upon our own misfortunes. It may be doubted whether either of those remedies will be sufficiently power­ ful. The efficacy of mirth it is not always easy to try, and the indulgence of melan­ choly may be suspected to be one of those medicines, which will destroy, if it hap­ pens not to cure. The safe and general antidote against sorrow, is employment. It is commonly observed, that among soldiers and seamen, though there is much kindness, there is little grief; they see their friend fall without any of that lamentation which is in­ dulged in security and idleness, because they have no leisure to spare from the care of themselves; and whoever shall keep his thoughts equally busy, will find himself equally unaffected with irretrievable losses. Time is observed generally to wear out sorrow, and its effects might doubtless be accelerated by quickening the succession, and enlarging the variety of objects.         Si tempore longo Leniri poterit luctus, tu sperne morari, Qui sapiet sibi tempus erit. — —Grotius.8 ’Tis long e’er time can mitigate your grief; To wisdom fly, she quickly brings relief. —F. Lewis.9

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exer­ cise and motion.

8. Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), “Consolatoria Oratorio Ad Patrem Super Morte Francisci Fratris” (A Con­ solatory Speech to His Father on the Death of his Brother Francis), Poemata Collecta (1617), p. 457 [461], with some changes. 9. Rev. Francis Lewis, who supplied thirty-­four translations for the collected editions of the Rambler, and about whom little else is known (see Boswell, Life, i.225–26).



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R A M B L E R , No. 72 Saturday, 24 November 1750 Omnis Aristippum decuit status, et color, et res, Sectantem majora fere; presentibus aequum. —Horace, Epistles, i.17.23–24. Yet Aristippus ev’ry dress became; In ev’ry various change of life the same: And though he aim’d at things of higher kind, Yet to the present held an equal mind. —Francis.

to the rambler. sir, Those who exalt themselves into the chair of instruction, without enquiring whether any will submit to their authority, have not sufficiently considered how much of human life passes in little incidents, cursory conversation, slight business, and casual amusements; and therefore they have endeavoured only to inculcate the more awful1 virtues, without condescending to regard those petty qualities, which grow important only by their frequency, and which though they produce no single acts of heroism, nor astonish us by great events, yet are every moment exerting their influence upon us, and make the draught of life sweet or bitter by imperceptible instillations.2 They operate unseen and unregarded, as change of air makes us sick or healthy, though we breathe it without attention, and only know the particles that impregnate it by their salutary or malignant effects. You have shewn yourself not ignorant of the value of those subaltern3 en­ dowments, yet have hitherto neglected to recommend good humour to the world, though a little reflection will shew you that it is the “balm of being,”4 the quality to which all that adorns or elevates mankind must owe its power of pleasing. Without good humour, learning and bravery can only confer that superiority which swells the heart of the lion in the desart, where he roars without reply, and ravages without resistance. Without good humour, virtue may awe by its dignity, and amaze by its 1. Awe-­inspiring. 2. “The act of pouring in by drops” (Dictionary). 3. “Inferior; subordinate” (Dictionary). 4. A faulty recollection of Milton’s phrase “balm of life” (Paradise Lost, xi.546).

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brightness; but must always be viewed at a distance, and will scarcely gain a friend or attract an imitator. Good humour may be defined a habit of being pleased; a constant and peren­ nial softness of manner, easiness of approach, and suavity of disposition; like that which every man perceives in himself, when the first transports of new felicity have subsided, and his thoughts are only kept in motion by a slow succession of soft im­ pulses. Good humour is a state between gayety and unconcern; the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another. It is imagined by many, that whenever they aspire to please, they are required to be merry, and to shew the gladness of their souls by flights of pleasantry, and bursts of laughter. But, though these men may be for a time heard with applause and admiration, they seldom delight us long. We enjoy them a little, and then retire to easiness and good humour, as the eye gazes awhile on eminences glittering with the sun, but soon turns aching away to verdure and to flowers. Gayety is to good humour as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance; the one overpowers weak spirits, and the other recreates and revives them. Gayety seldom fails to give some pain; the hearers either strain their faculties to accompany its towerings, or are left behind in envy and despair. Good humour boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending. It is well known that the most certain way to give any man pleasure, is to per­ suade him that you receive pleasure from him, to encourage him to freedom and confidence, and to avoid any such appearance of superiority as may overbear and depress him. We see many that by this art only, spend their days in the midst of ca­ resses, invitations, and civilities; and without any extraordinary qualities or attain­ ments, are the universal favourites of both sexes, and certainly find a friend in every place. The darlings of the world will, indeed, be generally found such as excite neither jealousy nor fear, and are not considered as candidates for any eminent de­ gree of reputation, but content themselves with common accomplishments, and en­ deavour rather to solicit kindness than to raise esteem; therefore in assemblies and places of resort it seldom fails to happen, that though at the entrance of some par­ ticular person every face brightens with gladness, and every hand is extended in salutation, yet if you pursue him beyond the first exchange of civilities, you will find him of very small importance, and only welcome to the company, as one by whom all conceive themselves admired, and with whom any one is at liberty to amuse himself when he can find no other auditor or companion; as one with whom all are at ease, who will hear a jest without criticism, and a narrative without contradiction, who laughs with every wit, and yields to every disputer. There are many whose vanity always inclines them to associate with those from whom they have no reason to fear mortification; and there are times in which the



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wise and the knowing are willing to receive praise without the labour of deserving it, in which the most elevated mind is willing to descend, and the most active to be at rest. All therefore are at some hour or another fond of companions whom they can entertain upon easy terms, and who will relieve them from solitude, without con­ demning them to vigilance and caution. We are most inclined to love when we have nothing to fear, and he that encourages us to please ourselves, will not be long with­ out preference in our affection to those whose learning holds us at the distance of pupils, or whose wit calls all attention from us, and leaves us without importance, and without regard. It is remarked by Prince Henry, when he sees Falstaff lying on the ground, that “he could have better spared a better man.”5 He was well acquainted with the vices and follies of him whom he lamented, but while his conviction compelled him to do justice to superior qualities, his tenderness still broke out at the remembrance of Falstaff, of the chearful companion, the loud buffoon, with whom he had passed his time in all the luxury of idleness, who had gladded him with unenvied merriment, and whom he could at once enjoy and despise. You may perhaps think this account of those who are distinguished for their good humour, not very consistent with the praises which I have bestowed upon it. But surely nothing can more evidently shew the value of this quality, than that it rec­ ommends those who are destitute of all other excellencies, and procures regard to the trifling, friendship to the worthless, and affection to the dull. Good humour is indeed generally degraded by the characters in which it is found; for being considered as a cheap and vulgar quality, we find it often neglected by those that having excellencies of higher reputation and brighter splendor, per­ haps imagine that they have some right to gratify themselves at the expense of others, and are to demand compliance, rather than to practise it. It is by some unfortunate mistake that almost all those who have any claim to esteem or love, press their pre­ tensions with too little consideration of others. This mistake my own interest as well as my zeal for general happiness makes me desirous to rectify, for I have a friend, who because he knows his own fidelity, and usefulness, is never willing to sink into a companion. I have a wife whose beauty first subdued me, and whose wit6 confirmed her conquest, but whose beauty now serves no other purpose than to entitle her to tyranny, and whose wit is only used to justify perverseness. Surely nothing can be more unreasonable than to lose the will to please, when we are conscious of the power, or show more cruelty than to chuse any kind of in­ fluence before that of kindness. He that regards the welfare of others, should make his virtue approachable, that it may be loved and copied; and he that considers the 5. Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV, v.iv.104. 6. Intelligence.

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wants which every man feels, or will feel of external assistance, must rather wish to be surrounded by those that love him, than by those that admire his excellencies, or sollicit his favours; for admiration ceases with novelty, and interest gains its end and retires. A man whose great qualities want the ornament of superficial attractions, is like a naked mountain with mines of gold, which will be frequented only till the treasure is exhausted. I am, &c. Philomides.7

7. Greek, a lover of smiling.



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I D L E R , No. 23 Saturday, 23 September 1758 Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship. It is painful to consider, that this sublime enjoyment may be impaired or destroyed by innumerable causes, and that there is no human possession of which the duration is less certain. Many have talked, in very exalted language, of the perpetuity of friendship, of invincible constancy, and unalienable kindness; and some examples have been seen of men who have continued faithful to their earliest choice, and whose affection has predominated over changes of fortune, and contrariety of opinion. But these instances are memorable, because they are rare. The friendship which is to be practised or expected by common mortals, must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases of delighting each other. Many accidents therefore may happen, by which the ardour of kindness will be abated, without criminal baseness or contemptible inconstancy on either part. To give pleasure is not always in our power; and little does he know himself, who believes that he can be always able to receive it. Those who would gladly pass their days together may be separated by the different course of their affairs; and friendship, like love, is destroyed by long ab­ sence, though it may be encreased by short intermissions. What we have missed long enough to want it, we value more when it is regained; but that which has been lost till it is forgotten, will be found at last with little gladness, and with still less, if a substitute has supplied the place. A man deprived of the companion to whom he used to open his bosom, and with whom he shared the hours of leisure and merri­ ment, feels the day at first hanging heavy on him; his difficulties oppress, and his doubts distract him; he sees time come and go without his wonted gratification, and all is sadness within and solitude about him. But this uneasiness never lasts long, necessity produces expedients, new amusements are discovered, and new conver­ sation is admitted. No expectation is more frequently disappointed, than that which naturally arises in the mind, from the prospect of meeting an old friend, after long separa­ tion. We expect the attraction to be revived, and the coalition to be renewed; no man considers how much alteration time has made in himself, and very few enquire what effect it has had upon others. The first hour convinces them that the pleasure, which they have formerly enjoyed, is for ever at an end; different scenes have made differ­ ent impressions, the opinions of both are changed, and that similitude of manners and sentiment is lost, which confirmed them both in the approbation of themselves. Friendship is often destroyed by opposition of interest, not only by the pon­

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derous and visible interest, which the desire of wealth and greatness forms and maintains, but by a thousand secret and slight competitions, scarcely known to the mind upon which they operate. There is scarcely any man without some favourite trifle which he values above greater attainments, some desire of petty praise which he cannot patiently suffer to be frustrated. This minute ambition is sometimes crossed before it is known, and sometimes defeated by wanton petulance; but such attacks are seldom made without the loss of friendship; for whoever has once found the vul­ nerable part will always be feared, and the resentment will burn on in secret of which shame hinders the discovery. This, however, is a slow malignity, which a wise man will obviate as inconsis­ tent with quiet, and a good man will repress as contrary to virtue; but human hap­ piness is sometimes violated by some more sudden strokes. A dispute begun in jest, upon a subject which a moment before was on both parts regarded with careless indifference, is continued by the desire of conquest, till vanity kindles into rage, and opposition rankles into enmity. Against this hasty mis­ chief I know not what security can be obtained; men will be sometimes surprized1 into quarrels, and though they might both hasten to reconciliation, as soon as their tumult has subsided, yet two minds will seldom be found together, which can at once subdue their discontent, or immediately enjoy the sweets of peace, without re­ membering the wounds of the conflict. Friendship has other enemies. Suspicion is always hardening the cautious, and disgust repelling the delicate. Very slender differences will sometimes part those whom long reciprocation of civility or beneficence has united. Lonelove and Ranger retired into the country to enjoy the company of each other, and returned in six weeks cold and petulant; Ranger’s pleasure was to walk in the fields, and Lonelove’s to sit in a bower; each had complied with the other in his turn, and each was angry that compliance had been exacted. The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly en­ creased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal. Those who are angry may be reconciled; those who have been injured may receive a rec­ ompense; but when the desire of pleasing and willingness to be pleased is silently diminished, the renovation of friendship is hopeless; as, when the vital powers sink into languor, there is no longer any use of the physician.

1. “Taken unawares” (Dictionary, s.v. to surprise, sense 1).



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R A M B L E R , No. 134 Saturday, 29 June 1751 Quis scit, an adjiciant hodiernae crastina summae Tempora Dî superi! —Horace, Odes, iv.7.17–18. Who knows if Heav’n, with ever-­bounteous pow’r, Shall add to-­morrow to the present hour? —Francis.

I sat yesterday morning employed in deliberating on which, among the vari­ ous subjects that occurred to my imagination, I should bestow the paper of to-­day. After a short effort of meditation by which nothing was determined, I grew every moment more irresolute, my ideas wandered from the first intention, and I rather wished to think, than thought, upon any settled subject; till at last I was awakened from this dream of study by a summons from the press: the time was come for which I had been thus negligently purposing to provide, and, however dubious or slug­ gish, I was now necessitated to write. Though to a writer whose design is so comprehensive and miscellaneous, that he may accommodate himself with a topick from every scene of life, or view of na­ ture, it is no great aggravation of his task to be obliged to a sudden composition, yet I could not forbear to reproach myself for having so long neglected what was unavoidably to be done, and of which every moment’s idleness increased the dif­ ficulty. There was however some pleasure in reflecting that I, who had only trifled till diligence was necessary, might still congratulate myself upon my superiority to multitudes, who have trifled till diligence is vain; who can by no degree of activity or resolution recover the opportunities which have slipped away; and who are con­ demned by their own carelessness to hopeless calamity and barren sorrow. The folly of allowing ourselves to delay what we know cannot be finally es­ caped, is one of the general weaknesses, which, in spite of the instruction of moral­ ists, and the remonstrances1 of reason, prevail to a greater or lesser degree in every mind: even they who most steadily withstand it, find it, if not the most violent, the most pertinacious of their passions, always renewing its attacks, and though often vanquished, never destroyed. It is indeed natural to have particular regard to the time present, and to be 1. To remonstrate is “to show reasons on any side in strong terms” (Dictionary).

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most solicitous for that which is by its nearness enabled to make the strongest im­ pressions. When therefore any sharp pain is to be suffered, or any formidable dan­ ger to be incurred, we can scarcely exempt ourselves wholly from the seducements of imagination; we readily believe that another day will bring some support or ad­ vantage which we now want; and are easily persuaded, that the moment of necessity which we desire never to arrive, is at a great distance from us. Thus life is languished away in the gloom of anxiety, and consumed in collect­ ing resolution2 which the next morning dissipates; in forming purposes which we scarcely hope to keep, and reconciling ourselves to our own cowardice by excuses, which, while we admit them, we know to be absurd. Our firmness is by the continual contemplation of misery hourly impaired; every submission to our fear enlarges its dominion; we not only waste that time in which the evil we dread might have been suffered and surmounted, but even where procrastination produces no absolute en­ crease of our difficulties, make them less superable3 to ourselves by habitual terrors. When evils cannot be avoided, it is wise to contract the interval of expectation; to meet the mischiefs which will overtake us if we fly; and suffer only their real malig­ nity without the conflicts of doubt and anguish of anticipation. To act is far easier than to suffer, yet we every day see the progress of life re­ tarded by the vis inertiae,4 the mere repugnance to motion, and find multitudes re­ pining at the want of that which nothing but idleness hinders them from enjoying. The case of Tantalus, in the region of poetick punishment, was somewhat to be pitied, because the fruits that hung about him retired from his hand;5 but what ten­ derness can be claimed by those who though perhaps they suffer the pains of Tan­ talus will never lift their hands for their own relief ? There is nothing more common among this torpid generation than murmurs and complaints; murmurs at uneasiness which only vacancy and suspicion expose them to feel, and complaints of distresses which it is in their own power to re­ move. Laziness is commonly associated with timidity. Either fear originally pro­ hibits endeavours by infusing despair of success; or the frequent failure of irreso­ lute struggles, and the constant desire of avoiding labour, impress by degrees false terrors on the mind. But fear, whether natural or acquired, when once it has full possession of the fancy, never fails to employ it upon visions of calamity, such as if they are not dissipated by useful employment, will soon overcast it with horrors, and imbitter life not only with those miseries by which all earthly beings are really 2. “[From resolute.] Fixed determination; settled thought” (Dictionary, sense 4). 3. Capable of being overcome. 4. The force of inertia. 5. Tantalus offered up his son Pelops as sacrificial food at a banquet of the gods; for making this inedible offering he was punished in the Underworld, where he was made to stand in a pool of water within reach of low-­ hanging fruit that perpetually receded from his grasp.



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more or less tormented, but with those which do not yet exist, and which can only be discerned by the perspicacity of cowardice. Among all who sacrifice future advantage to present inclination, scarcely any gain so little as those that suffer themselves to freeze in idleness. Others are cor­ rupted by some enjoyment of more or less power to gratify the passions; but to neglect our duties, merely to avoid the labour of performing them, a labour which is always punctually rewarded, is surely to sink under weak temptations. Idleness never can secure tranquillity; the call of reason and of conscience will pierce the closest pavilion of the sluggard, and, though it may not have force to drive him from his down, will be loud enough to hinder him from sleep. Those moments which he cannot resolve to make useful by devoting them to the great business of his being, will still be usurped by powers that will not leave them to his disposal; remorse and vexation will seize upon them, and forbid him to enjoy what he is so desirous to ap­ propriate. There are other causes of inactivity incident to more active faculties and more acute discernment. He to whom many objects of persuit arise at the same time, will frequently hesitate between different desires, till a rival has precluded him, or change his course as new attractions prevail, and harrass himself without advancing. He who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of proba­ bilities, and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road, till some accident intercepts his journey. He whose penetration extends to remote con­ sequences, and who, whenever he applies his attention to any design, discovers new prospects of advantage, and possibilities of improvement, will not easily be persuaded that his project is ripe for execution; but will superadd one contrivance to another, endeavour to unite various purposes in one operation, multiply compli­ cations, and refine niceties, till he is entangled in his own scheme, and bewildered in the perplexity of various intentions. He that resolves to unite all the beauties of situation in a new purchase, must waste his life in roving to no purpose from prov­ ince to province. He that hopes in the same house to obtain every convenience, may draw plans and study Palladio,6 but will never lay a stone. He will attempt a treatise on some important subject, and amass materials, consult authors, and study all the dependent and collateral parts of learning, but never conclude himself qualified to write. He that has abilities to conceive perfection, will not easily be content without it; and since perfection cannot be reached, will lose the opportunity of doing well in the vain hope of unattainable excellence. The certainty that life cannot be long, and the probability that it will be much 6. Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), vastly influential Venetian architect, author of I quattro libri dell’architettura (1570). The Four Books of Architecture were translated numerous times in the early eighteenth century.

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shorter than nature allows, ought to awaken every man to the active prosecution of whatever he is desirous to perform. It is true that no diligence can ascertain success; death may intercept the swiftest career; but he who is cut off in the execution of an honest undertaking, has at least the honour of falling in his rank,7 and has fought the battle, though he missed the victory.

7. “Line of men placed a-­breast” (Dictionary, sense 1), a military formation.



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I D L E R , No. 27 Saturday, 21 October 1758 It has been the endeavour of all those whom the world has reverenced for superior wisdom, to persuade man to be acquainted with himself, to learn his own powers and his own weakness, to observe by what evils he is most dangerously beset, and by what temptations most easily overcome. This counsel has been often given with serious dignity, and often received with appearance of conviction; but, as very few can search deep into their own minds without meeting what they wish to hide from themselves, scarce any man persists in cultivating such disagreeable acquaintance, but draws the veil again between his eyes and his heart, leaves his passions and appetites as he found them, and advises others to look into themselves. This is the common result of enquiry even among those that endeavour to grow wiser or better, but this endeavour is far enough from frequency; the greater part of the multitudes that swarm upon the earth, have never been disturbed by such un­ easy curiosity, but deliver themselves up to business or to pleasure, plunge into the current of life, whether placid or turbulent, and pass on from one point of prospect to another, attentive rather to any thing than the state of their minds; satisfied, at an easy rate, with an opinion that they are no worse than others, that every man must mind his own interest, or that their pleasures hurt only themselves, and are therefore no proper subjects of censure. Some, however, there are, whom the intrusion of scruples, the recollection of better notions, or the latent reprehension of good examples, will not suffer to live entirely contented with their own conduct; these are forced to pacify the mutiny of reason with fair promises, and quiet their thoughts with designs of calling all their actions to review, and planning a new scheme for the time to come. There is nothing which we estimate so fallaciously as the force of our own reso­ lutions, nor any fallacy which we so unwillingly and tardily detect. He that has re­ solved a thousand times, and a thousand times deserted his own purpose, yet suffers no abatement of his confidence, but still believes himself his own master, and able, by innate vigour of soul, to press forward to his end, through all the obstructions that inconveniences or delights can put in his way. That this mistake should prevail for a time is very natural. When conviction is present, and temptation out of sight, we do not easily conceive how any reasonable being can deviate from his true interest. What ought to be done while it yet hangs only in speculation, is so plain and certain, that there is no place for doubt; the

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whole soul yields itself to the predominance of truth, and readily determines to do what, when the time of action comes, will be at last omitted. I believe most men may review all the lives that have passed within their obser­ vation, without remembring one efficacious resolution, or being able to tell a single instance of a course of practice suddenly changed in consequence of a change of opinion, or an establishment of determination. Many indeed alter their conduct, and are not at fifty what they were at thirty, but they commonly varied imperceptibly from themselves, followed the train of external causes, and rather suffered reforma­ tion than made it. It is not uncommon to charge the difference between promise and perfor­ mance, between profession and reality, upon deep design and studied deceit; but the truth is, that there is very little hypocrisy in the world; we do not so often en­ deavour or wish to impose on others as on ourselves; we resolve to do right, we hope to keep our resolutions, we declare them to confirm our own hope, and fix our own inconstancy by calling witnesses of our actions; but at last habit prevails, and those whom we invited to our triumph, laugh at our defeat. Custom is commonly too strong for the most resolute resolver though fur­ nished for the assault with all the weapons of philosophy. “He that endeavours to free himself from an ill habit,” says Bacon, “must not change too much at a time lest he should be discouraged by difficulty; nor too little, for then he will make but slow advances.”1 This is a precept which may be applauded in a book, but will fail in the trial, in which every change will be found too great or too little. Those who have been able to conquer habit, are like those that are fabled to have returned from the realms of Pluto: Pauci, quos aequus amavit Jupiter, atque ardens evexit ad aethera virtus. —Aeneid, vi.129–30.2

They are sufficient to give hope but not security, to animate the contest but not to promise victory. Those who are in the power of evil habits, must conquer them as they can, and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained; but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom, they may effectually resolve to escape the tyrant, whom they will very vainly resolve to conquer. 1. SJ paraphrases Francis Bacon, Essays (1625), “Of Nature in Men” (p. 227). 2. They are few, whom impartial Jupiter loved, or sparkling worth raised to the heavens.



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T h e C o n d u c t o f Li f e : M o r a l C h o ic e s

R A M B L E R , No. 8 Saturday, 14 April 1750 ——Patitur poenas peccandi sola voluntas; Nam scelus intra se tacitum qui cogitat ullum, Facti crimen habet. —Juvenal, xiii.208–10 For he that but conceives a crime in thought, Contracts the danger of an actual fault. —Creech

If the most active and industrious of mankind was able, at the close of life, to recollect distinctly his past moments, and distribute them, in a regular account, ac­ cording to the manner in which they have been spent, it is scarcely to be imagined how few would be marked out to the mind, by any permanent or visible effects, how small a proportion his real action would bear to his seeming possibilities of action, how many chasms he would find of wide and continued vacuity, and how many interstitial1 spaces unfilled, even in the most tumultuous hurries of business, and the most eager vehemence of persuit. It is said by modern philosophers, that not only the great globes of matter are thinly scattered thro’ the universe, but the hardest bodies are so porous, that, if all matter were compressed to perfect solidity, it might be contained in a cube of a few feet. In like manner, if all the employment of life were crowded into the time which it really occupied, perhaps a few weeks, days, or hours, would be sufficient for its accomplishment, so far as the mind was engaged in the performance. For such is the 1. Between one thing and another.

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inequality of our corporeal to our intellectual faculties, that we contrive in minutes what we execute in years, and the soul2 often stands an idle spectator of the labour of the hands, and expedition of the feet. For this reason, the antient generals often found themselves at leisure to per­ sue the study of philosophy in the camp; and Lucan, with historical veracity, makes Caesar relate of himself, that he noted the revolutions of the stars in the midst of preparations for battle. ——————Media inter proelia semper Sideribus, coelique plagis, superisque vacavi. —Pharsalia, x.185–86.3 Amid the storms of war, with curious eyes I trace the planets and survey the skies.

That the soul always exerts her peculiar powers, with greater or less force, is very probable, though the common occasions of our present condition require but a small part of that incessant cogitation; and by the natural frame of our bodies, and general combination of the world, we are so frequently condemned to inactivity, that as through all our time we are thinking, so for a great part of our time we can only think. Lest a power so restless should be either unprofitably, or hurtfully employed, and the superfluities of intellect run to waste, it is no vain speculation to consider how we may govern our thoughts, restrain them from irregular motions, or confine them from boundless dissipation. How the understanding is best conducted to the knowledge of science, by what steps it is to be led forwards in its persuit, how it is to be cured of its defects, and habituated to new studies, has been the inquiry of many acute and learned men, whose observations I shall not either adopt or censure; my purpose being to con­ sider the moral discipline of the mind, and to promote the increase of virtue rather than of learning. This inquiry seems to have been neglected for want of remembering that all action has its origin in the mind, and that therefore to suffer the thoughts to be viti­ ated, is to poison the fountains of morality: Irregular desires will produce licentious practices; what men allow themselves to wish they will soon believe, and will be at last incited to execute what they please themselves with contriving. 2. In this context, soul means mind. 3. Marcus Lucanus Annaeus, or Lucan (39–65 CE), most famous for his epic poem about the civil war in Rome (49–48 BCE), De bello civili, also known as Pharsalia, after the place of a key battle.



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For this reason the casuists4 of the Romish church, who gain, by confession, great opportunities of knowing human nature, have generally determined that what it is a crime to do, it is a crime to think. Since by revolving with pleasure, the facility, safety or advantage of a wicked deed, a man soon begins to find his constancy relax, and his detestation soften; the happiness of success glittering before him, withdraws his attention from the atrociousness of the guilt, and acts are at last confidently per­ petrated, of which the first conception only crept into the mind, disguised in pleas­ ing complications, and permitted rather than invited. No man has ever been drawn to crimes, by love or jealousy, envy or hatred, but he can tell how easily he might at first have repelled the temptation, how readily his mind would have obeyed a call to any other object, and how weak his passion has been after some casual avocation,5 ’till he has recalled it again to his heart, and re­ vived the viper by too warm a fondness. Such, therefore, is the importance of keeping reason a constant guard over imagination, that we have otherwise no security for our own virtue, but may corrupt our hearts in the most recluse solitude, with more pernicious and tyrannical appe­ tites and wishes, than the commerce of the world will generally produce; for we are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the grad­ ual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the arti­ fices of self-­deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness. In this disease of the soul, it is of the utmost importance to apply remedies at the beginning; and, therefore, I shall endeavour to shew what thoughts are to be re­ jected or improved, as they regard the past, present, or future; in hopes that some may be awakened to caution and vigilance, who, perhaps, indulge themselves in dangerous dreams, so much the more dangerous, because being yet only dreams they are concluded innocent. The recollection of the past is only useful by way of provision for the future; and therefore, in reviewing all occurrences that fall under a religious consideration, it is proper that a man stop at the first thoughts, to remark how he was led thither, and why he continues the reflexion. If he is dwelling with delight upon a stratagem of successful fraud, a night of licentious riot, or an intrigue of guilty pleasure, let him summon off his imagination as from an unlawful persuit, expel those passages from his remembrance, of which, though he cannot seriously approve them, the pleasure overpowers the guilt, and refer them to a future hour, when they may be considered with greater safety. Such an hour will certainly come; for the impressions 4. “One that studies and settles cases of conscience” (Dictionary). 5. “Diversion of the thoughts” (OED).

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of past pleasure are always lessening, but the sense of guilt, which respects futurity, continues the same. The serious and impartial retrospect of our conduct is indisputably necessary to the confirmation or recovery of virtue, and is, therefore, recommended under the name of self-­examination, by divines, as the first act previous to repentance. It is, indeed, of so great use, that without it we should always be to begin life, be seduced for ever by the same allurements, and misled by the same fallacies. But in order that we may not lose the advantage of our experience, we must endeavour to see every thing in its proper form, and excite in ourselves those sentiments which the great author of nature has decreed the concomitants or followers of good and bad actions. Μηδ᾽ ὕπνον μαλακοῖσιν ἐπ᾽ ὂμμασι προσδέξασθαι, Πρὶν τῶν ήμερινῶν ἔργων τρὶς ἔκαστον έπελθεῖν· Πῆ παρέβην; τί δ᾽ ἒρεξα; τί μοι δέον οὐκ ἐτελέσθη; Ἀρξάμενος δ᾽ ἀπὸ προώτου ἐπέξιθι· καὶ μετέπειτα, Δειλὰ μὲν ἐκπρήξας, ἐπιπλήσσεο, χρηστὰ δὲ, τέρπου.6

Let not sleep, says Pythagoras, fall upon thy eyes till thou hast thrice re­ viewed the transactions of the past day. Where have I turned aside from rec­ titude? What have I been doing? What have I left undone, which I ought to have done? Begin thus from the first act, and proceed; and in conclusion, at the ill which thou hast done be troubled, and rejoice for the good.

Our thoughts on present things being determined by the objects before us, fall not under those indulgences, or excursions, which I am now considering. But I cannot forbear, under this head, to caution pious and tender minds, that are dis­ turbed by the irruptions of wicked imaginations, against too great dejection, and too anxious alarms; for thoughts are only criminal, when they are first chosen, and then voluntarily continued. Evil into the mind of god or man May come and go, so unapprov’d, and leave No spot or stain behind. —Paradise Lost, v.117–19. 6. Aurea Carmina, The Golden Verses, traditionally attributed to Pythagoras (sixth century BCE) but known only through the commentary of Hierocles (fifth century CE). These are lines 40–44 of the seventy-­one-­ line work.



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In futurity chiefly are the snares lodged, by which the imagination is intangled. Futurity is the proper abode of hope and fear, with all their train and progeny of subordinate apprehensions and desires. In futurity events and chances are yet float­ ing at large, without apparent connexion with their causes, and we therefore easily indulge the liberty of gratifying ourselves with a pleasing choice. To pick and cull among possible advantages is, as the civil law terms it, in vacuum venire,7 to take what belongs to nobody; but it has this hazard in it, that we shall be unwilling to quit what we have seized, though an owner should be found. It is easy to think on that which may be gained, till at last we resolve to gain it, and to image the happiness of particular conditions till we can be easy in no other. We ought, at least, to let our de­ sires fix upon nothing in another’s power for the sake of our quiet, or in another’s possession for the sake of our innocence. When a man finds himself led, though by a train of honest sentiments, to a wish for that to which he has no right, he should start back as from a pitfal covered with flowers. He that fancies he should benefit the publick more in a great station than the man that fills it, will in time imagine it an act of virtue to supplant him; and, as opposition readily kindles into hatred, his eager­ ness to do that good, to which he is not called, will betray him to crimes, which in his original scheme were never purposed. He therefore that would govern his actions by the laws of virtue, must regulate his thoughts by those of reason; he must keep guilt from the recesses of his heart, and remember that the pleasures of fancy, and the emotions of desire are more dan­ gerous as they are more hidden, since they escape the awe of observation, and oper­ ate equally in every situation, without the concurrence of external opportunities.

7. Literally, “to enter a vacant place.” In civil law it could mean the acquisition of an estate for want of proper heirs.

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R A M B L E R , No. 28 Saturday, 23 June 1750 Illi mors gravis incubat, Qui, notus nimis omnibus, Ignotus moritur sibi. —Seneca, Thyestes, ll. 401–3    To him, alas, to him, I fear, The face of death will terrible appear, Who in his life, flatt’ring his senseless pride, By being known to all the world beside, Does not himself, when he is dying, know, Nor what he is, nor whither he’s to go. —Cowley1

I have shown, in a late essay,2 to what errors men are hourly betrayed by a mis­ taken opinion of their own powers, and a negligent inspection of their own charac­ ter. But as I then confined my observations to common occurrences, and familiar scenes, I think it proper to enquire how far a nearer acquaintance with ourselves is necessary to our preservation from crimes as well as follies, and how much the atten­ tive study of our own minds may contribute to secure to us the approbation of that being, to whom we are accountable for our thoughts and our actions, and whose favour must finally constitute our total happiness. If it be reasonable to estimate the difficulty of any enterprise by frequent mis­ carriages, it may justly be concluded that it is not easy for a man to know himself; for wheresoever we turn our view, we shall find almost all with whom we converse so nearly as to judge of their sentiments, indulging more favourable conceptions of their own virtue than they have been able to impress upon others, and congratu­ lating themselves upon degrees of excellence, which their fondest admirers cannot allow them to have attained. Those representations of imaginary virtue are generally considered as arts of hypocrisy, and as snares laid for confidence and praise. But I believe the suspicion often unjust; those who thus propagate their own reputation, only extend the fraud by which they have been themselves deceived; for this failing is incident to numbers, 1. Abraham Cowley (1618–1667), “Of Solitude.” 2. Rambler 24, p. 22 above.

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who seem to live without designs, competitions, or persuits; it appears on occasions which promise no accession of honour or of profit, and to persons from whom very little is to be hoped or feared. It is, indeed, not easy to tell how far we may be blinded by the love of ourselves, when we reflect how much a secondary passion can cloud our judgment, and how few faults a man, in the first raptures of love, can discover in the person or conduct of his mistress. To lay open all the sources from which error flows in upon him who contem­ plates his own character, would require more exact knowledge of the human heart, than, perhaps, the most acute and laborious observers have acquired. And, since falsehood may be diversified without end, it is not unlikely that every man admits an imposture in some respect peculiar to himself, as his views have been accidentally directed, or his ideas particularly combined. Some fallacies, however, there are, more frequently insidious, which it may, perhaps, not be useless to detect, because though they are gross they may be fatal, and because nothing but attention is necessary to defeat them. One sophism by which men persuade themselves that they have those virtues which they really want, is formed by the substitution of single acts for habits. A miser who once relieved a friend from the danger of a prison, suffers his imagina­ tion to dwell for ever upon his own heroic generosity; he yields his heart up to indig­ nation at those who are blind to merit, or insensible to misery, and who can please themselves with the enjoyment of that wealth, which they never permit others to partake. From any censures of the world, or reproaches of his conscience, he has an appeal to action and to knowledge; and though his whole life is a course of rapacity and avarice, he concludes himself to be tender and liberal, because he has once per­ formed an act of liberality and tenderness. As a glass which magnifies objects by the approach of one end to the eye, lessens them by the application of the other, so vices are extenuated by the inversion of that fallacy, by which virtues are augmented. Those faults which we cannot con­ ceal from our own notice, are considered, however frequent, not as habitual corrup­ tions, or settled practices, but as casual failures, and single lapses. A man who has, from year to year, set his country to sale, either for the gratification of his ambition or resentment, confesses that the heat of party now and then betrays the severest virtue to measures that cannot be seriously defended. He that spends his days and nights in riot and debauchery, owns that his passions oftentimes overpower his resolutions. But each comforts himself that his faults are not without precedent, for the best and the wisest men have given way to the violence of sudden temptations. There are men who always confound the praise of goodness with the practice, and who believe themselves mild and moderate, charitable and faithful, because they have exerted their eloquence in commendation of mildness, fidelity, and other virtues. This is an error almost universal among those that converse much with de­

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pendents, with such whose fear or interest disposes them to a seeming reverence for any declamation, however enthusiastick, and submission to any boast, however arro­ gant. Having none to recall their attention to their lives, they rate themselves by the goodness of their opinions, and forget how much more easily men may show their virtue in their talk than in their actions. The tribe is likewise very numerous of those who regulate their lives, not by the standard of religion, but the measure of other men’s virtue; who lull their own remorse with the remembrance of crimes more atrocious than their own, and seem to believe that they are not bad while another can be found worse. For escaping these and a thousand other deceits, many expedients have been proposed. Some have recommended the frequent consultation of a wise friend, ad­ mitted to intimacy, and encouraged to sincerity. But this appears a remedy by no means adapted to general use: for in order to secure the virtue of one, it presupposes more virtue in two than will generally be found. In the first, such a desire of rectitude and amendment, as may incline him to hear his own accusation from the mouth of him whom he esteems, and by whom, therefore, he will always hope that his faults are not discovered; and in the second such zeal and honesty, as will make him con­ tent for his friend’s advantage to lose his kindness. A long life may be passed without finding a friend in whose understanding and virtue we can equally confide, and whose opinion we can value at once for its just­ ness and sincerity. A weak man, however honest, is not qualified to judge. A man of the world, however penetrating, is not fit to counsel. Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other’s failings, because they are his own. Friends are tender and unwilling to give pain, or they are interested, and fearful to offend. These objections have inclined others to advise, that he who would know him­ self, should consult his enemies, remember the reproaches that are vented to his face, and listen for the censures that are uttered in private. For his great business is to know his faults, and those malignity will discover, and resentment will reveal. But this precept may be often frustrated; for it seldom happens that rivals or opponents are suffered to come near enough to know our conduct with so much exactness as that conscience should allow and reflect the accusation. The charge of an enemy is often totally false, and commonly so mingled with falsehood, that the mind takes advantage from the failure of one part to discredit the rest, and never suffers any dis­ turbance afterward from such partial reports. Yet it seems that enemies have been always found by experience the most faith­ ful monitors; for adversity has ever been considered as the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, and this effect it must produce by with­ drawing flatterers, whose business it is to hide our weaknesses from us, or by giving loose to malice, and licence to reproach; or at least by cutting off those pleasures



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which called us away from meditation on our conduct, and repressing that pride which too easily persuades us, that we merit whatever we enjoy. Part of these benefits it is in every man’s power to procure to himself, by assign­ ing proper portions of his life to the examination of the rest, and by putting himself frequently in such a situation by retirement and abstraction, as may weaken the in­ fluence of external objects. By this practice he may obtain the solitude of adversity without its melancholy, its instructions without its censures, and its sensibility with­ out its perturbations. The necessity of setting the world at a distance from us, when we are to take a survey of ourselves, has sent many from high stations to the severities of a monastic life; and indeed, every man deeply engaged in business, if all regard to another state be not extinguished, must have the conviction, though, perhaps, not the resolution of Valdesso,3 who, when he solicited Charles the Fifth to dismiss him, being asked, whether he retired upon disgust, answered that he laid down his commission for no other reason but because “there ought to be some time for sober reflection between the life of a soldier and his death.” There are few conditions which do not entangle us with sublunary hopes and fears, from which it is necessary to be at intervals disencumbered, that we may place ourselves in his presence who views effects in their causes, and actions in their mo­ tives; that we may, as Chillingworth4 expresses it, consider things as if there were no other beings in the world but God and ourselves; or, to use language yet more awful, “may commune with our own hearts, and be still.”5 Death, says Seneca, falls heavy upon him who is too much known to others, and too little to himself;6 and Pontanus, a man celebrated among the early restorers of literature, thought the study of our own hearts of so much importance, that he has recommended it from his tomb. Sum Joannes Jovianus Pontanus, quem amaverunt bonae musae, suspexerunt viri probi, honestaverunt reges domini; jam scis qui sim, vel qui potius fuerim; ego vero te, hospes, noscere in tenebris nequeo, sed teipsum ut noscas rogo. “I am Pontanus, beloved by the powers of literature, admired by men of worth, and dignified by the monarchs of the world. Thou knowest now who I am, or more properly who I was. For thee, stranger, I who am in darkness cannot know thee, but I entreat thee to know thyself.”7 I hope every reader of this paper will consider himself as engaged to the obser­ vation of a precept, which the wisdom and virtue of all ages have concurred to en­ force, a precept dictated by philosophers, inculcated by poets, and ratified by saints. 3. Alfonso de Valdés (1490–1532), Spanish humanist and chancellor to Emperor Charles V. 4. William Chillingworth (1602–1644). 5. Psalms 4.4. 6. See the motto to this essay. 7. Giovanni Giovano Pontano (1426–1503), Italian poet and humanist. The epitaph has been variously attributed. 54

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R A M B L E R , No. 31 Tuesday, 3 July 1750 Non ego mendosos ausim defendere mores, Falsaque pro vitiis arma movere meis. —Ovid, Amores, ii.4.1–2 Corrupted manners I shall ne’er defend, Nor, falsely witty, for my faults contend. —Elphinston

Though the fallibility of man’s reason, and the narrowness of his knowledge, are very liberally confessed, yet the conduct of those who so willingly admit the weakness of human nature, seems to discern that this acknowledgment is not al­ together sincere; at least, that most make it with a tacit reserve in favour of them­ selves, and that with whatever ease they give up the claims of their neighbours, they are desirous of being thought exempt from faults in their own conduct, and from error in their opinions. The certain and obstinate opposition, which we may observe made to confuta­ tion, however clear, and to reproof however tender, is an undoubted argument, that some dormant privilege is thought to be attacked; for as no man can lose what he neither possesses, nor imagines himself to possess, or be defrauded of that to which he has no right, it is reasonable to suppose that those who break out into fury at the softest contradiction, or the slightest censure, since they apparently conclude them­ selves injured, must fancy some antient immunity violated, or some natural preroga­ tive invaded. To be mistaken, if they thought themselves liable to mistake, could not be considered as either shameful or wonderful, and they would not receive with so much emotion intelligence which only informed them of what they knew before, nor struggle with such earnestness against an attack that deprived them of nothing to which they held themselves entitled. It is related of one of the philosophers, that when an account was brought him of his son’s death, he received it only with this reflexion, “I knew that my son was mortal.”1 He that is convinced of an error, if he had the same knowledge of his own weakness, would, instead of straining for artifices, and brooding malignity, only re­ gard such oversights as the appendages of humanity, and pacify himself with con­ sidering that he had always known man to be a fallible being. 1. Plutarch, Moralia, 463 d–­e . The philosopher is Anaxagoras (Loeb, Moralia, vi.155).

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If it be true that most of our passions are excited by the novelty of objects, there is little reason for doubting that to be considered as subject to fallacies of ratiocina­ tion, or imperfection of knowledge, is to a great part of mankind entirely new; for it is impossible to fall into any company where there is not some regular and estab­ lished subordination, without finding rage and vehemence produced only by differ­ ence of sentiments about things in which neither of the disputants have any other interest than what proceeds from their mutual unwillingness to give way to any opin­ ion that may bring upon them the disgrace of being wrong. I have heard of one that, having advanced some erroneous doctrines in philosophy,2 refused to see the experiments by which they were confuted: and the observation of every day will give new proofs with how much industry subterfuges and evasions are sought to decline the pressure of resistless arguments, how often the state of the question is altered, how often the antagonist is wilfully misrepre­ sented, and in how much perplexity the clearest positions are involved by those whom they happen to oppose. Of all mortals none seem to have been more infected with this species of vanity, than the race of writers, whose reputation arising solely from their understanding, gives them a very delicate sensibility of any violence attempted on their literary hon­ our. It is not unpleasing to remark with what solicitude men of acknowledged abili­ ties will endeavour to palliate absurdities and reconcile contradictions, only to ob­ viate criticisms to which all human performances must ever be exposed, and from which they can never suffer, but when they teach the world by a vain and ridiculous impatience to think them of importance. Dryden, whose warmth of fancy, and haste of composition very frequently hur­ ried him into inaccuracies, heard himself sometimes exposed to ridicule for having said in one of his tragedies, I follow fate, which does too fast persue. —Indian Emperor, iv.iii.3.

That no man could at once follow and be followed was, it may be thought, too plain to be long disputed; and the truth is, that Dryden was apparently betrayed into the blunder by the double meaning of the word “fate,” to which in the former part of the verse he had annexed the idea of “fortune,” and in the latter that of “death”; so that the sense only was, “though persued by ‘death,’ I will not resign myself to despair, but will follow ‘fortune,’ and do and suffer what is appointed.” This how­ ever was not completely expressed, and Dryden being determined not to give way to his critics, never confessed that he had been surprised by an ambiguity; but finding 2. Natural philosophy, or science.

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luckily in Virgil an account of a man moving in a circle, with this expression, Et se sequiturque fugitque,3 “Here,” says he, “is the passage in imitation of which I wrote the line that my critics were pleased to condemn as nonsense; not but I may some­ times write nonsense, though they have not the fortune to find it.”4 Every one sees the folly of such mean doublings to escape the persuit of criti­ cism; nor is there a single reader of this poet, who would not have paid him greater veneration, had he shewn consciousness enough of his own superiority to set such cavils at defiance, and owned that he sometimes slipped into errors by the tumult of his imagination, and the multitude of his ideas. It is happy when this temper discovers itself only in little things, which may be right or wrong without any influence on the virtue or happiness of mankind. We may, with very little inquietude, see a man persist in a project, which he has found to be impracticable, live in an inconvenient house because it was contrived by himself, or wear a coat of a particular cut, in hopes by perseverance to bring it into fashion. These are indeed follies, but they are only follies, and, however wild or ridiculous, can very little affect others. But such pride, once indulged, too frequently operates upon more important objects, and inclines men not only to vindicate their errors, but their vices; to persist in practices which their own hearts condemn, only lest they should seem to feel re­ proaches, or be made wiser by the advice of others; or to search for sophisms tend­ ing to the confusion of all principles, and the evacuation of all duties, that they may not appear to act what they are not able to defend. Let every man, who finds vanity so far predominant, as to betray him to the danger of this last degree of corruption, pause a moment to consider what will be the consequences of the plea which he is about to offer for a practice to which he knows himself not led at first by reason, but impelled by the violence of desire, sur­ prized by the suddenness of passion, or seduced by the soft approaches of temp­ tation, and by imperceptible gradations of guilt. Let him consider what he is going to commit by forcing his understanding to patronise those appetites, which it is its chief business to hinder and reform. The cause of virtue requires so little art to defend it, and good and evil, when they have been once shewn, are so easily distinguished, that such apologists seldom gain proselytes to their party, nor have their fallacies power to deceive any but those whose desires have clouded their discernment. All that the best faculties thus em­ ployed can perform is, to persuade the hearers that the man is hopeless whom they 3. The phrase actually is from Ovid, Metamorphoses, iv.461: “both following himself and fleeing” (Loeb translation). 4. SJ paraphrases Dryden’s statement in the Preface to Tyrannic Love (California Dryden, x.113), substi­ tuting the passage in Ovid for Dryden’s citation of Virgil, Aeneid, xi.694–95.



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only thought vitious, that corruption has passed from his manners to his principles, that all endeavours for his recovery are without prospect of success, and that nothing remains but to avoid him as infectious, or hunt him down as destructive. But if it be supposed that he may impose on his audience by partial represen­ tations of consequences, intricate deductions of remote causes, or perplexed com­ binations of ideas, which having various relations appear different as viewed on different sides; that he may sometimes puzzle the weak and well-meaning, and now and then seduce, by the admiration of his abilities, a young mind still fluctuating in unsettled notions, and neither fortified by instruction nor enlightened by experi­ ence; yet what must be the event of such a triumph? A man cannot spend all this life in frolick: age, or disease, or solitude will bring some hours of serious consider­ ation, and it will then afford no comfort to think, that he has extended the dominion of vice, that he has loaded himself with the crimes of others, and can never know the extent of his own wickedness, or make reparation for the mischief that he has caused. There is not perhaps in all the stores of ideal anguish, a thought more pain­ ful, than the consciousness of having propagated corruption by vitiating principles, of having not only drawn others from the paths of virtue, but blocked up the way by which they should return, of having blinded them to every beauty but the paint of pleasure, and deafened them to every call but the alluring voice of the syrens of destruction. There is yet another danger in this practice: men who cannot deceive others, are very often successful in deceiving themselves; they weave their sophistry till their own reason is entangled, and repeat their positions till they are credited by them­ selves; by often contending they grow sincere in the cause, and by long wishing for demonstrative arguments they at last bring themselves to fancy that they have found them. They are then at the uttermost verge of wickedness, and may die without having that light rekindled in their minds, which their own pride and contumacy have extinguished. The men who can be charged with fewest failings, either with respect to abili­ ties or virtue, are generally most ready to allow them; for not to dwell on things of solemn and awful consideration, the humility of confessors, the tears of saints, and the dying terrors of persons eminent for piety and innocence, it is well known that Caesar wrote an account of the errors committed by him in his wars of Gaul,5 and that Hippocrates, whose name is perhaps in rational estimation greater than Caesar’s, warned posterity against a mistake into which he had fallen.6 “So much,” 5. Presumably C. Julius Caesar, Commentary on the War in Gaul, but no specific reference has been located. 6. Hippocrates, Epidemics, 5.27.

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says Celsus, “does the open and artless confession of an error become a man con­ scious that he has enough remaining to support his character.”7 As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it, without fearing any censure so much as that of his own mind. As justice requires that all injuries should be repaired, it is the duty of him who has seduced others by bad practices, or false notions, to endeavour that such as have adopted his errors should know his retraction, and that those who have learned vice by his example, should by his example be taught amendment.

7. Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c. 25 BCE–­50 CE), De medicina, 8.4.4.



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A DV E N T U R E R , No. 50 Saturday, 28 April 1753 Quicunque turpi fraude semel innotuit, Etiamsi vera dicit, amittit fidem. —Phaedrus, i.10.1–21 The wretch that often has deceiv’d, Though truth he speaks, is ne’er believ’d.

When Aristotle was once asked, what a man could gain by uttering falsehoods; he replied, “not to be credited when he shall tell the truth.”2 The character of a liar is at once so hateful and contemptible, that even of those who have lost their virtue it might be expected, that from the violation of truth they should be restrained by their pride. Almost every other vice that disgraces human nature, may be kept in countenance by applause and association: the corrupter of virgin innocence sees himself envied by the men, and at least not detested by the women: the drunkard may easily unite with beings, devoted like himself to noisy merriment or silent insensibility, who will celebrate his victories over the novices of intemperance, boast themselves the companions of his prowess, and tell with rap­ ture of the multitudes whom unsuccessful emulation has hurried to the grave: even the robber and the cut-­throat have their followers, who admire their address and in­ trepidity, their stratagems of rapine, and their fidelity to the gang. The liar, and only the liar, is invariably and universally despised, abandoned, and disowned; he has no domestic consolations, which he can oppose to the censure of mankind; he can retire to no fraternity where his crimes may stand in the place of virtues; but is given up to the hisses of the multitude, without friend and with­ out apologist. It is the peculiar condition of falsehood, to be equally detested by the good and bad: “The devils,” says Sir Thomas Brown, “do not tell lies to one another; for truth is necessary to all societies; nor can the society of hell subsist without it.”3 It is natural to expect, that a crime thus generally detested, should be generally avoided; at least, that none should expose himself to unabated and unpitied infamy, 1. Phaedrus, The Fables of Aesop, “The Wolf and the Fox with the Ape for a Judge.” The wolf accuses the fox of stealing; the fox denies it; the ape believes neither of them. 2. Diogenes Laertius, Lives, Book V, c. 1, “Aristotle” (17). 3. SJ is paraphrasing Pseudodoxia Epidemica, i.xi, par. 16.

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without an adequate temptation; and that to guilt so easily detected, and so severely punished, an adequate temptation would not readily be found. Yet so it is, that in defiance of censure and contempt, truth is frequently vio­ lated; and scarcely the most vigilant and unremitted circumspection will secure him that mixes with mankind, from being hourly deceived by men of whom it can scarcely be imagined, that they mean any injury to him, or profit to themselves; even where the subject of conversation could not have been expected to put the passions in motion, or to have excited either hope or fear, or zeal or malignity, sufficient to induce any man to put his reputation in hazard, however little he might value it, or to overpower the love of truth, however weak might be its influence. The casuists4 have very diligently distinguished lyes into their several classes, according to their various degrees of malignity: but they have, I think, generally omitted that which is most common, and, perhaps, not least mischievous; which, since the moralists have not given it a name, I shall distinguish as the Lye of Vanity. To vanity may justly be imputed most of the falsehoods, which every man perceives hourly playing upon his ear, and, perhaps, most of those that are propa­ gated with success. To the lye of commerce, and the lye of malice, the motive is so apparent, that they are seldom negligently or implicitly received: suspicion is always watchful over the practices of interest; and whatever the hope of gain, or desire of mischief, can prompt one man to assert, another is by reasons equally cogent in­ cited to refute. But vanity pleases herself with such slight gratifications, and looks forward to pleasure so remotely consequential, that her practices raise no alarm, and her stratagems are not easily discovered. Vanity is, indeed, often suffered to pass unpursued by suspicion; because he that would watch her motions, can never be at rest: fraud and malice are bounded in their influence; some opportunity of time and place is necessary to their agency; but scarce any man is abstracted one moment from his vanity; and he, to whom truth affords no gratifications, is generally inclined to seek them in falsehood. It is remarked by Sir Kenelm Digby, “that every man has a desire to appear superior to others, though it were only in having seen what they have not seen.”5 Such an accidental advantage, since it neither implies merit, nor confers dignity, one would think should not be desired so much as to be counterfeited: yet even this vanity, trifling as it is, produces innumerable narratives, all equally false; but more or less credible, in proportion to the skill or confidence of the relater. How many may a man of diffusive conversation count among his acquaintances, whose lives have been 4. “One that studies and settles cases of conscience” (Dictionary). 5. “. . . innate it is to every man, to desire the having of some preeminence beyond his neighbours; be it but in pretending to have seen something which they have not,” Of Bodies and of Mans Soul (1669), p. 65.



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signalised by numberless escapes; who never cross the river but in a storm, or take a journey into the country without more adventures than befel the knight-­errants of antient times, in pathless forests or enchanted castles! How many must he know to whom portents and prodigies are of daily occurrence; and for whom nature is hourly working wonders invisible to every other eye, only to supply them with subjects of conversation! Others there are that amuse themselves with the dissemination of falsehood, at greater hazard of detection and disgrace; men marked out by some lucky planet for universal confidence and friendship, who have been consulted in every difficulty, entrusted with every secret, and summoned to every transaction: it is the supreme felicity of these men, to stun all companies with noisy information; to still doubt, and overbear opposition, with certain knowledge or authentic intelligence. A liar of this kind, with a strong memory or brisk imagination, is often the oracle of an ob­ scure club, and till time discovers his impostures, dictates to his hearers with uncon­ trouled authority; for if a public question be started, he was present at the debate; if a new fashion be mentioned, he was at court the first day of its appearance; if a new performance of literature draws the attention of the public, he has patronised the author, and seen his work in manuscript; if a criminal of eminence be condemned to die, he often predicted his fate, and endeavoured his reformation: and who that lives at a distance from the scene of action, will dare to contradict a man, who re­ ports from his own eyes and ears, and to whom all persons and affairs are thus inti­ mately known? This kind of falsehood is generally successful for a time, because it is practised at first with timidity and caution: but the prosperity of the liar is of short duration; the reception of one story, is always an incitement to the forgery of another less probable; and he goes on to triumph over tacit credulity, till pride or reason rises up against him, and his companions will no longer endure to see him wiser than them­ selves. It is apparent, that the inventors of all these fictions intend some exaltation of themselves, and are led off by the pursuit of honour from their attendance upon truth: their narratives always imply some consequence in favour of their courage, their sagacity or their activity, their familiarity with the learned, or their reception among the great; they are always bribed by the present pleasure of seeing themselves superior to those that surround them, and receiving the homage of silent attention and envious admiration. But vanity is sometimes incited to fiction, by less visible gratifications: the present age abounds with a race of liars, who are content with the consciousness of falsehood, and whose pride is to deceive others without any gain or glory to them­ selves. Of this tribe it is the supreme pleasure to remark a lady in the play-­house or the park, and to publish, under the character of a man suddenly enamoured, an ad­

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vertisement in the news of the next day, containing a minute description of her per­ son and her dress. From this artifice, indeed, no other effect can be expected than perturbations which the writer can never see, and conjectures of which he can never be informed. Some mischief, however, he hopes he has done: and to have done mis­ chief, is of some importance. He sets his invention to work again, and produces a narrative of a robbery, or a murder, with all the circumstances of time and place accurately adjusted: this is a jest of greater effect and longer duration: if he fixes his scene at a proper distance, he may for several days keep a wife in terror for her hus­ band, or a mother for her son; and please himself with reflecting, that by his abilities and address, some addition is made to the miseries of life. There is, I think, an antient law of Scotland, by which Leasing-­making6 was capitally punished. I am, indeed, far from desiring to increase in this kingdom the number of executions: yet I cannot but think, that they who destroy the confidence of society, weaken the credit of intelligence, and interrupt the security of life; harrass the delicate with shame, and perplex the timorous with alarms; might very properly be awakened to a sense of their crimes, by denunciations of a whipping post or pil­ lory: since many are so insensible of right and wrong, that they have no standard of action but the law; nor feel guilt, but as they dread punishment.

6. “Verbal sedition” (OED). Gilbert Burnet reports in his History of His Own Time: “. . . misrepresent­ ing the proceedings of Parliament, and of belying the King’s good subjects called in the Scottish law Leasing making, which either to the king of the people or to the people of the king is capital” (1724–34), i.119.



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R A M B L E R , No. 76 Saturday, 8 December 1750    ————Silvis ubi passim Palantes error certo de tramite pellit, Ille sinistrorsum, hic dextrorsum abit, unus utrique Error, sed variis illudit partibus. —Horace, Satires, ii.3.48–51 While mazy error draws mankind astray From truth’s sure path, each takes his devious way: One to the right, one to the left recedes, Alike deluded, as each fancy leads. —Elphinston

It is easy for every man, whatever be his character with others, to find reasons for esteeming himself, and therefore censure, contempt, or conviction of crimes, sel­ dom deprive him of his own favour. Those, indeed, who can see only external facts, may look upon him with abhorrence, but when he calls himself to his own tribunal, he finds every fault, if not absolutely effaced, yet so much palliated by the goodness of his intention, and the cogency of the motive, that very little guilt or turpitude re­ mains; and when he takes a survey of the whole complication of his character, he discovers so many latent excellencies, so many virtues that want but an opportunity to exert themselves in act, and so many kind wishes for universal happiness, that he looks on himself as suffering unjustly under the infamy of single failings, while the general temper of his mind is unknown or unregarded. It is natural to mean well, when only abstracted ideas of virtue are proposed to the mind, and no particular passion turns us aside from rectitude; and so willing is every man to flatter himself, that the difference between approving laws, and obey­ ing them, is frequently forgotten; he that acknowledges the obligations of morality, and pleases his vanity with enforcing them to others, concludes himself zealous in the cause of virtue, though he has no longer any regard to her precepts, than they conform to his own desires; and counts himself among her warmest lovers, because he praises her beauty, though every rival steals away his heart. There are, however, great numbers who have little recourse to the refinements of speculation, but who yet live at peace with themselves, by means which require less understanding, or less attention. When their hearts are burthened with the con­ sciousness of a crime, instead of seeking for some remedy within themselves, they

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look round upon the rest of mankind, to find others tainted with the same guilt: they please themselves with observing, that they have numbers on their side; and that though they are hunted out from the society of good men, they are not likely to be condemned to solitude. It may be observed, perhaps without exception, that none are so industrious to detect wickedness, or so ready to impute it, as they whose crimes are apparent and confessed. They envy an unblemished reputation, and what they envy they are busy to destroy; they are unwilling to suppose themselves meaner, and more cor­ rupt than others, and therefore willingly pull down from their elevations those with whom they cannot rise to an equality. No man yet was ever wicked without secret discontent, and according to the different degrees of remaining virtue, or unextin­ guished reason, he either endeavours to reform himself, or corrupt others; either to regain the station which he has quitted, or prevail on others to imitate his defection. It has been always considered as an alleviation of misery not to suffer alone, even when union and society can contribute nothing to resistance or escape; some comfort of the same kind seems to incite wickedness to seek associates, though in­ deed another reason may be given, for as guilt is propagated the power of reproach is diminished, and among numbers equally detestable every individual may be shel­ tered from shame, though not from conscience. Another lenitive by which the throbs of the breast are assuaged, is, the contem­ plation, not of the same, but of different crimes. He that cannot justify himself by his resemblance to others, is ready to try some other expedient, and to enquire what will rise to his advantage from opposition and dissimilitude. He easily finds some faults in every human being, which he weighs against his own, and easily makes them pre­ ponderate while he keeps the balance in his own hand, and throws in or takes out at his pleasure circumstances that make them heavier or lighter. He then triumphs in his comparative purity, and sets himself at ease, not because he can refute the charges advanced against him, but because he can censure his accusers with equal justice, and no longer fears the arrows of reproach, when he has stored his magazine of malice with weapons equally sharp and equally envenomed. This practice, though never just, is yet specious1 and artful, when the censure is directed against deviations to the contrary extreme. The man who is branded with cowardice, may, with some appearance of propriety, turn all his force of argument against a stupid contempt of life, and rash precipitation into unnecessary danger. Every recession from temerity is an approach towards cowardice, and though it be confessed that bravery, like other virtues, stands between faults on either hand, yet the place of the middle point may always be disputed; he may therefore often im­ pose upon careless understandings, by turning the attention wholly from himself, 1. “Plausible; superficially, not solidly right” (Dictionary, sense 2).



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and keeping it fixed invariably on the opposite fault; and by shewing how many evils are avoided by his behaviour, he may conceal for a time those which are incurred. But vice has not always opportunities or address for such artful subterfuges; men often extenuate their own guilt, only by vague and general charges upon others, or endeavour to gain rest to themselves, by pointing some other prey to the persuit of censure. Every whisper of infamy is industriously circulated, every hint of suspicion eagerly improved, and every failure of conduct joyfully published, by those whose interest it is, that the eye and voice of the publick should be employed on any rather than on themselves. All these artifices, and a thousand others equally vain and equally despicable, are incited by that conviction of the deformity of wickedness, from which none can set himself free, and by an absurd desire to separate the cause from the effects, and to enjoy the profit of crimes without suffering the shame. Men are willing to try all methods of reconciling guilt and quiet, and when their understandings are stubborn and uncomplying, raise their passions against them, and hope to over-­power their own knowledge. It is generally not so much the desire of men, sunk into depravity, to deceive the world as themselves, for when no particular circumstances make them dependant on others, infamy disturbs them little, but as it revives their remorse, and is echoed to them from their own hearts. The sentence most dreaded is that of reason and con­ science, which they would engage on their side at any price but the labours of duty, and the sorrows of repentance. For this purpose every seducement and fallacy is sought, the hopes still rest upon some new experiment till life is at an end; and the last hour steals on unperceived, while the faculties are engaged in resisting reason, and repressing the sense of the divine disapprobation.

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R A M B L E R , No. 131 Tuesday, 18 June 1751 ———Fatis accede deisque, Et cole felices; miseros fuge. Sidera coelo Ut distant, et flamma mari, sic utile recto. —Lucan, Pharsalia, viii.486–88 Still follow where auspicious fates invite; Caress the happy, and the wretched slight. Sooner shall jarring elements unite, Than truth with gain, than interest with right. —F. Lewis

There is scarcely any sentiment in which, amidst the innumerable varieties of inclination that nature or accident have scattered in the world, we find greater num­ bers concurring than in the wish for riches; a wish indeed so prevalent that it may be considered as universal and transcendental, as the desire in which all other desires are included, and of which the various purposes which actuate mankind are only subordinate species and different modifications. Wealth is the general center of inclination, the point to which all minds pre­ serve an invariable tendency, and from which they afterwards diverge in numberless directions. Whatever is the remote or ultimate design, the immediate care is to be rich; and in whatever enjoyment we intend finally to acquiesce, we seldom consider it as attainable but by the means of money. Of wealth therefore all unanimously con­ fess the value, nor is there any disagreement but about the use. No desire can be formed which riches do not assist to gratify. He that places his happiness in splendid equipage or numerous dependents, in refined praise or popular acclamations, in the accumulation of curiosities or the revels of luxury, in splendid edifices or wide plantations, must still either by birth or acquisition pos­ sess riches. They may be considered as the elemental principles of pleasure, which may be combined with endless diversity; as the essential and necessary substance, of which only the form is left to be adjusted by choice. The necessity of riches being thus apparent, it is not wonderful1 that almost every mind has been employed in endeavours to acquire them; that multitudes have vied in arts by which life is furnished with accommodations, and which therefore mankind may reasonably be expected to reward. 1. “Strange; astonishing” (Dictionary). 67

It had indeed been happy, if this predominant appetite had operated only in concurrence with virtue, by influencing none but those who were zealous to deserve what they were eager to possess, and had abilities to improve their own fortunes by contributing to the ease or happiness of others. To have riches and to have merit would then have been the same, and success might reasonably have been considered as a proof of excellence. But we do not find that any of the wishes of men keep a stated proportion to their powers of attainment. Many envy and desire wealth, who can never procure it by honest industry or useful knowledge. They therefore turn their eyes about to ex­ amine what other methods can be found of gaining that which none, however impo­ tent or worthless, will be content to want. A little enquiry will discover that there are nearer ways to profit than through the intricacies of art, or up the steeps of labour; what wisdom and virtue scarcely receive at the close of life, as the recompense of long toil and repeated efforts, is brought within the reach of subtilty and dishonesty by more expeditious and com­ pendious measures: the wealth of credulity is an open prey to falsehood; and the possessions of ignorance and imbecility are easily stolen away by the conveyances of secret artifice, or seized by the gripe of unresisted violence. It is likewise not hard to discover, that riches always procure protection for themselves, that they dazzle the eyes of enquiry, divert the celerity of pursuit, or appease the ferocity of vengeance. When any man is incontestably known to have large possessions, very few think it requisite to enquire by what practices they were obtained; the resentment of mankind rages only against the struggles of feeble and timorous corruption, but when it has surmounted the first opposition, it is after­ wards supported by favour, and animated by applause. The prospect of gaining speedily what is ardently desired, and the certainty of obtaining by every accession of advantage an addition of security, have so far pre­ vailed upon the passions of mankind, that the peace of life is destroyed by a general and incessant struggle for riches. It is observed of gold, by an old epigrammatist, that “to have it is to be in fear, and to want it is to be in sorrow.”2 There is no con­ dition which is not disquieted either with the care of gaining or of keeping money; and the race of man may be divided in a political3 estimate between those who are practising fraud, and those who are repelling it. If we consider the present state of the world, it will be found, that all confi­ dence is lost among mankind, that no man ventures to act where money can be en­ dangered, upon the faith of another. It is impossible to see the long scrolls in which every contract is included, with all their appendages of seals and attestation, without 2. Greek Anthology, ix.394. 3. “Judicious, expedient, sensible” (OED, sense A2).

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wondering at the depravity of those beings, who must be restrained from violation of promise by such formal and publick evidences, and precluded from equivoca­ tion and subterfuge by such punctilious minuteness. Among all the satires to which folly and wickedness have given occasion, none is equally severe with a bond or a settlement. Of the various arts by which riches may be obtained, the greater part are at the first view irreconcileable with the laws of virtue; some are openly flagitious,4 and practised not only in neglect, but in defiance of faith and justice; and the rest are on every side so entangled with dubious tendencies, and so beset with perpetual temp­ tations, that very few, even of those who are not yet abandoned, are able to preserve their innocence, or can produce any other claim to pardon than that they deviated from the right less than others, and have sooner and more diligently endeavoured to return. One of the chief characteristicks of the golden age, of the age in which neither care nor danger had intruded on mankind, is the community of possessions: strife and fraud were totally excluded, and every turbulent passion was stilled, by plenty and equality. Such were indeed happy times, but such times can return no more. Community of possession must include spontaneity of production; for what is ob­ tained by labour, will be of right the property of him by whose labour it is gained. And while a rightful claim to pleasure or to affluence must be procured either by slow industry or uncertain hazard, there will always be multitudes whom cowardice or impatience incite to more safe and more speedy methods, who strive to pluck the fruit without cultivating the tree, and to share the advantages of victory without par­ taking the danger of the battle. In later ages, the conviction of the danger to which virtue is exposed while the mind continues open to the influence of riches, has determined many to vows of perpetual poverty; they have suppressed desire by cutting off the possibility of grati­ fication, and secured their peace by destroying the enemy whom they had no hope of reducing to quiet subjection. But by debarring themselves from evil, they have rescinded many opportunities of good; they have too often sunk into inactivity and uselessness; and though they have forborn to injure society, have not fully paid their contributions to its happiness. While riches are so necessary to present convenience, and so much more easily obtained by crimes than virtues, the mind can only be secured from yielding to the continual impulse of covetousness by the preponderation of unchangeable and eternal motives. Gold will turn the intellectual balance, when weighed only against reputation; but will be light and ineffectual when the opposite scale is charged with justice, veracity, and piety. 4. “Wicked; villainous; atrocious” (Dictionary, sense 1).



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Li t e r a t u r e , L e a r n i n g , a n d A u t h o r s h ip

R A M B L E R , No. 14 Saturday, 5 May 1750 ______________________________ Nil fuit unquam Sic dispar sibi______________________________ —Horace, Satires, i.3.18–19 Sure such a various creature ne’er was known. —Francis

Among the many inconsistencies which folly produces, or infirmity suffers in the human mind, there has often been observed a manifest and striking contrariety between the life of an author and his writings; and Milton, in a letter to a learned stranger, by whom he had been visited, with great reason congratulates himself upon the consciousness of being found equal to his own character, and having preserved in a private and familiar interview that reputation which his works had procured him.1 Those whom the appearance of virtue, or the evidence of genius, have tempted to a nearer knowledge of the writer in whose performances they may be found, have indeed had frequent reason to repent their curiosity; the bubble that sparkled be­ fore them has become common water at the touch; the phantom of perfection has vanished when they wished to press it to their bosom. They have lost the pleasure of imagining how far humanity may be exalted, and, perhaps, felt themselves less inclined to toil up the steeps of virtue, when they observe those who seem best able to point the way, loitering below, as either afraid of the labour, or doubtful of the reward. 1. To Emeric Bigot, a patron of serious scholarship, 24 March 1656/57, in The Works of John Milton, 18 vols., ed. Frank Allen Paterson et al. (1936), xii.84–85.

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It has been long the custom of the oriental monarchs to hide themselves in gar­ dens and palaces, to avoid the conversation of mankind, and to be known to their subjects only by their edicts. The same policy is no less necessary to him that writes, than to him that governs; for men would not more patiently submit to be taught, than commanded, by one known to have the same follies and weaknesses with them­ selves. A sudden intruder into the closet of an author would perhaps feel equal in­ dignation with the officer, who having long solicited admission into the presence of Sardanapalus, saw him not consulting upon laws, enquiring into grievances, or modelling armies, but employed in feminine amusements, and directing the ladies in their work.2 It is not difficult to conceive, however, that for many reasons a man writes much better than he lives. For, without entering into refined speculations, it may be shown much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear, and is in the same state with him that teaches upon land the art of navigation, to whom the sea is always smooth, and the wind always prosperous. The mathematicians are well acquainted with the difference between pure sci­ ence, which has to do only with ideas, and the application of its laws to the use of life, in which they are constrained to submit to the imperfection of matter and the influence of accidents. Thus, in moral discussions it is to be remembred that many impediments obstruct our practice, which very easily give way to theory. The specu­ latist is only in danger of erroneous reasoning, but the man involved in life has his own passions, and those of others, to encounter, and is embarrassed with a thousand inconveniences, which confound him with variety of impulse, and either perplex or obstruct his way. He is forced to act without deliberation, and obliged to choose before he can examine; he is surprised by sudden alterations of the state of things, and changes his measures according to superficial appearances; he is led by others, either because he is indolent, or because he is timorous; he is sometimes afraid to know what is right, and sometimes finds friends or enemies diligent to deceive him. We are, therefore, not to wonder that most fail, amidst tumult, and snares, and danger, in the observance of those precepts, which they laid down in solitude, safety, and tranquillity, with a mind unbiassed, and with liberty unobstructed. It is the con­ dition of our present state to see more than we can attain, the exactest vigilance and caution can never maintain a single day of unmingled innocence, much less can the utmost efforts of incorporated mind reach the summits of speculative virtue. It is, however, necessary for the idea of perfection to be proposed, that we may 2. Sardanapalus (seventh century BCE) spent his days dressed as a woman and practicing bisexuality. Diodorus Siculus attributes the fall of Assyria to his behavior (Bibliotheca historica, ii.23–24).



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have some object to which our endeavours are to be directed; and he that is most de­ ficient in the duties of life, makes some atonement for his faults, if he warns others against his own failings, and hinders, by the salubrity3 of his admonitions, the con­ tagion of his example. Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues, which he neglects to practise; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself. The interest which the corrupt part of mankind have in hardening themselves against every motive to amendment, has disposed them to give to these contradic­ tions, when they can be produced against the cause of virtue, that weight which they will not allow them in any other case. They see men act in opposition to their inter­ est, without supposing, that they do not know it; those who give way to the sudden violence of passion, and forsake the most important persuits for petty pleasures, are not supposed to have changed their opinions, or to approve their own conduct. In moral or religious questions alone, they determine the sentiments by the actions, and charge every man with endeavouring to impose upon the world, whose writings are not confirmed by his life. They never consider that they themselves neglect, or practise something every day, inconsistently with their own settled judgment, nor discover that the conduct of the advocates for virtue can little increase, or lessen, the obligations of their dictates; argument is to be invalidated only by argument, and is in itself of the same force, whether or not it convinces him by whom it is proposed. Yet since this prejudice, however unreasonable, is always likely to have some prevalence, it is the duty of every man to take care lest he should hinder the efficacy of his own instructions. When he desires to gain the belief of others, he should shew that he believes himself; and when he teaches the fitness of virtue by his reasonings, he should, by his example, prove its possibility: Thus much at least may be required of him, that he shall not act worse than others because he writes better, nor imag­ ine that, by the merit of his genius, he may claim indulgence beyond mortals of the lower classes, and be excused for want of prudence, or neglect of virtue. Bacon, in his History of the Winds, after having offered something to the imagination as desirable, often proposes lower advantages in its place to the reason as attainable.4 The same method may be sometimes pursued in moral endeavours, 3. “Wholesomeness; healthfulness” (Dictionary). 4. The History of the Winds is part of Bacon’s Natural and Experimental History, which is the third part of his Great Instauration. See the Oxford Francis Bacon, Vol. XII, ed. Graham Rees (2007), pp. 19–131. For Bacon’s preference for attainable truths, see, e.g., p. 67.

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which this philosopher has observed in natural enquiries; having first set positive and absolute excellence before us, we may be pardoned though we sink down to humbler virtue, trying, however, to keep our point always in view, and struggling not to lose ground, though we cannot gain it. It is recorded of Sir Matthew Hale, that he, for a long time, concealed the con­ secration of himself to the stricter duties of religion, lest by some flagitious5 and shameful action, he should bring piety into disgrace.6 For the same reason, it may be prudent for a writer, who apprehends that he shall not inforce his own maxims by his domestic character, to conceal his name that he may not injure them. There are, indeed, a greater number whose curiosity to gain a more familiar knowledge of successful writers, is not so much prompted by an opinion of their power to improve as to delight, and who expect from them not arguments against vice, or dissertations on temperance or justice, but flights of wit, and sallies of pleas­ antry, or, at least, acute remarks, nice distinctions, justness of sentiment, and ele­ gance of diction. This expectation is, indeed, specious and probable, and yet, such is the fate of all human hopes, that it is very often frustrated, and those who raise admiration by their books, disgust by their company. A man of letters for the most part spends, in the privacies of study, that season of life in which the manners are to be softened into ease, and polished into elegance, and, when he has gained knowledge enough to be respected, has neglected the minuter acts by which he might have pleased. When he enters life, if his temper be soft and timorous, he is diffident and bashful, from the knowledge of his defects; or if he was born with spirit and resolution, he is ferocious and arrogant from the consciousness of his merit: he is either dissipated by the awe of company, and unable to recollect his reading, and arrange his arguments; or he is hot, and dogmatical, quick in opposition, and tenacious in defence, disabled by his own violence, and confused by his haste to triumph. The graces of writing and conversation are of different kinds, and though he who excels in one might have been with opportunities and application equally suc­ cessful in the other, yet as many please by extemporary talk, though utterly un­ acquainted with the more accurate method, and more laboured beauties, which composition requires; so it is very possible that men, wholly accustomed to works of study, may be without that readiness of conception, and affluence of language, always necessary to colloquial entertainment. They may want address to watch the hints which conversation offers for the display of their particular attainments, or 5. “Wicked; villainous; atrocious” (Dictionary). 6. Gilbert Burnet, The Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale, Kt. (1681), pp. 141–42. Hale was an English judge, barrister, and jurist. In Dictionary, SJ quotes his Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature (1677).



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they may be so much unfurnished with matter on common subjects, that discourse not professedly literary glides over them as heterogeneous bodies, without admitting their conceptions to mix in the circulation. A transition from an author’s books to his conversation, is too often like an en­ trance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples, and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendor, gran­ deur and magnificence; but, when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with ob­ structions, and clouded with smoke.

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R A M B L E R , No. 16 Saturday, 12 May 1750 —————Multis dicendi copia torrens, Et sua mortifera est facundia —————— —Juvenal, x.9–10 Some who the depths of eloquence have found, In that unnavigable stream were drown’d. —Dryden

sir, I am the modest young man whom you favoured with your advice, in a late paper;1 and, as I am very far from suspecting that you foresaw the numberless incon­ veniences which I have, by following it, brought upon myself, I will lay my condition open before you, for you seem bound to extricate me from the perplexities, in which your counsel, however innocent in the intention, has contributed to involve me. You told me, as you thought, to my comfort, that a writer might easily find means of introducing his genius to the world, for the “presses of England were open.” This I have now fatally experienced; the press is, indeed, open. ——————Facilis descensus Averni, Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis. —Aeneid, vi.126–27 The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way. —Dryden

The means of doing hurt to ourselves are always at hand. I immediately sent to a printer, and contracted with him for an impression of several thousands of my pamphlet. While it was at the press, I was seldom absent from the printing-­house, and continually urged the workmen to haste, by solicitations, promises, and re­ wards. From the day all other pleasures were excluded, by the delightful employ­ 1. Rambler 10 (Yale, iv.54–55): this imaginary person offered to contribute an essay (rejected by all other periodical editors) to the Rambler. SJ suggested self-­publication.

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ment of correcting the sheets;2 and from the night sleep was generally banished, by anticipations of the happiness, which every hour was bringing nearer. At last the time of publication approached, and my heart beat with the rap­ tures of an author. I was above all little precautions, and, in defiance of envy or of criticism, set my name upon the title, without sufficiently considering, that what has once passed the press is irrevocable, and that though the printing-­house may properly be compared to the infernal regions, for the facility of its entrance, and the difficulty with which authors return from it; yet there is this difference, that a great genius can never return to his former state, by a happy draught of the waters of oblivion.3 I am now, Mr. Rambler, known to be an author, and am condemned, irrevers­ ibly condemned, to all the miseries of high reputation. The first morning after pub­ lication my friends assembled about me; I presented each, as is usual, with a copy of my book. They looked into the first pages, but were hindered, by their admiration,4 from reading farther. The first pages are, indeed, very elaborate. Some passages they particularly dwelt upon, as more eminently beautiful than the rest; and some deli­ cate strokes, and secret elegancies, I pointed out to them, which had escaped their observation. I then begged of them to forbear their compliments, and invited them, I could not do less, to dine with me at a tavern. After dinner, the book was resumed; but their praises very often so much overpowered my modesty, that I was forced to put about the glass,5 and had often no means of repressing the clamours of their admiration, but by thundering to the drawer for another bottle. Next morning another set of my acquaintance congratulated me upon my per­ formance, with such importunity of praise, that I was again forced to obviate their civilities by a treat. On the third day I had yet a greater number of applauders to put to silence in the same manner; and, on the fourth, those whom I had entertained the first day came again, having, in the perusal of the remaining part of the book, dis­ covered so many forcible sentences and masterly touches, that it was impossible for me to bear the repetition of their commendations. I, therefore, persuaded them once more to adjourn to the tavern, and choose some other subject, on which I might share in their conversation. But it was not in their power to withhold their attention from my performance, which had so entirely taken possession of their minds, that no intreaties of mine could change their topick, and I was obliged to stifle, with claret, that praise, which neither my modesty could hinder, nor my uneasiness repress. 2. Proof sheets or galleys printed on narrow, inexpensive strips of paper and given to authors for cor­ rection. 3. In classical mythology, the river Lethe flowing through the underworld was said to make those who drank from it forget their past. 4. “Wonder” (Dictionary). 5. “To put about the glass”: to pass around the alcoholic beverages.

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The whole week was thus spent in a kind of literary revel, and I have now found that nothing is so expensive as great abilities, unless there is join’d with them an in­ satiable eagerness of praise; for to escape from the pain of hearing myself exalted above the greatest names dead and living of the learned world, it has already cost me two hogsheads of port, fifteen gallons of arrack,6 ten dozen of claret, and five and forty bottles of champagne. I was resolved to stay at home no longer, and, therefore, rose early and went to the coffee-­house; but found that I had now made myself too eminent for happiness, and that I was no longer to enjoy the pleasure of mixing, upon equal terms, with the rest of the world. As soon as I enter the room, I see part of the company raging with envy, which they endeavour to conceal, sometimes with the appearance of laughter, and sometimes with that of contempt; but the disguise is such, that I can discover the secret rancour of their hearts, and as envy is deservedly its own punishment, I frequently indulge myself in tormenting them with my presence. But, though there may be some slight satisfaction received from the mortifica­ tion of my enemies, yet my benevolence will not suffer me to take any pleasure in the terrors of my friends. I have been cautious, since the appearance of my work, not to give myself more premeditated airs of superiority, than the most rigid humility might allow. It is, indeed, not impossible that I may sometimes have laid down my opinion, in a manner that shewed a consciousness of my ability to maintain it, or interrupted the conversation, when I saw its tendency, without suffering the speaker to waste his time in explaining his sentiments; and, indeed, I did indulge myself for two days in a custom of drumming with my fingers, when the company began to lose themselves in absurdities, or to encroach upon subjects which I knew them unqualified to discuss. But I generally acted with great appearance of respect, even to those whose stupidity I pitied in my heart. Yet, notwithstanding this exemplary moderation, so universal is the dread of uncommon powers, and such the unwill­ ingness of mankind to be made wiser, that I have now for some days found myself shunned by all my acquaintance. If I knock at a door, no body is at home; if I enter a coffee-­house, I have the box to myself. I live in the town like a lion in his desart, or an eagle on his rock, too great for friendship or society, and condemned to solitude, by unhappy elevation, and dreaded ascendency. Nor is my character only formidable to others, but burdensome to myself. I naturally love to talk without much thinking, to scatter my merriment at random, and to relax my thoughts with ludicrous remarks and fanciful images; but such is now the importance of my opinion, that I am afraid to offer it, lest, by being estab­ lished too hastily into a maxim, it should be the occasion of error to half the nation; and such is the expectation with which I am attended, when I am going to speak, 6. A fermented liquor made from the sap of coconut trees.



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that I frequently pause to reflect whether what I am about to utter is worthy of my­ self. This, Sir, is sufficiently miserable, but there are still greater calamities behind. You must have read in Pope and Swift how men of parts have had their closets rifled, and their cabinets broke open at the instigation of piratical booksellers, for the profit of their works;7 and it is apparent, that there are many prints now sold in the shops, of men whom you cannot suspect of sitting for that purpose, and whose likenesses must have been certainly stolen when their names made their faces vendible. These considerations at first put me on my guard, and I have, indeed, found sufficient rea­ son for my caution, for I have discovered many people examining my countenance, with a curiosity that shewed their intention to draw it; I immediately left the house, but find the same behaviour in another. Others may be persecuted, but I am haunted; I have good reason to believe that eleven painters are now dogging me, for they know that he who can get my face first will make his fortune. I often change my wig, and wear my hat over my eyes, by which I hope somewhat to confound them; for you know it is not fair to sell my face, without admitting me to share the profit. I am, however, not so much in pain for my face as for my papers, which I dare neither carry with me nor leave behind. I have, indeed, taken some measures for their preservation, having put them in an iron chest, and fixed a padlock upon my closet. I change my lodgings five times a week, and always remove at the dead of night. Thus I live, in consequence of having given too great proofs of a predominant genius, in the solitude of a hermit, with the anxiety of a miser, and the caution of an outlaw; afraid to shew my face, lest it should be copied; afraid to speak, lest I should injure my character, and to write lest my correspondents should publish my letters; always uneasy lest my servants should steal my papers for the sake of money, or my friends for that of the publick. This it is to soar above the rest of mankind; and this representation I lay before you, that I may be informed how to divest myself of the laurels which are so cumbersome to the wearer, and descend to the enjoyment of that quiet from which I find a writer of the first class so fatally debarred. —Misellus8

7. Preface to Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1727), in The Prose Works of Alexander Pope, Vol. II, ed. Rose­ mary Cowler (1986), p. 91. Cf. jakes in Dictionary. 8. Latin for poor or little.

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R A M B L E R , No. 125 Tuesday, 28 May 1751 Descriptas servare vices, operumque colores, Cur ego, si nequeo ignoroque, poeta salutor? —Horace, Ars Poetica, ll. 86–87 But if, through weakness, or my want of art, I can’t to every different style impart The proper strokes and colours it may claim, Why am I honour’d with a poet’s name? —Francis

It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that “definitions are hazardous.”1 Things modified by human understandings, subject to varieties of complication, and change­ able as experience advances knowledge, or accident influences caprice, are scarcely to be included in any standing form of expression, because they are always suffering some alteration of their state. Definition is, indeed, not the province of man; every thing is set above or below our faculties. The works and operations of nature are too great in their extent, or too much diffused in their relations, and the performances of art too inconstant and uncertain, to be reduced to any determinate idea. It is impos­ sible to impress upon our minds an adequate and just representation of an object so great that we can never take it into our view, or so mutable that it is always changing under our eye, and has already lost its form while we are labouring to conceive it. Definitions have been no less difficult or uncertain in criticism than in law. Imagination, a licentious and vagrant faculty, unsusceptible of limitations, and im­ patient of restraint, has always endeavoured to baffle the logician, to perplex the confines of distinction, and burst the inclosures of regularity. There is therefore scarcely any species of writing, of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents; every new genius produces some innovation, which, when in­ vented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established. Comedy has been particularly unpropitious to definers; for though perhaps they might properly have contented themselves, with declaring it to be “such a dra­ 1. Omnis definitio in jure civili periculosa est, parum est enim ut non subverti posset. All definition in the civil law is hazardous, for there is little that cannot be subverted. Digest of Justinian, ed. Paul Krueger (1966), 50.17.202 (i.926).

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matic representation of human life, as may excite mirth,”2 they have embarrassed their definition with the means by which the comic writers attain their end, without considering that the various methods of exhilarating their audience, not being lim­ ited by nature, cannot be comprised in precept. Thus, some make comedy a repre­ sentation of mean, and others of bad men; some think that its essence consists in the unimportance, others in the fictitiousness, of the transaction. But any man’s reflec­ tions will inform him, that every dramatick composition which raises mirth is com­ ick; and that, to raise mirth, it is by no means universally necessary, that the person­ ages should be either mean or corrupt, nor always requisite, that the action should be trivial, nor ever, that it should be fictitious. If the two kinds of dramatick poetry had been defined only by their effects upon the mind, some absurdities might have been prevented, with which the com­ positions of our greatest poets are disgraced, who, for want of some settled ideas and accurate distinctions, have unhappily confounded tragick with comick sentiments. They seem to have thought, that as the meanness of personages constituted com­ edy, their greatness was sufficient to form a tragedy; and that nothing was necessary but that they should croud the scene with monarchs, and generals, and guards; and make them talk, at certain intervals, of the downfal of kingdoms, and the rout of armies. They have not considered, that thoughts or incidents in themselves ridicu­ lous, grow still more grotesque by the solemnity of such characters; that reason and nature are uniform and inflexible; and that what is despicable and absurd, will not, by any association with splendid titles, become rational or great; that the most im­ portant affairs, by an intermixture of an unseasonable levity, may be made contempt­ ible; and that the robes of royalty can give no dignity to nonsense or to folly. “Comedy,” says Horace, “sometimes raises her voice”;3 and tragedy may like­ wise on proper occasions abate her dignity; but as the comick personages can only depart from their familiarity of stile, when the more violent passions are put in mo­ tion, the heroes and queens of tragedy should never descend to trifle, but in the hours of ease, and intermissions of danger. Yet in the tragedy of Don Sebastian, when the king of Portugal is in the hands of his enemy, and having just drawn the lot, by which he is condemned to die, breaks out into a wild boast that his dust shall take possession of Africk, the dialogue proceeds thus between the captive and his conqueror:   Muley Moluch. What shall I do to conquer thee?   Seb. Impossible! 2. In Dictionary, SJ defines comedy as “A dramatick representation of the lighter faults of mankind, with an intention to make vice and folly ridiculous: opposed to tragedy.” 3. Ars Poetica, l. 93.

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Souls know no conquerors.   M. Mol. I’ll shew thee for a monster thro’ my Africk.   Seb. No, thou canst only shew me for a man: Africk is stor’d with monsters; man’s a prodigy Thy subjects have not seen.   M. Mol. Thou talk’st as if Still at the head of battle.   Seb. Thou mistak’st, For there I would not talk.   Benducar, the Minister. Sure he would sleep. —i.i.4

This conversation, with the sly remark of the minister, can only be found not to be comick, because it wants the probability necessary to representations of common life, and degenerates too much towards buffoonry and farce. The same play affords a smart return of the general to the emperor, who, en­ forcing his orders for the death of Sebastian, vents his impatience in this abrupt threat: ——————No more replies, But see thou do’st it: Or——————————

To which Dorax answers, Choak in that threat: I can say Or as loud. —iii.i.5

A thousand instances of such impropriety might be produced, were not one scene in Aureng-­Zebe sufficient to exemplify it. Indamora, a captive queen, having Aureng-­Zebe for her lover, employs Arimant, to whose charge she had been in­ trusted, and whom she had made sensible of her charms, to carry her message to his rival. Arimant, with a letter in his hand: Indamora.   Arim. And I the messenger to him from you? Your empire you to tyranny pursue: You lay commands, both cruel and unjust, 4. John Dryden, Don Sebastian, i.i.370–75; California Dryden, xv.93. 5. iii.i.429–31; California Dryden, xv.140.



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To serve my rival, and betray my trust.   Ind. You first betray’d your trust in loving me: And should not I my own advantage see? Serving my love, you may my friendship gain; You know the rest of your pretences vain. You must, my Arimant, you must be kind: ’Tis in your nature, and your noble mind.   Arim. I’ll to the king, and strait my trust resign.   Ind. His trust you may, but you shall never mine. Heav’n made you love me for no other end, But to become my confidant and friend: As such, I keep no secret from your sight, And therefore make you judge how ill I write: Read it, and tell me freely then your mind, If ’tis indited, as I meant it, kind.   Arim. I ask not heaven my freedom to restore, [Reading. But only for your sake——————I’ll read no more. And yet I must—————— Less for my own, than for your sorrow sad—— [Reading. Another line, like this, would make me mad———— Heav’n! she goes on——yet more——and yet more   kind!  Each sentence is a dagger to my mind. See me this night————

[As Reading.

[Reading. Thank fortune, who did such a friend provide; For faithful Arimant shall be your guide. Not only to be made an instrument, But pre-­engag’d without my own consent!   Ind. Unknown t’ engage you, still augments my score, And gives you scope of meriting the more.   Arim. The best of men Some int’rest in their actions must confess; None merit, but in hope they may possess, The fatal paper rather let me tear, Than, like Bellerophon, my own sentence bear.   Ind. You may; but ’twill not be your best advice:

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’Twill only give me pains of writing twice. You know you must obey me, soon or late: Why should you vainly struggle with your fate?   Arim. I thank thee, heav’n! thou hast been     wond’rous kind! Why am I thus to slavery design’d, And yet am cheated with a freeborn mind? Or make thy orders with my reason suit, Or let me live by sense, a glorious brute—————— [She frowns. You frown, and I obey with speed, before That dreadful sentence comes, See me no more. —iii.i.6

In this scene, every circumstance concurs to turn tragedy to farce. The wild absurdity of the expedient; the contemptible subjection of the lover; the folly of obliging him to read the letter, only because it ought to have been concealed from him; the frequent interruptions of amorous impatience; the faint expostulations of a voluntary slave; the imperious haughtiness of a tyrant without power; the deep re­ flection of the yielding rebel upon fate and free-­will; and his wise wish to lose his reason as soon as he finds himself about to do what he cannot persuade his reason to approve, are surely sufficient to awaken the most torpid risibility. There is scarce a tragedy of the last century which has not debased its most important incidents, and polluted its most serious interlocutions with buffoonry and meanness; but though perhaps it cannot be pretended that the present age has added much to the force and efficacy of the drama, it has at least been able to escape many faults, which either ignorance had overlooked, or indulgence had licensed. The later tragedies indeed have faults of another kind, perhaps more destructive to delight, though less open to censure. That perpetual tumour of phrase with which every thought is now expressed by every personage, the paucity of adventures which regularity admits, and the unvaried equality of flowing dialogue, has taken away from our present writers almost all that dominion over the passions which was the boast of their predecessors. Yet they may at least claim this commendation, that they avoid gross faults, and that if they cannot often move terror or pity, they are always careful not to provoke laughter.

6. Dryden, Aureng-­Zebe, iii.i.1–48; California Dryden, xii.192–93.



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R A M B L E R , No. 137 Tuesday, 9 July 1751 Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt. —Horace, Satires, i.2.24 —————Whilst fools one vice condemn, They run into the opposite extreme. —Creech

That wonder is the effect of ignorance, has been often observed. The awful stillness of attention, with which the mind is overspread at the first view of an unex­ pected effect, ceases when we have leisure to disentangle complications and investi­ gate causes. Wonder is a pause of reason, a sudden cessation of the mental progress,1 which lasts only while the understanding is fixed upon some single idea, and is at an end when it recovers force enough to divide the object into its parts, or mark the intermediate gradations from the first agent to the last consequence. It may be remarked with equal truth, that ignorance is often the effect of won­ der. It is common for those who have never accustomed themselves to the labour of enquiry, nor invigorated their confidence by conquests over difficulty, to sleep in the gloomy quiescence of astonishment, without any effort to animate enquiry, or dispel obscurity. What they cannot immediately conceive, they consider as too high to be reached, or too extensive to be comprehended; they therefore content them­ selves with the gaze of folly, forbear to attempt what they have no hopes of perform­ ing, and resign the pleasure of rational contemplation to more pertinacious study or more active faculties. Among the productions of mechanic art, many are of a form so different from that of their first materials, and many consist of parts so numerous and so nicely adapted to each other, that it is not possible to view them without amazement. But when we enter the shops of artificers, observe the various tools by which every operation is facilitated, and trace the progress of a manufacture thro’ the different hands, that, in succession to each other, contribute to its perfection, we soon dis­ cover that every single man has an easy task, and that the extremes however remote of natural rudeness and artificial elegance, are joined by a regular concatenation 1. Cf. Francis Bacon, “Wonder . . . is the contemplation broken off, or losing itself ” (Works [1740], i.appendix.72). Cf. “Yalden,” Yale, xxii.828: “All wonder is the effect of novelty upon ignorance.”

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of effects, of which every one is introduced by that which precedes it, and equally introduces that which is to follow. The same is the state of intellectual and manual performances. Long calcula­ tions or complex diagrams affright the timorous and unexperienced from a second view; but if we have skill sufficient to analise them into simple principles, it will be discovered that our fear was groundless. “Divide and conquer,”2 is a principle equally just in science as in policy. Complication is a species of confederacy, which, while it continues united, bids defiance to the most active and vigorous intellect; but of which every member is separately weak, and which may therefore be quickly sub­ dued if it can once be broken. The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time.3 The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently re­ peated; the most lofty fabricks of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions.4 It often happens, whatever be the cause, that impatience of labour or dread of miscarriage, seizes those who are most distinguished for quickness of apprehen­ sion; and that they who might with greatest reason promise themselves victory, are least willing to hazard the encounter. This diffidence, where the attention is not laid asleep by laziness or dissipated by pleasures, can arise only from confused and gen­ eral views, such as negligence snatches in haste, or from the disappointment of the first hopes formed by arrogance without reflection. To expect that the intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance, or the eminences of fame ascended with­ out labour, is to expect a peculiar privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to suppose that the maze is inscrutable to diligence, or the heights inaccessible to perseverance, is to submit tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain the mind in voluntary shackles. It is the proper ambition of the heroes in literature to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge by discovering and conquering new regions of the intellectual world. To the success of such undertakings perhaps some degree of fortuitous happiness is necessary, which no man can promise or procure to himself; and therefore doubt and irresolution may be forgiven in him that ventures into the unexplored abysses of truth, and attempts to find his way through the fluctuations of uncertainty, and the conflicts of contradiction. But when nothing more is required, than to pursue a path already beaten, and to trample obstacles which others have demolished, why 2. Francis Bacon, Letter to James I (1615), quoting Machiavelli, The Prince. 3. “The surest way for a learner . . . is not to advance by jumps and larger strides . . . distinct gradual growth in knowledge is firm and sure, it carries its own light with it in every step of its progression . . .” (Some Thoughts on the Conduct of the Understanding, section 28). 4. Cf. Rasselas, Ch. XIii, p. 194 below.



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should any man so much distrust his own intellect as to imagine himself unequal to the attempt? It were to be wished that they who devote their lives to study would at once believe nothing too great for their attainment, and consider nothing as too little for their regard; that they would extend their notice alike to science and to life, and unite some knowledge of the present world to their acquaintance with past ages and remote events. Nothing has so much exposed men of learning to contempt and ridicule, as their ignorance of things which are known to all but themselves. Those who have been taught to consider the institutions of the schools,5 as giving the last perfection to human abilities, are surprised to see men wrinkled with study, yet wanting to be instructed in the minute circumstances of propriety, or the necessary forms of daily transaction; and quickly shake off their reverence for modes of education, which they find to produce no ability above the rest of mankind. “Books,” says Bacon, “can never teach the use of books.”6 The student must learn by commerce with mankind to reduce his speculations to practice, and accom­ modate his knowledge to the purposes of life. It is too common for those who have been bred to scholastic professions, and passed much of their time in academies where nothing but learning confers honours, to disregard every other qualification, and to imagine that they shall find mankind ready to pay homage to their knowledge, and to crowd about them for instruction. They, therefore, step out from their cells into the open world with all the confidence of authority and dignity of importance; they look round about them at once with ignorance and scorn on a race of beings to whom they are equally unknown and equally contemptible, but whose manners they must imitate, and with whose opin­ ions they must comply, if they desire to pass their time happily among them. To lessen that disdain with which scholars are inclined to look on the common business of the world, and the unwillingness with which they condescend to learn what is not to be found in any system of philosophy, it may be necessary to consider that though admiration is excited by abstruse researches and remote discoveries, yet pleasure is not given, nor affection conciliated, but by softer accomplishments, and qualities more easily communicable to those about us. He that can only converse upon questions, about which only a small part of mankind has knowledge sufficient to make them curious, must lose his days in unsocial silence, and live in the crowd of life without a companion. He that can only be useful in great occasions, may die without exerting his abilities, and stand a helpless spectator of a thousand vexations 5. “A place of literary education; an university” (Dictionary, sense 2). 6. SJ paraphrases “Of Studies,” Essays Civil and Moral (1625).

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which fret away happiness, and which nothing is required to remove but a little dex­ terity of conduct and readiness of expedients. No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance, or to extinguish the desire of fond endearments, and tender officiousness;7 and therefore, no one should think it unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may be gained. Kindness is preserved by a constant reciproca­ tion of benefits or interchange of pleasures; but such benefits only can be bestowed, as others are capable to receive, and such pleasures only imparted, as others are qualified to enjoy. By this descent from the pinacles of art no honour will be lost; for the con­ descensions8 of learning are always overpaid by gratitude. An elevated genius em­ ployed in little things, appears, to use the simile of Longinus, like the sun in his evening declination, he remits his splendor but retains his magnitude,9 and pleases more, though he dazzles less.

7. Kindness. 8. “. . . voluntary submission to equality with inferiours” (Dictionary). 9. “remits . . . magnitude”: a translation of Pseudo-­Longinus describing Homer in his later work, the Odyssey (On the Sublime, ix.13). The last clause of the sentence is SJ’s addition.



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A DV E N T U R E R , No. 107 Tuesday, 13 November 1753 ———Sub judice lis est. —Horace, Art of Poetry, l. 78 And of their vain disputings find no end. —Francis

It has been sometimes asked by those, who find the appearance of wisdom more easily attained by questions than solutions, how it comes to pass, that the world is divided by such difference of opinion; and why men, equally reasonable, and equally lovers of truth, do not always think in the same manner. With regard to simple propositions, where the terms are understood, and the whole subject is comprehended at once, there is such an uniformity of sentiment among all human beings, that, for many ages, a very numerous set of notions were supposed to be innate, or necessarily coexistent with the faculty of reason; it being imagined, that universal agreement could proceed only from the invariable dictates of the universal parent.1 In questions diffuse and compounded, this similarity of determination is no longer to be expected. At our first sally into the intellectual world, we all march together along one strait and open road; but as we proceed further, and wider pros­ pects open to our view, every eye fixes upon a different scene; we divide into various paths, and, as we move forward, are still at a greater distance from each other. As a question becomes more complicated and involved, and extends to a greater number of relations, disagreement of opinion will always be multiplied, not because we are irrational, but because we are finite beings, furnished with different kinds of knowl­ edge, exerting different degrees of attention, one discovering consequences which escape another, none taking in the whole concatenation of causes and effects, and most comprehending but a very small part; each comparing what he observes with a different criterion, and each referring it to a different purpose. Where, then, is the wonder, that they, who see only a small part, should judge erroneously of the whole? or that they, who see different and dissimilar parts, should judge differently from each other? Whatever has various respects, must have various appearances of good and 1. In his Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), John Locke asserted that there are no innate propositions, principles, or ideas (Book I, Section iv).

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evil, beauty or deformity: thus, the gardener tears up as a weed, the plant which the physician gathers as a medicine; and “a general,” says Sir Kenelm Digby, “will look with pleasure over a plain, as a fit place on which the fate of empires might be de­ cided in battle; which the farmer will despise as bleak and barren, neither fruitful of pasturage, nor fit for tillage.”2 Two men examining the same question, proceed commonly like the physician and gardener in selecting herbs, or the farmer and hero looking on the plain; they bring minds impressed with different notions, and direct their inquiries to different ends; they form, therefore, contrary conclusions, and each wonders at the other’s absurdity. We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinion, because we very often differ from ourselves: how often we alter our minds, we do not always remark; because the change is sometimes made imper­ ceptibly and gradually, and the last conviction effaces all memory of the former; yet every man, accustomed from time to time to take a survey of his own notions, will by a slight retrospection be able to discover, that his mind has suffered many revolu­ tions; that the same things have in the several parts of his life been condemned and approved, pursued and shunned; and that on many occasions, even when his prac­ tice has been steddy, his mind has been wavering, and he has persisted in a scheme of action, rather because he feared the censure of inconstancy, than because he was always pleased with his own choice. Of the different faces shewn by the same objects as they are viewed on opposite sides, and of the different inclinations which they must constantly raise in him that contemplates them, a more striking example cannot easily be found than two Greek epigrammatists will afford us in their accounts of human life, which I shall lay before the reader in English prose. Posidippus, a comic poet, utters this complaint; “Through which of the paths of life is it eligible to pass? In public assemblies are debates and troublesome affairs; domestic privacies are haunted with anxieties; in the country is labour; on the sea is terror; in a foreign land, he that has money must live in fear, he that wants it must pine in distress; are you married? you are troubled with suspicions; are you single? you languish in solitude; children occasion toil, and a childless life is a state of des­ titution; the time of youth is a time of folly, and gray hairs are loaded with infirmity. This choice only, therefore, can be made, either never to receive being, or immedi­ ately to lose it.”3 Such and so gloomy is the prospect, which Posidippus has laid before us. But 2. SJ is paraphrasing Observations upon Religio Medici (1643), pp. 119–20. 3. Greek Anthology, ix.359. SJ later translated this epigram into Latin (Yale, vi.327). The author is Po­ sidippus of Pella, epigrammatist, not the New Comedy poet of the same name (see Oxford Classical Dictionary).



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we are not to acquiesce too hastily in his determination against the value of exis­ tence, for Metrodorus, a philosopher of Athens, has shewn, that life has pleasures as well as pains; and having exhibited the present state of man in brighter colours, draws, with equal appearance of reason, a contrary conclusion: “You may pass well through any of the paths of life. In public assemblies are honours and transactions of wisdom; in domestic privacy is stilness and quiet; in the country are the beauties of nature; on the sea is the hope of gain; in a foreign land, he that is rich is honoured, he that is poor may keep his poverty secret; are you mar­ ried? you have a chearful house; are you single? you are unincumbered; children are objects of affection; to be without children is to be without care; the time of youth is the time of vigour; and gray hairs are made venerable by piety. It will, therefore, never be a wise man’s choice, either not to obtain existence, or to lose it; for every state of life has its felicity.”4 In these epigrams are included most of the questions, which have engaged the speculations of the enquirers after happiness; and though they will not much assist our determinations, they may, perhaps, equally promote our quiet, by shewing that no absolute determination ever can be formed. Whether a public station, or private life be desirable, has always been debated. We see here both the allurements and discouragements of civil employments; on one side there is trouble, on the other honour; the management of affairs is vexatious and difficult, but it is the only duty in which wisdom can be conspicuously displayed: it must then still be left to every man to chuse either ease or glory; nor can any general precept be given, since no man can be happy by the prescription of another. Thus what is said of children by Posidippus, “that they are occasions of fatigue,” and by Metrodorus, “that they are objects of affection,” is equally certain; but whether they will give most pain or pleasure, must depend on their future con­ duct and dispositions, on many causes over which the parent can have little influ­ ence: there is, therefore, room for all the caprices of imagination, and desire must be proportioned to the hope or fear that shall happen to predominate. Such is the uncertainty, in which we are always likely to remain with regard to questions, wherein we have most interest, and which every day affords us fresh opportunity to examine: we may examine, indeed, but we never can decide, because our faculties are unequal to the subject: we see a little, and form an opinion; we see more, and change it. This inconstancy and unsteadiness, to which we must so often find ourselves liable, ought certainly to teach us moderation and forbearance towards those, who cannot accommodate themselves to our sentiments: if they are deceived, we have no 4. Greek Anthology, ix.360. Also translated by SJ into Latin (Yale, vi.328). The author is Metrodorus Epi­ grammaticus, not Metrodorus of Lampsacus, the student of Epicurus.

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right to attribute their mistake to obstinacy or negligence, because we likewise have been mistaken: we may, perhaps, again change our own opinion; and what excuse shall we be able to find for aversion and malignity conceived against him, whom we shall then find to have committed no fault, and who offended us only by refusing to follow us into error? It may likewise contribute to soften that resentment, which pride naturally raises against opposition, if we consider, that he, who differs from us, does not always contradict us; he has one view of an object, and we have another; each de­ scribes what he sees with equal fidelity, and each regulates his steps by his own eyes: one man, with Posidippus, looks on celibacy as a state of gloomy solitude, without a partner in joy or a comforter in sorrow; the other considers it, with Metrodorus, as a state free from incumbrances, in which a man is at liberty to chuse his own gratifi­ cations, to remove from place to place in quest of pleasure, and to think of nothing but merriment and diversion; full of these notions, one hastens to chuse a wife, and the other laughs at his rashness, or pities his ignorance; yet it is possible that each is right, but that each is right only for himself. Life is not the object of science: we see a little, very little; and what is beyond we only can conjecture. If we enquire of those who have gone before us, we receive small satisfaction; some have travelled life without observation, and some willingly mislead us. The only thought, therefore, on which we can repose with comfort, is that which presents to us the care of Providence, whose eye takes in the whole of things, and under whose direction all involuntary errors will terminate in happiness.



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A DV E N T U R E R , No. 115 Tuesday, 11 December 1753 Scribimus indocti doctique. —Horace, Epistles, ii.1.117 All dare to write, who can or cannot read.

They who have attentively considered the history of mankind, know that every age has its peculiar character. At one time, no desire is felt but for military honours; every summer affords battles and sieges, and the world is filled with ravage, blood­ shed, and devastation: this sanguinary1 fury at length subsides, and nations are di­ vided into factions, by controversies about points that will never be decided. Men then grow weary of debate and altercation, and apply themselves to the arts of profit; trading companies are formed, manufactures improved, and navigation extended; and nothing is any longer thought on, but the increase and preservation of property, the artifices of getting money, and the pleasures of spending it. The present age, if we consider chiefly the state of our own country, may be stiled with great propriety The Age of Authors; for, perhaps, there never was a time, in which men of all degrees of ability, of every kind of education, of every profession and employment, were posting with ardour so general to the press. The province of writing was formerly left to those, who by study, or appearance of study, were sup­ posed to have gained knowledge unattainable by the busy part of mankind; but in these enlightened days, every man is qualified to instruct every other man; and he that beats the anvil, or guides the plough, not contented with supplying corporal necessities, amuses himself in the hours of leisure with providing intellectual plea­ sures for his countrymen. It may be observed, that of this, as of other evils, complaints have been made by every generation: but though it may, perhaps, be true, that at all times more have been willing than have been able to write, yet there is no reason for believing, that the dogmatical2 legions of the present race were ever equalled in number by any former period; for so widely is spread the itch of literary praise, that almost every man is an author, either in act or in purpose; has either bestowed his favours on the

1. “Cruel; bloody; murtherous” (Dictionary). 2. Dogmatical: “Authoritative; magisterial; positive; in the manner of a philosopher laying down the first principles of a sect” (Dictionary).

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public, or with-­holds them, that they may be more seasonably offered, or made more worthy of acceptance. In former times, the pen, like the sword, was considered as consigned by na­ ture to the hands of men; the ladies contented themselves with private virtues and domestic excellence, and a female writer, like a female warrior, was considered as a kind of excentric being, that deviated, however illustriously, from her due sphere of motion, and was, therefore, rather to be gazed at with wonder, than countenanced by imitation. But as the times past are said to have seen a nation of Amazons, who drew the bow and wielded the battle-­axe, formed encampments, and wasted na­ tions; the revolution of years has now produced a generation of Amazons of the pen, who with the spirit of their predecessors have set masculine tyranny at defiance, as­ serted their claim to the regions of science, and seem resolved to contest the usur­ pations of virility. Some, indeed, there are of both sexes, who are authors only in desire, but have not yet attained the power of executing their intentions; whose performances have not arrived at bulk sufficient to form a volume, or who have not the confidence, how­ ever impatient of nameless obscurity, to sollicit openly the assistance of the printer. Among these are the innumerable correspondents of public papers, who are always offering assistance which no man will receive, and suggesting hints that are never taken, and who complain loudly of the perverseness and arrogance of authors, la­ ment their insensibility of their own interest, and fill the coffee-­houses with dark stories of performances by eminent hands, which have been offered and rejected. To what cause this universal eagerness of writing can be properly ascribed, I have not yet been able to discover. It is said, that every art is propagated in propor­ tion to the rewards conferred upon it; a position from which a stranger would natu­ rally infer, that literature was now blessed with patronage far transcending the can­ dour or munificence of the Augustan age,3 that the road to greatness was open to none but authors, and that by writing alone riches and honour were to be obtained. But since it is true, that writers, like other competitors, are very little disposed to favour one another, it is not to be expected, that at a time, when every man writes, any man will patronize; and, accordingly, there is not one that I can recollect at present, who professes the least regard for the votaries of science, invites the ad­ dresses of learned men, or seems to hope for reputation from any pen but his own. The cause, therefore, of this epidemical conspiracy for the destruction of paper, must remain a secret; nor can I discover, whether we owe it to the influences of the constellations, or the intemperature4 of seasons; whether the long continu­ 3. The age of Augustus Caesar, Roman emperor from 27 BCE to 14 CE, when Maecenas, Augustus, and other patrons supported great writers such as Virgil and Horace. 4. “Excess of some quality” (Dictionary).



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ance of the wind at any single point, or intoxicating vapours exhaled from the earth, have turned our nobles and our peasants, our soldiers and traders, our men and women, all into wits, philosophers and writers. It is, indeed, of more importance to search out the cure, than the cause of this intellectual malady; and he would deserve well of his country, who, instead of amus­ ing himself with conjectural speculations, should find means of persuading the peer to inspect his steward’s accounts, or repair the rural mansion of his ancestors, who could replace the tradesman behind his counter, and send back the farmer to the mattock and the flail.5 General irregularities are known in time to remedy themselves. By the con­ stitution of antient Aegypt, the priesthood was continually increasing, till at length there was no people beside themselves; the establishment was then dissolved, and the number of priests was reduced and limited. Thus among us, writers will, per­ haps, be multiplied, till no readers will be found, and then the ambition of writing must necessarily cease. But as it will be long before the cure is thus gradually effected, and the evil should be stopped, if it be possible, before it rises to so great a height, I could wish that both sexes would fix their thoughts upon some salutary considerations, which might repress their ardour for that reputation which not one of many thousands is fated to obtain. Let it be deeply impressed and frequently recollected, that he who has not ob­ tained the proper qualifications of an author, can have no excuse for the arrogance of writing, but the power of imparting to mankind something necessary to be known. A man uneducated and unlettered may sometimes start a useful thought, or make a lucky discovery, or obtain by chance some secret of nature, or some intelligence of facts, of which the most enlightened mind may be ignorant, and which it is better to reveal, though by a rude and unskilful communication, than to lose for ever by suppressing it. But few will be justified by this plea; for of the innumerable books and pam­ phlets that have overflowed the nation, scarce one has made any addition to real knowledge, or contained more than a transposition of common sentiments and a repetition of common phrases. It will be naturally enquired, when the man who feels an inclination to write, may venture to suppose himself properly qualified; and since every man is inclined to think well of his own intellect, by what test he may try his abilities, without haz­ arding the contempt or resentment of the public. The first qualification of a writer is a perfect knowledge of the subject which he undertakes to treat, since we cannot teach what we do not know, nor can properly 5. A mattock is a pickaxe, and a flail is used in separating wheat from chaff, or threshing.

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undertake to instruct others, while we are ourselves in want of instruction. The next requisite is, that he be master of the language in which he delivers his sentiments: if he treats of science and demonstration, that he has attained a stile clear, pure, ner­ vous6 and expressive; if his topics be probable and persuasory, that he be able to rec­ ommend them by the superaddition of elegance and imagery, to display the colours7 of varied diction, and pour forth the music of modulated periods. If it be again enquired, upon what principles any man shall conclude that he wants those powers, it may be readily answered, that no end is attained but by the proper means; he only can rationally presume that he understands a subject, who has read and compared the writers that have hitherto discussed it, familiarised their arguments to himself by long meditation, consulted the foundations of different sys­ tems, and separated truth from error by a rigorous examination. In like manner, he only has a right to suppose that he can express his thoughts, whatever they are, with perspicuity or elegance, who has carefully perused the best authors, accurately noted their diversities of stile, diligently selected the best modes of diction, and familiarised them by long habits of attentive practice. No man is a rhetorician or philosopher by chance. He who knows that he undertakes to write on questions which he has never studied, may without hesitation determine, that he is about to waste his own time and that of his reader, and expose himself to the derision of those whom he aspires to instruct: he that without forming his stile by the study of the best models, hastens to obtrude his compositions on the public, may be certain, that whatever hope or flattery may suggest, he shall shock the learned ear with barbarisms, and contribute, wherever his work shall be received, to the depravation of taste and the corruption of language.

6. “Vigorous, powerful, forcible” (OED, sense 4a). 7. Embellishments.



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A DV E N T U R E R , No. 138 Saturday, 2 March 1754 Quid purè tranquillet? honos, an dulce lucellum, An secretum iter et fallientis semita vitae? —Horace, Epistles, i.18.102–03 Whether the tranquil mind and pure, Honours or wealth our bliss insure; Or down through life unknown to stray, Where lonely leads the silent way. —Francis

Having considered the importance of authors to the welfare of the public, I am led by a natural train of thought, to reflect on their condition with regard to them­ selves; and to enquire, what degree of happiness or vexation is annexed to the difficult and laborious employment, of providing instruction or entertainment for mankind. In estimating the pain or pleasure of any particular state, every man, indeed, draws his decisions from his own breast, and cannot with certainty determine, whether other minds are affected by the same causes in the same manner. Yet by this criterion we must be content to judge, because no other can be obtained; and, indeed, we have no reason to think it very fallacious, for excepting here and there an anomalous mind, which either does not feel like others, or dissembles its sensi­ bility, we find men unanimously concur in attributing happiness or misery to par­ ticular conditions, as they agree in acknowledging the cold of winter and the heat of autumn. If we apply to authors themselves for an account of their state, it will appear very little to deserve envy; for they have in all ages been addicted to complaint. The neglect of learning, the ingratitude of the present age, and the absurd preference by which ignorance and dulness often obtain favour and rewards, have been from age to age topics of invective; and few have left their names to posterity, without some appeal to future candour from the perverseness and malice of their own times. I have, nevertheless, been often inclined to doubt, whether authors, however querulous, are in reality more miserable than their fellow mortals. The present life is to all a state of infelicity; every man, like an author, believes himself to merit more than he obtains, and solaces the present with the prospect of the future: others, in­ deed, suffer those disappointments in silence, of which the writer complains, to shew how well he has learned the art of lamentation.

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There is at least one gleam of felicity, of which few writers have missed the en­ joyment: he whose hopes have so far overpowered his fears, as that he has resolved to stand forth a candidate for fame, seldom fails to amuse himself, before his appear­ ance, with pleasing scenes of affluence or honour; while his fortune is yet under the regulation of fancy, he easily models it to his wish, suffers no thoughts of critics or rivals to intrude upon his mind, but counts over the bounties of patronage or listens to the voice of praise. Some there are, that talk very luxuriously of the second period of an author’s happiness, and tell of the tumultuous raptures of invention, when the mind riots in imagery, and the choice stands suspended between different sentiments. These pleasures, I believe, may sometimes be indulged to those, who come to a subject of disquisition with minds full of ideas, and with fancies so vigorous, as easily to excite, select, and arrange them. To write, is, indeed, no unpleasing em­ ployment, when one sentiment readily produces another, and both ideas and ex­ pressions present themselves at the first summons: but such happiness, the greatest genius does not always obtain; and common writers know it only to such a degree, as to credit its possibility. Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow dili­ gence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or reso­ lution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements. It frequently happens, that a design which, when considered at a distance, gave flattering hopes of facility, mocks us in the execution with unexpected difficulties; the mind which, while it considered it in the gross, imagined itself amply furnished with materials, finds sometimes an unexpected barrenness and vacuity, and won­ ders whither all those ideas are vanished, which a little before seemed struggling for emission. Sometimes many thoughts present themselves; but so confused and uncon­ nected, that they are not without difficulty reduced to method, or concatenated in a regular and dependent series: the mind falls at once into a labyrinth, of which neither the beginning nor end can be discovered, and toils and struggles without progress or extrication. It is asserted by Horace, that “if matter be once got together, words will be found with very little difficulty”;1 a position which, though sufficiently plausible to be inserted in poetical precepts, is by no means strictly and philosophically true. If words were naturally and necessarily consequential to sentiments, it would always follow, that he who has most knowledge must have most eloquence, and that every man would clearly express what he fully understood: yet we find, that to think, and to discourse, are often the qualities of different persons; and many books might 1. Art of Poetry, ll. 40–41.



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surely be produced, where just and noble sentiments are degraded and obscured by unsuitable diction. Words, therefore, as well as things, claim the care of an author. Indeed, of many authors, and those not useless or contemptible, words are almost the only care: many make it their study, not so much to strike out new sentiments, as to rec­ ommend those which are already known to more favourable notice by fairer deco­ rations; but every man, whether he copies or invents, whether he delivers his own thoughts or those of another, has often found himself deficient in the power of ex­ pression, big with ideas which he could not utter, obliged to ransack his memory for terms adequate to his conceptions, and at last unable to impress upon his reader the image existing in his own mind. It is one of the common distresses of a writer, to be within a word of a happy period, to want only a single epithet to give amplification its full force, to require only a correspondent term in order to finish a paragraph with elegance and make one of its members answer to the other: but these deficiencies cannot always be sup­ plied; and after a long study and vexation, the passage is turned anew, and the web unwoven that was so nearly finished. But when thoughts and words are collected and adjusted, and the whole com­ position at last concluded, it seldom gratifies the author, when he comes coolly and deliberately to review it, with the hopes which had been excited in the fury of the performance: novelty always captivates the mind; as our thoughts rise fresh upon us, we readily believe them just and original, which, when the pleasure of production is over, we find to be mean and common, or borrowed from the works of others, and supplied by memory rather than invention. But though it should happen, that the writer finds no such faults in his per­ formance, he is still to remember, that he looks upon it with partial eyes; and when he considers, how much men who could judge of others with great exactness, have often failed in judging of themselves, he will be afraid of deciding too hastily in his own favour, or of allowing himself to contemplate with too much complacence, treasure that has not yet been brought to the test, nor passed the only trial that can stamp its value. From the public, and only from the public, is he to await a confirmation of his claim, and a final justification of self esteem; but the public is not easily persuaded to favour an author. If mankind were left to judge for themselves, it is reasonable to imagine, that of such writings, at least, as describe the movements of the human passions, and of which every man carries the archetype within him, a just opinion would be formed; but whoever has remarked the fate of books, must have found it governed by other causes, than general consent arising from general conviction. If a new performance happens not to fall into the hands of some, who have courage to tell, and authority to propagate their opinion, it often remains long in obscurity,

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and perhaps perishes unknown and unexamined. A few, a very few, commonly con­ stitute the taste of the time; the judgment which they have once pronounced, some are too lazy to discuss, and some too timorous to contradict: it may, however, be I think observed, that their power is greater to depress than exalt, as mankind are more credulous of censure than of praise. This perversion of the public judgment, is not to be rashly numbered amongst the miseries of an author; since it commonly serves, after miscarriage, to reconcile him to himself. Because the world has sometimes passed an unjust sentence, he readily concludes the sentence unjust by which his performance is condemned; be­ cause some have been exalted above their merits by partiality, he is sure to ascribe the success of a rival, not to the whole of his work, but the zeal of his patrons. Upon the whole, as the author seems to share all the common miseries of life, he appears to partake likewise of its lenitives2 and abatements.

2. “Any thing applied to ease pain” (Dictionary, sense 1).



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I D L E R , No. 63 Saturday, 30 June 1759 The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety. The first labour is enforced by necessity. The savage finds himself incommoded by heat and cold, by rain and wind; he shelters himself in the hollow of a rock, and learns to dig a cave where there was none before. He finds the sun and the wind ex­ cluded by the thicket, and when the accidents of the chace, or the convenience of pasturage leads him into more open places, he forms a thicket for himself, by plant­ ing stakes at proper distances, and laying branches from one to another. The next gradation of skill and industry produces a house, closed with doors, and divided by partitions; and apartments are multiplied and disposed according to the various degrees of power or invention; improvement succeeds improvement, as he that is freed from a greater evil grows impatient of a less, till ease in time is ad­ vanced to pleasure. The mind set free from the importunities of natural want, gains leisure to go in search of superfluous gratifications, and adds to the uses of habitation the delights of prospect. Then begins the reign of symmetry; orders of architecture are invented, and one part of the edifice is conformed to another, without any other reason than that the eye may not be offended. The passage is very short from elegance to luxury. Ionick and Corinthian col­ umns are soon succeeded by gilt cornices, inlaid floors, and petty ornaments, which shew rather the wealth than the taste of the possessor. Language proceeds, like every thing else, thro’ improvement to degeneracy.1 The rovers who first take possession of a country, having not many ideas, and those not nicely modified or discriminated, were contented if by general terms and abrupt sentences they could make their thoughts known to one another; as life begins to be more regulated, and property to become limited, disputes must be decided and claims adjusted; the differences of things are noted, and distinctness and propriety of expression become necessary. In time, happiness and plenty give rise to curiosity, and the sciences are cultivated for ease and pleasure; to the arts which are now to be taught, emulation2 soon adds the art of teaching; and the studious and ambitious contend not only who shall think best, but who shall tell their thoughts in the most pleasing manner. 1. Cf. Preface to the Dictionary, p. 416 below. 2. “Rivalry; desire of superiority” (Dictionary, sense 1).

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Then begin the arts of rhetorick and poetry, the regulation of figures, the selec­ tion of words, the modulation of periods, the graces of transition, the complication of clauses, and all the delicacies of style and subtilties of composition, useful while they advance perspicuity, and laudable while they increase pleasure, but easy to be refined by needless scrupulosity till they shall more embarrass the writer than assist the reader or delight him. The first state is commonly antecedent to the practice of writing; the ignorant essays of imperfect diction pass away with the savage generation that uttered them. No nation can trace their language beyond the second period, and even of that it does not often happen that many monuments remain. The fate of the English tongue is like that of others. We know nothing of the scanty jargon of our barbarous ancestors, but we have specimens of our language when it began to be adapted to civil and religious purposes, and find it such as might naturally be expected, artless and simple, unconnected and concise. The writers seem to have desired little more than to be understood, and perhaps seldom aspired to the praise of pleasing. Their verses were considered chiefly as memorial, and therefore did not differ from prose but by the measure or the rhyme. In this state, varied a little according to the different purposes or abilities of writers, our language may be said to have continued to the time of Gower, whom Chaucer calls his master, and who, however obscured by his scholar’s popularity, seems justly to claim the honour which has been hitherto denied him, of shewing his countrymen that something more was to be desired, and that English verse might be exalted into poetry.3 From the time of Gower and Chaucer, the English writers have studied ele­ gance, and advanced their language, by successive improvements, to as much har­ mony as it can easily receive, and as much copiousness as human knowledge has hitherto required. These advances have not been made at all times with the same dili­ gence or the same success. Negligence has suspended the course of improvement, or affectation turned it aside; time has elapsed with little change, or change has been made without amendment. But elegance has been long kept in view with attention as near to constancy as life permits, till every man now endeavours to excel others in accuracy, or outshine them in splendour of style, and the danger is, lest care should too soon pass to affectation.

3. SJ here recapitulates parts of his “History of the English Language,” which he included in his Dictionary. See Yale, xviii.125–263, esp. 180: “The first of our authours, who can properly be said to have written English, was Sir John Gower, who . . . calls Chaucer his disciple, and may therefore be considered as the father of our poetry.”



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Marriage, Men, and Women

R A M B L E R , No. 18 Saturday, 19 May 1750  Illic matre carentibus Privignis mulier temperat innocens, Nec dotata regit virum Conjux, nec nitido fidit adultero:  Dos est magna parentium Virtus, et metuens alterius tori  Certo foedere castitas. —Horace, Odes, iii.24.17–23    Not there the guiltless step-­dame knows The baleful draught for orphans to compose;    No wife high-­portion’d rules her spouse, Or trusts her essenc’d lover’s faithless vows:    The lovers there for dow’ry claim, The father’s virtue, and the spotless fame,    Which dares not break the nuptial tie. —Francis

There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution has withheld from it. This general unhappiness has given occasion to many sage maxims among the serious, and smart remarks among the gay; the moralist and the writer of epigrams have equally shown their abilities upon it; some have lamented, and some have ridi­ culed it; but as the faculty of writing has been chiefly a masculine endowment, the

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reproach of making the world miserable has been always thrown upon the women, and the grave and the merry have equally thought themselves at liberty to conclude either with declamatory complaints, or satirical censures, of female folly or fickle­ ness, ambition or cruelty, extravagance or lust. Led by such a number of examples, and incited by my share in the common interest, I sometimes venture to consider this universal grievance, having endeav­ oured to divest my heart of all partiality, and place myself as a kind of neutral being between the sexes, whose clamours, being equally vented on both sides with all the vehemence of distress, all the apparent confidence of justice, and all the indig­ nation of injured virtue, seem entitled to equal regard. The men have, indeed, by their superiority of writing, been able to collect the evidence of many ages, and raise prejudices in their favour by the venerable testimonies of philosophers, historians and poets; but the pleas of the ladies appeal to passions of more forcible operation than the reverence of antiquity. If they have not so great names on their side, they have stronger arguments; it is to little purpose that Socrates, or Euripides, are pro­ duced against the sighs of softness, and the tears of beauty. The most frigid and in­ exorable judge would, at least, stand suspended between equal powers, as Lucan was perplexed in the determination of the cause, where the deities were on one side, and Cato on the other.1 But I, who have long studied the severest and most abstracted philosophy, have now, in the cool maturity of life, arrived to such command over my passions, that I can hear the vociferations of either sex without catching any of the fire from those that utter them. For I have found, by long experience, that a man will sometimes rage at his wife, when in reality his mistress has offended him; and a lady complain of the cruelty of her husband, when she has no other enemy than bad cards. I do not suffer myself to be any longer imposed upon by oaths on one side, or fits on the other; nor when the husband hastens to the tavern, and the lady retires to her closet, am I always confident that they are driven by their miseries; since I have sometimes reason to believe, that they purpose not so much to soothe their sorrows, as to ani­ mate their fury. But how little credit soever may be given to particular accusations, the general accumulation of the charge shews, with too much evidence, that married persons are not very often advanced in felicity; and, therefore, it may be proper to examine at what avenues so many evils have made their way into the world. With this purpose, I have reviewed the lives of my friends, who have been least successful in connubial contracts, and attentively considered by what motives they were incited to marry, and by what principles they regulated their choice. One of the first of my acquaintances that resolved to quit the unsettled thought­ 1. Lucan, Pharsalia, i.128: Victrix causa deis placuit, victa Cato (The victorious side was pleasing to the gods; the defeated to Cato).



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less condition of a batchelor, was Prudentius, a man of slow parts, but not without knowledge or judgment in things which he had leisure to consider gradually before he determined them. Whenever we met at a tavern, it was his province to settle the scheme of our entertainment, contract with the cook, and inform us when we had called for wine to the sum originally proposed. This grave considerer found by deep meditation that a man was no loser by marrying early, even though he contented himself with a less fortune; for estimating the exact worth of annuities, he found that, considering the constant diminution of the value of life, with the probable fall of the interest of money, it was not worse to have ten thousand pounds at the age of two and twenty years, than a much larger fortune at thirty; for many opportunities, says he, occur of improving money, which if a man misses, he may not afterwards recover. Full of these reflections, he threw his eyes about him, not in search of beauty, or elegance, dignity, or understanding, but of a woman with ten thousand pounds. Such a woman, in a wealthy part of the kingdom, it was not very difficult to find; and by artful management with her father, whose ambition was to make his daughter a gentlewoman, my friend got her, as he boasted to us in confidence two days after his marriage, for a settlement of seventy three pounds a year less than her fortune might have claimed, and less than he would himself have given, if the fools had been but wise enough to delay the bargain. Thus, at once delighted with the superiority of his parts, and the augmenta­ tion of his fortune, he carried Furia to his own house, in which he never afterwards enjoyed one hour of happiness. For Furia was a wretch of mean intellects, violent passions, a strong voice, and low education, without any sense of happiness but that which consisted in eating, and counting money. Furia was a scold. They agreed in the desire of wealth, but with this difference, that Prudentius was for growing rich by gain, Furia by parsimony. Prudentius would venture his money with chances very much in his favour; but Furia very wisely observing that what they had was, while they had it, their own, thought all traffick too great a hazard, and was for putting it out at low interest, upon good security. Prudentius ventured, however, to insure a ship at a very unreasonable price, but happening to lose his money, was so tor­ mented with the clamours of his wife, that he never durst try a second experiment. He has now grovelled seven and forty years under Furia’s direction, who never once mentioned him, since his bad luck, by any other name than that of “the insurer.” The next that married from our society was Florentius.2 He happened to see Zephyretta in a chariot at a horserace, danced with her at night, was confirmed in his first ardour, waited on her next morning, and declared himself her lover. Floren­ 2. Florentius: the name means “blooming or blossoming very much.” Zephyretta suggests a little, favor­ able, westerly breeze.

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tius had not knowledge enough of the world, to distinguish between the flutter of coquetry, and the sprightliness of wit, or between the smile of allurement, and that of chearfulness. He was soon waked from his rapture by conviction that his plea­ sure was but the pleasure of a day. Zephyretta had in four and twenty hours spent her stock of repartee, gone round the circle of her airs, and had nothing remaining for him but childish insipidity, or for herself, but the practice of the same artifices upon new men. Melissus was a man of parts,3 capable of enjoying, and of improving life. He had passed through the various scenes of gayety with that indifference and posses­ sion of himself, natural to men who have something higher and nobler in their pros­ pect. Retiring to spend the summer in a village little frequented, he happened to lodge in the same house with Ianthe, and was unavoidably drawn to some acquain­ tance, which her wit and politeness soon invited him to improve. Having no oppor­ tunity of any other company, they were always together; and, as they owed their pleasures to each other, they began to forget that any pleasure was enjoyed before their meeting. Melissus, from being delighted with her company, quickly began to be uneasy in her absence, and being sufficiently convinced of the force of her under­ standing, and finding, as he imagined, such a conformity of temper as declared them formed for each other, addressed her as a lover, after no very long courtship obtained her for his wife, and brought her next winter to town in triumph. Now began their infelicity. Melissus had only seen her in one scene, where there was no variety of objects, to produce the proper excitements to contrary de­ sires. They had both loved solitude and reflection, where there was nothing but soli­ tude and reflection to be loved; but when they came into publick life, Ianthe discov­ ered those passions which accident rather than hypocrisy had hitherto concealed. She was, indeed, not without the power of thinking, but was wholly without the exertion of that power when either gayety, or splendour, played on her imagination. She was expensive in her diversions, vehement in her passions, insatiate of plea­ sure however dangerous to her reputation, and eager of applause by whomsoever it might be given. This was the wife which Melissus the philosopher found in his re­ tirement, and from whom he expected an associate in his studies, and an assistant to his virtues. Prosapius, upon the death of his younger brother, that the family might not be extinct, married his housekeeper, and has ever since been complaining to his friends that mean notions are instilled into his children, that he is ashamed to sit at his own table, and that his house is uneasy to him for want of suitable companions. Avaro, master of a very large estate, took a woman of bad reputation, recom­ 3. Melissus was a king of Crete and Ianthe a Cretan woman beloved of another woman, who transforms into a man in Ovid, Metamorphoses, ix.764 ff.



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mended to him by a rich uncle, who made that marriage the condition on which he should be his heir. Avaro now wonders to perceive his own fortune, his wife’s, and his uncle’s, insufficient to give him that happiness which is to be found only with a woman of virtue. I intend to treat in more papers on this important article of life, and shall, there­ fore, make no reflexion upon these histories, except that all whom I have mentioned failed to obtain happiness, for want of considering that marriage is the strictest type of perpetual friendship; that there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and that he must expect to be wretched, who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness, that regard which only virtue and piety can claim.

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R A M B L E R , No. 35 Tuesday, 17 July 1750    ———————Non pronuba Juno, Non Hymenaeus adest, non illi Gratia lecto. —Ovid, Metamorphoses, vi.428–29 Without connubial Juno’s aid they wed; Nor Hymen nor the Graces bless the bed. —Elphinston

to the rambler. sir, As you have hitherto delayed the performance of the promise, by which you gave us reason to hope for another paper upon matrimony,1 I imagine you desirous of collecting more materials than your own experience, or observation, can supply; and I shall therefore lay candidly before you an account of my own entrance into the conjugal state. I was about eight and twenty years old, when, having tried the diversions of the town till I began to be weary, and being awakened into attention to more serious business, by the failure of an attorney to whom I had implicitly trusted the conduct of my own fortune, I resolved to take my estate into my own care, and methodise my whole life according to the strictest rules of oeconomical prudence. In persuance of this scheme, I took leave of my acquaintance, who dismissed me with numberless jests upon my new system; having first endeavoured to divert me from a design so little worthy of a man of wit, by ridiculous accounts of the igno­ rance and rusticity into which many had sunk in their retirement, after having dis­ tinguished themselves in taverns and play-­houses, and given hopes of rising to un­ common eminence among the gay part of mankind. When I came first into the country, which, by a neglect not uncommon among young heirs, I had never seen since the death of my father, I found every thing in such confusion, that, being utterly without practice in business, I had great difficul­ ties to encounter in disentangling the perplexities of my circumstances; they how­ ever gave way to diligent application, and I perceived that the advantage of keeping my own accounts would very much over-­balance the time which they could require. I had now visited my tenants, surveyed my land, and repaired the old house, 1. See Rambler 18, p. 102 above.

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which, for some years, had been running to decay. These proofs of pecuniary wis­ dom began to recommend me, as a sober, judicious, thriving gentleman, to all my graver neighbours of the country, who never failed to celebrate my management in opposition to Thriftless and Latterwit, two smart fellows, who had estates in the same part of the kingdom, which they visited now and then in a frolick, to take up their rents beforehand, debauch a milk-­maid, make a feast for the village, and tell stories of their own intrigues, and then rode post back to town to spend their money. It was doubtful, however, for some time, whether I should be able to hold my resolution; but a short perseverance removed all suspicions. I rose every day in repu­ tation, by the decency of my conversation, and the regularity of my conduct, and was mentioned with great regard at the assizes,2 as a man very fit to be put in com­ mission for the peace.3 During the confusion of my affairs, and the daily necessity of visiting farms, adjusting contracts, letting leases, and superintending repairs, I found very little vacuity in my life, and therefore had not many thoughts of marriage; but, in a little while, the tumult of business subsided, and the exact method which I had estab­ lished, enabled me to dispatch my accounts with great facility. I had, therefore, now upon my hands, the task of finding means to spend my time, without falling back into the poor amusements which I had hitherto indulged, or changing them for the sports of the field, which I saw persued with so much eagerness by the gentlemen of the country, that they were indeed the only pleasures in which I could promise myself any partaker. The inconvenience of this situation naturally disposed me to wish for a com­ panion, and the known value of my estate, with my reputation for frugality and prudence, easily gained me admission into every family; for I soon found that no enquiry was made after any other virtue, nor any testimonial necessary, but of my freedom from incumbrances,4 and my care of what they termed the “main chance.”5 I saw not without indignation, the eagerness with which the daughters, wherever I came, were set out to show; nor could I consider them in a state much different from prostitution, when I found them ordered to play their airs before me, and to exhibit, by some seeming chance, specimens of their musick, their work,6 or their house­ wifery. No sooner was I placed at table, than the young lady was called upon to pay me some civility or other; nor could I find means of escaping, from either father or mother, some account of their daughter’s excellencies, with a declaration, that they 2. “The sessions held periodically in each county of England, for the purpose of administering civil and criminal justice” (OED, sense 12). 3. Appointed a Justice of the Peace. 4. “Burthen upon an estate” (Dictionary, s.v. encumbrance, sense 3). 5. “The chance of enriching oneself ” (OED, s.v. chance, sense 12b). 6. “Flowers or embroidery of the needle” (Dictionary, sense 4).

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were now leaving the world, and had no business on this side the grave, but to see their children happily disposed of; that she whom I had been pleased to compliment at table, was indeed the chief pleasure of their age, so good, so dutiful, so great a re­ lief to her mamma in the care of the house, and so much her papa’s favourite for her chearfulness and wit, that it would be with the last reluctance that they should part; but to a worthy gentleman in the neighbourhood, whom they might often visit, they would not so far consult their own gratification, as to refuse her; and their tender­ ness should be shewn in her fortune, whenever a suitable settlement was proposed. As I knew these overtures not to proceed from any preference of me before another equally rich, I could not but look with pity on young persons condemned to be set to auction, and made cheap by injudicious commendations; for how could they know themselves offered and rejected a hundred times, without some loss of that soft elevation, and maiden dignity, so necessary to the completion of female ex­ cellence? I shall not trouble you with a history of the stratagems practised upon my judg­ ment, or the allurements tried upon my heart, which, if you have, in any part of your life, been acquainted with rural politicks, you will easily conceive. Their arts have no great variety, they think nothing worth their care but money, and supposing its influ­ ence the same upon all the world, seldom endeavour to deceive by any other means than false computations. I will not deny that, by hearing myself loudly commended for my discretion, I began to set some value upon my character, and was unwilling to lose my credit by marrying for love. I therefore resolved to know the fortune of the lady whom I should address, before I enquired after her wit, delicacy, or beauty. This determination led me to Mitissa, the daughter of Chrysophilus,7 whose person was at least without deformity, and whose manners were free from reproach, as she had been bred up at a distance from all common temptations. To Mitissa, therefore, I obtained leave from her parents to pay my court, and was referred by her again to her father, whose direction she was resolved to follow. The question then was, only, what should be settled? The old gentleman made an enormous demand, with which I refused to comply. Mitissa was ordered to exert her power; she told me, that if I could refuse her papa, I had no love for her; that she was an unhappy creature, and that I was a perfidious man: then she burst into tears, and fell into fits. All this, as I was no passionate lover, had little effect. She next refused to see me, and because I thought myself obliged to write in terms of distress, they had once hopes of starving me into measures;8 but finding me inflexible, the father complied with my proposal, and told me he liked me the more for being so good at a bargain. 7. Chrysophilus means lover of gold; Mitissa might mean a little bit of thread, as in a spiderweb. 8. Terms of submission.



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I was now married to Mitissa, and was to experience the happiness of a match made without passion. Mitissa soon discovered, that she was equally prudent with myself, and had taken a husband only to be at her own command, and to have a chariot at her own call. She brought with her an old maid recommended by her mother, who taught her all the arts of domestick management, and was, on every occasion, her chief agent and directress. They soon invented one reason or other, to quarrel with all my servants, and either prevailed on me to turn them away, or treated them so ill, that they left me of themselves, and always supplied their places with some brought from my wife’s relations. Thus they established a family, over which I had no authority, and which was in a perpetual conspiracy against me; for Mitissa considered herself as having a separate interest, and thought nothing her own, but what she laid up without my knowledge. For this reason she brought me false accounts of the expences of the house, joined with my tenants in complaints of hard times, and by means of a steward of her own, took rewards for soliciting abate­ ments of the rent. Her great hope is to outlive me, that she may enjoy what she has thus accumulated, and therefore she is always contriving some improvements of her jointure land, and once tried to procure an injunction to hinder me from felling tim­ ber upon it for repairs. Her father and mother assist her in her projects, and are fre­ quently hinting that she is ill used, and reproaching me with the presents that other ladies receive from their husbands. Such, Sir, was my situation for seven years, till at last my patience was ex­ hausted, and having one day invited her father to my house, I laid the state of my affairs before him, detected my wife in several of her frauds, turned out her steward, charged a constable with her maid, took my business in my own hands, reduced her to a settled allowance, and now write this account to warn others against marrying those whom they have no reason to esteem. I am, &c.

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R A M B L E R , No. 45 Tuesday, 21 August 1750 Ἣπερ μεγίστη γίγνεται σωτηρία, Ὃταν γύνη πρὸς ἂνδρα μὴ διχοστατῇ, Νῦν δ᾽ ἐχθρὰ πάντα.

—Euripides, Medea, ll. 14–16. This is the chief felicity of life, That concord smile on the connubial bed; But now ’tis hatred all——————————

to the rambler. sir, Though, in the dissertations which you have given us on marriage,1 very just cautions are laid down against the common causes of infelicity, and the necessity of having, in that important choice, the first regard to virtue is carefully inculcated; yet I cannot think the subject so much exhausted, but that a little reflection would present to the mind many questions in the discussion of which great numbers are interested, and many precepts which deserve to be more particularly and forcibly impressed. You seem, like most of the writers that have gone before you, to have allowed as an uncontested principle, that “Marriage is generally unhappy”: but I know not whether a man who professes to think for himself, and concludes from his own observations, does not depart from his character when he follows the crowd thus implicitly, and receives maxims without recalling them to a new examination, espe­ cially when they comprise so wide a circuit of life, and include such variety of cir­ cumstances. As I have an equal right with others to give my opinion of the objects about me, and a better title to determine concerning that state which I have tried, than many who talk of it without experience, I am unwilling to be restrained by mere authority from advancing what, I believe, an accurate view of the world will con­ firm, that marriage is not commonly unhappy, otherwise than as life is unhappy; and that most of those who complain of connubial miseries, have as much satisfaction as their nature would have admitted, or their conduct procured in any other condition. It is, indeed, common to hear both sexes repine at their change, relate the hap­ 1. Ramblers 18, 35, 39. Cf. Ramblers 113, 115, 119, and 167. Also see Rasselas, chs. 28–29 (pp. 214–18 below).

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piness of their earlier years, blame the folly and rashness of their own choice, and warn those whom they see coming into the world against the same precipitance and infatuation. But it is to be remembered, that the days which they so much wish to call back, are the days not only of celibacy but of youth, the days of novelty and im­ provement, of ardour and of hope, of health and vigour of body, of gayety and light­ ness of heart. It is not easy to surround life with any circumstances in which youth will not be delightful; and I am afraid that whether married or unmarried, we shall find the vesture of terrestrial existence more heavy and cumbrous, the longer it is worn. That they censure themselves for the indiscretion of their choice, is not a suffi­ cient proof that they have chosen ill, since we see the same discontent at every other part of life which we cannot change. Converse with almost any man, grown old in a profession, and you will find him regretting that he did not enter into some dif­ ferent course, to which he too late finds his genius better adapted, or in which he discovers that wealth and honour are more easily attained. “The merchant,” says Horace, “envies the soldier, and the soldier recounts the felicity of the merchant; the lawyer when his clients harass him, calls out for the quiet of the countryman; and the countryman, when business calls him to town, proclaims that there is no hap­ piness but amidst opulence and crouds.”2 Every man recounts the inconveniencies of his own station, and thinks those of any other less, because he has not felt them. Thus the married praise the ease and freedom of a single state, and the single fly to marriage from the weariness of solitude. From all our observations we may collect with certainty, that misery is the lot of man, but cannot discover in what particular condition it will find most alleviations; or whether all external appendages are not, as we use them, the causes either of good or ill. Whoever feels great pain naturally hopes for ease from change of posture; he changes it, and finds himself equally tormented: and of the same kind are the ex­ pedients by which we endeavour to obviate or elude those uneasinesses, to which mortality will always be subject. It is not likely that the married state is eminently miserable, since we see such numbers, whom the death of their partners has set free from it, entering it again. Wives and husbands are, indeed, incessantly complaining of each other; and there would be reason for imagining that almost every house was infested with per­ verseness or oppression beyond human sufferance, did we not know upon how small occasions some minds burst out into lamentations and reproaches, and how naturally every animal revenges his pain upon those who happen to be near, without any nice examination of its cause. We are always willing to fancy ourselves within a little of happiness, and when, with repeated efforts, we cannot reach it, persuade 2. Satires, i.1.4–12.

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ourselves that it is intercepted by an ill-paired mate, since, if we could find any other obstacle, it would be our own fault that it was not removed. Anatomists have often remarked, that though our diseases are sufficiently nu­ merous and severe, yet when we enquire into the structure of the body, the tender­ ness of some parts, the minuteness of others, and the immense multiplicity of animal functions that must concur to the healthful and vigorous exercise of all our powers, there appears reason to wonder rather that we are preserved so long, than that we perish so soon, and that our frame subsists for a single day, or hour, without dis­ order, rather than that it should be broken or obstructed by violence of accidents, or length of time.3 The same reflection arises in my mind, upon observation of the manner in which marriage is frequently contracted. When I see the avaricious and crafty taking companions to their tables, and their beds, without any enquiry, but after farms and money; or the giddy and thoughtless uniting themselves for life to those whom they have only seen by the light of tapers at a ball; when parents make articles4 for their children, without enquiring after their consent; when some marry for heirs to dis­ appoint their brothers, and others throw themselves into the arms of those whom they do not love, because they have found themselves rejected where they were more solicitous to please; when some marry because their servants cheat them, some be­ cause they squander their own money, some because their houses are pestered with company, some because they will live like other people, and some only because they are sick of themselves, I am not so much inclined to wonder that marriage is sometimes unhappy, as that it appears so little loaded with calamity; and cannot but conclude that society has something in itself eminently agreeable to human nature, when I find its pleasures so great that even the ill choice of a companion can hardly over-­balance them. By the ancient custom of the Muscovites the men and women never saw each other till they were joined beyond the power of parting. It may be suspected that by this method many unsuitable matches were produced, and many tempers associated that were not qualified to give pleasure to each other. Yet, perhaps, among a people so little delicate, where the paucity of gratifications, and the uniformity of life gave no opportunity for imagination to interpose its objections, there was not much dan­ ger of capricious dislike, and while they felt neither cold nor hunger they might live quietly together, without any thought of the defects of one another.5

3. Though not specifically traced, similar remarks are common in works of physico-­theology, such as John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation (1699). 4. “Terms, stipulations” (Dictionary, sense 3). 5. John Perry, The State of Russia Under the Present Czar (1716), pp. 200–202, reports that the custom was revoked because it led to such bad marriages that many husbands and wives murdered each other.



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Amongst us, whom knowledge has made nice, and affluence wanton, there are, indeed, more cautions requisite to secure tranquillity; and yet if we observe the man­ ner in which those converse, who have singled out each other for marriage, we shall, perhaps, not think that the Russians lost much by their restraint. For the whole en­ deavour of both parties, during the time of courtship, is to hinder themselves from being known, and to disguise their natural temper, and real desires, in hypocritical imitation, studied compliance, and continued affectation. From the time that their love is avowed, neither sees the other but in a mask, and the cheat is managed often on both sides with so much art, and discovered afterwards with so much abrupt­ ness, that each has reason to suspect that some transformation has happened on the wedding-­night, and that by a strange imposture one has been courted, and another married. I desire you, therefore, Mr. Rambler, to question all who shall hereafter come to you with matrimonial complaints, concerning their behaviour in the time of court­ ship, and inform them that they are neither to wonder nor repine, when a contract begun with fraud has ended in disappointment. I am, &c.

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I D L E R , No. 12 Saturday, 1 July 1758 That every man is important in his own eyes, is a position of which we all either voluntarily or unwarily at least once an hour confess the truth, and it will unavoid­ ably follow that every man believes himself important to the publick. The right which this importance gives us to general notice and visible distinc­ tion, is one of those disputable privileges which we have not always courage to as­ sert; and which we therefore suffer to lye dormant till some elation of mind, or vicis­ situde of fortune, incites us to declare our pretensions and enforce our demands. And hopeless as the claim of vulgar1 characters may seem to the supercilious and severe, there are few who do not at one time or other endeavour to step forward be­ yond their rank, who do not make some struggles for fame, and shew that they think all other conveniencies and delights imperfectly enjoyed without a name. To get a name can happen but to few. A name, even in the most commercial nation, is one of the few things which cannot be bought. It is the free gift of man­ kind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly be­ stowed. But this unwillingness only encreases desire in him who believes his merit sufficient to overcome it. There is a particular period of life, in which this fondness for a name seems principally to predominate in both sexes. Scarce any couple comes together, but the nuptials are declared in the news papers with encomiums on each party. Many an eye, ranging over the page with eager curiosity in quest of statesmen and heroes, is stopped by a marriage celebrated between Mr. Buckram, an eminent salesman, in Threadneedle-­street, and Miss Dolly Juniper, the only daughter of an eminent dis­ tiller, of the parish of St. Giles’s in the Fields,2 a young lady adorned with every ac­ complishment that can give happiness to the married state. Or we are told, amidst our impatience for the event of a battle, that on a certain day Mr. Winker, a tide-­ waiter at Yarmouth,3 was married to Mrs. Cackle, a widow lady of great accomplish­ ments, and that as soon as the ceremony was performed they set out in a post-­chaise for Yarmouth. Many are the enquiries which such intelligence must undoubtedly raise, but 1. “Mean; low; being of the common rate” (Dictionary, sense 3). 2. Buckram is a kind of stiff, coarse linen. Threadneedle Street is in the financial district of the City of London. St. Giles, in the Covent Garden/Holborn area of London, was a low district, used as the setting for Hogarth’s satirical drawing “Gin Lane.” 3. Tide-­waiter: “An officer who watches the landing of goods at the customhouse” (Dictionary). Great Yarmouth is a coastal town in Norfolk.

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nothing in this world is lasting. When the reader has contemplated with envy, or with gladness, the felicity of Mr. Buckram and Mr. Winker, and ransacked his mem­ ory for the names of Juniper and Cackle, his attention is diverted to other thoughts, by finding that Mirza will not cover this season;4 or that a spaniel has been lost or stolen, that answers to the name of Ranger.5 Whence it arises that on the day of marriage all agree to call thus openly for honours, I am not able to discover. Some, perhaps, think it kind, by a publick dec­ laration, to put an end to the hopes of rivalry and the fears of jealousy, to let par­ ents know that they may set their daughters at liberty whom they have locked up for fear of the bridegroom, or to dismiss to their counters and their offices the amorous youths that had been used to hover round the dwelling of the bride. These connubial praises may have another cause. It may be the intention of the husband and wife to dignify themselves in the eyes of each other, and, according to their different tempers or expectations, to win affection or enforce respect. It was said of the family of Lucas, that it was “noble,” for “all the brothers were valiant, and all the sisters were virtuous.”6 What would a stranger say of the English nation, in which on the day of marriage all the men are “eminent,” and all the women “beautiful, accomplished,” and “rich.” How long the wife will be persuaded of the eminence of her husband, or the husband continue to believe that his wife has the qualities required to make marriage happy, may reasonably be questioned. I am afraid that much time seldom passes before each is convinced that praises are fallacious, and particularly those praises which we confer upon ourselves. I should therefore think, that this custom might be omitted without any loss to the community, and that the sons and daughters of lanes and alleys might go here­ after to the next church, with no witnesses of their worth or happiness but their par­ ents and their friends; but if they cannot be happy on the bridal day without some gratification of their vanity, I hope they will be willing to encourage a friend of mine who proposes to devote his powers to their service. Mr. Settle, a man whose “eminence” was once allowed by the “eminent,” and whose “accomplishments” were confessed by the “accomplished,” in the latter part of a long life supported himself by an uncommon expedient. He had a standing 4. Mirza is mentioned as full brother of Dimple, a stallion advertised for covering (mating) in the London Evening Post for 6–8 June 1758. 5. The Public Advertiser for 24 June 1758 carried an ad for a lost spaniel named Roger. 6. On the monument to Margaret Cavendish, the writer (1623?–­1673), the inscription reads in part: “Here lyes the Loyall Duke of Newcastle and his Dutches his second wife, by whome hee had noe issue, her name was Margarett Lucas yongest sister to the Lord Lucas of Colchester a noble familie for all the Brothers were Valiant and all the Sisters virtuous. . . .”

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elegy and epithalamium,7 of which only the first and last leaves were varied occasion­ ally, and the intermediate pages were, by general terms, left applicable alike to every character. When any marriage became known, Settle ran to the bridegroom with his epithalamium; and when he heard of any death, ran to the heir with his elegy. Who can think himself disgraced by a trade that was practised so long by the rival of Dryden, by the poet whose Empress of Morocco was played before princes by ladies of the court?8 My friend purposes to open an office in the Fleet9 for matrimonial panegyricks, and will accommodate all with praise who think their own powers of expression in­ adequate to their merit. He will sell any man or woman the virtue or qualification which is most fashionable or most desired; but desires his customers to remember, that he sets beauty at the highest price, and riches at the next, and, if he be well paid, throws in virtue for nothing.

7. “A nuptial song; a compliment upon marriage” (Dictionary). 8. Elkanah Settle (1648–1724); cf. SJ’s “Dryden,” Yale, xxi.373–75 and 406, where SJ says that Settle’s “latter years were spent in contriving shows for fairs, and carrying an elegy or epithalamium, of which the be­ ginning and end were occasionally varied, but the intermediate parts were always the same, to every house where there was a funeral or a wedding.” 9. Fleet Street is a major street in the City of London, long known for its importance to the publishing industry.



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R A M B L E R , No. 4 Saturday, 31 March 1750 Simul et jucunda et idonea dicere vitae. —Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 334 And join both profit and delight in one. —Creech

The works of fiction, with which the present generation seems more particu­ larly delighted, are such as exhibit life in its true state, diversified only by accidents that daily happen in the world, and influenced by passions and qualities which are really to be found in conversing with mankind.1 This kind of writing may be termed not improperly the comedy of romance, and is to be conducted nearly by the rules of comic poetry.2 Its province is to bring about natural events by easy means, and to keep up curiosity without the help of wonder: it is therefore precluded from the machines3 and expedients of the heroic romance, and can neither employ giants to snatch away a lady from the nuptial rites, nor knights to bring her back from captivity; it can neither bewilder its personages in desarts, nor lodge them in imaginary castles. I remember a remark made by Scaliger upon Pontanus, that all his writings are filled with the same images; and that if you take from him his lilies and his roses,

1. Alexander Chalmers, an editor of the Rambler in 1802 and of SJ’s Works in 1806, noted: “This excel­ lent paper was occasioned by the popularity of [Tobias Smollett’s] Roderick Random [1748] and [Henry Field­ ing’s] Tom Jones [1749] . . . models of that species of romance, now known by the more common name of Novel.” 2. Fielding called it “comic Romance,” defined it as “a comic Epic-­Poem in Prose,” and, like SJ, believed it should adhere “strictly to Nature” (Joseph Andrews, preface, pars. 5–6). 3. “Supernatural agency in poems” (Dictionary, sense 3).

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his satyrs and his dryads, he will have nothing left that can be called poetry.4 In like manner, almost all the fictions of the last age will vanish, if you deprive them of a hermit and a wood, a battle and a shipwreck. Why this wild strain of imagination found reception so long in polite and learned ages, it is not easy to conceive; but we cannot wonder that, while readers could be procured, the authors were willing to continue it: for when a man had by practice gained some fluency of language, he had no further care than to retire to his closet, let loose his invention, and heat his mind with incredibilities; a book was thus produced without fear of criticism, without the toil of study, without knowledge of nature, or acquaintance with life. The task of our present writers is very different; it requires, together with that learning which is to be gained from books, that experience which can never be at­ tained by solitary diligence, but must arise from general converse, and accurate ob­ servation of the living world. Their performances have, as Horace expresses it, plus oneris quantum veniae minus,5 little indulgence, and therefore more difficulty. They are engaged in portraits of which every one knows the original, and can detect any deviation from exactness of resemblance. Other writings are safe, except from the malice of learning, but these are in danger from every common reader; as the slip­ per ill executed was censured by a shoemaker who happened to stop in his way at the Venus of Apelles.6 But the fear of not being approved as just copyers of human manners, is not the most important concern that an author of this sort ought to have before him. These books are written chiefly to the young, the ignorant, and the idle, to whom they serve as lectures of conduct, and introductions into life. They are the entertainment of minds unfurnished with ideas, and therefore easily susceptible of impressions; not fixed by principles, and therefore easily following the current of fancy; not informed by experience, and consequently open to every false suggestion and partial account. That the highest degree of reverence should be paid to youth, and that noth­ ing indecent should be suffered to approach their eyes or ears; are precepts extorted by sense and virtue from an ancient writer, by no means eminent for chastity of thought.7 The same kind, tho’ not the same degree of caution, is required in every thing which is laid before them, to secure them from unjust prejudices, perverse opinions, and incongruous combinations of images. 4. SJ recalls Julius Caesar Scaliger, Poetices libri septem (1561; 2d ed., 1581), p. 810, commenting on the Latin verse of Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503). 5. Epistles, ii.1.170. 6. Pliny the Elder (Natural History, 35.36) says it was Apelles’s custom to display his paintings to the public because he valued their opinion more than his own. 7. Juvenal, whose theme in Satire XIV is the impressionability of children.



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In the romances formerly written, every transaction and sentiment was so re­ mote from all that passes among men, that the reader was in very little danger of making any applications to himself; the virtues and crimes were equally beyond his sphere of activity; and he amused himself with heroes and with traitors, deliverers and persecutors, as with beings of another species, whose actions were regulated upon motives of their own, and who had neither faults nor excellencies in common with himself. But when an adventurer is levelled with the rest of the world, and acts in such scenes of the universal drama, as may be the lot of any other man; young spectators fix their eyes upon him with closer attention, and hope by observing his behaviour and success to regulate their own practices, when they shall be engaged in the like part. For this reason these familiar histories may perhaps be made of greater use than the solemnities of professed morality, and convey the knowledge of vice and virtue with more efficacy than axioms and definitions. But if the power of example is so great, as to take possession of the memory by a kind of violence, and produce effects almost without the intervention of the will, care ought to be taken that, when the choice is unrestrained, the best examples only should be exhibited; and that which is likely to operate so strongly, should not be mischievous or uncertain in its effects. The chief advantage which these fictions have over real life is, that their authors are at liberty, tho’ not to invent, yet to select objects, and to cull from the mass of mankind, those individuals upon which the attention ought most to be employ’d; as a diamond, though it cannot be made, may be polished by art, and placed in such a situation, as to display that lustre which before was buried among common stones. It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art, to imitate nature; but it is necessary to distinguish those parts of nature, which are most proper for imita­ tion: greater care is still required in representing life, which is so often discoloured by passion, or deformed by wickedness. If the world be promiscuously described, I cannot see of what use it can be to read the account; or why it may not be as safe to turn the eye immediately upon mankind, as upon a mirrour which shews all that presents itself without discrimination. It is therefore not a sufficient vindication of a character, that it is drawn as it ap­ pears, for many characters ought never to be drawn; nor of a narrative, that the train of events is agreeable to observation and experience, for that observation which is called knowledge of the world, will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good. The purpose of these writings is surely not only to show man­ kind, but to provide that they may be seen hereafter with less hazard; to teach the means of avoiding the snares which are laid by Treachery for Innocence, without infusing any wish for that superiority with which the betrayer flatters his vanity; to give the power of counteracting fraud, without the temptation to practise it; to ini­

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tiate youth by mock encounters in the art of necessary defence, and to increase pru­ dence without impairing virtue. Many writers, for the sake of following nature, so mingle good and bad quali­ ties in their principal personages, that they are both equally conspicuous; and as we accompany them through their adventures with delight, and are led by degrees to interest ourselves in their favour, we lose the abhorrence of their faults, because they do not hinder our pleasure, or, perhaps, regard them with some kindness for being united with so much merit. There have been men indeed splendidly wicked, whose endowments threw a brightness on their crimes, and whom scarce any villainy made perfectly detestable, because they never could be wholly divested of their excellencies; but such have been in all ages the great corrupters of the world, and their resemblance ought no more to be preserved, than the art of murdering without pain. Some have advanced, without due attention to the consequences of this notion, that certain virtues have their correspondent faults, and therefore that to ex­ hibit either apart is to deviate from probability. Thus men are observed by Swift to be “grateful in the same degree as they are resentful.”8 This principle, with others of the same kind, supposes man to act from a brute impulse, and persue a certain de­ gree of inclination, without any choice of the object; for, otherwise, though it should be allowed that gratitude and resentment arise from the same constitution of the passions, it follows not that they will be equally indulged when reason is consulted; yet unless that consequence be admitted, this sagacious maxim becomes an empty sound, without any relation to practice or to life. Nor is it evident, that even the first motions to these effects are always in the same proportion. For pride, which produces quickness of resentment, will obstruct gratitude, by unwillingness to admit that inferiority which obligation implies; and it is very unlikely, that he who cannot think he receives a favour will acknowledge or repay it. It is of the utmost importance to mankind, that positions of this tendency should be laid open and confuted; for while men consider good and evil as springing from the same root, they will spare the one for the sake of the other, and in judging, if not of others at least of themselves, will be apt to estimate their virtues by their vices. To this fatal error all those will contribute, who confound the colours9 of right and wrong, and instead of helping to settle their boundaries, mix them with so much art, that no common mind is able to disunite them. 8. The statement is actually by Alexander Pope, “Thoughts on Various Subjects,” The Prose Works of Alexander Pope, ed. Rosemary Cowler (1986), ii.160. Cowler notes that Pope follows La Rochefoucauld’s maxim 229. 9. “Appearance, pretense, false show” (Dictionary, sense 6).



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In narratives, where historical veracity has no place, I cannot discover why there should not be exhibited the most perfect idea of virtue; of virtue not angelical, nor above probability, for what we cannot credit we shall never imitate, but the high­ est and purest that humanity can reach, which, exercised in such trials as the various revolutions of things shall bring upon it, may, by conquering some calamities, and enduring others, teach us what we may hope, and what we can perform. Vice, for vice is necessary to be shewn, should always disgust; nor should the graces of gaiety, or the dignity of courage, be so united with it, as to reconcile it to the mind. Wher­ ever it appears, it should raise hatred by the malignity of its practices, and contempt by the meanness of its stratagems; for while it is supported by either parts or spirit, it will be seldom heartily abhorred. The Roman tyrant was content to be hated, if he was but feared;10 and there are thousands of the readers of romances willing to be thought wicked, if they may be allowed to be wits. It is therefore to be steadily in­ culcated, that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness; and that vice is the natural consequence of narrow thoughts, that it be­ gins in mistake, and ends in ignominy.

10. Caligula, according to Suetonius (Lives of the Emperors, “Caligula,” 30).

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R A M B L E R , No. 36 Saturday, 21 July 1750 Ἅμ᾽ ἕποντο νομῆες Τερπόμενοι σύριγξι· δόλον δ᾽ οὔτι προνόησαν.

—Iliad, xviii.525–26 ———Piping on their reeds, the shepherds go, Nor fear an ambush, nor suspect a foe. —Pope1

There is scarcely any species of poetry, that has allured more readers, or ex­ cited more writers, than the pastoral. It 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. It exhibits a life, to which we have been always accustomed to associate peace, and leisure, and inno­ cence: and therefore we readily set open the heart, for the admission of its images, which contribute to drive away cares and perturbations, and suffer ourselves, with­ out resistance, to be transported to elysian regions, where we are to meet with noth­ ing but joy, and plenty, and contentment; where every gale whispers pleasure, and every shade promises repose. It has been maintained by some, who love to talk of what they do not know, that pastoral is the most antient poetry; and, indeed, since it is probable, that poetry is nearly of the same antiquity with rational nature, and since the life of the first men was certainly rural, we may reasonably conjecture, that, as their ideas would neces­ sarily be borrowed from those objects with which they were acquainted, their com­ posures, being filled chiefly with such thoughts on the visible creation as must occur to the first observers, were pastoral hymns like those which Milton introduces the original pair singing, in the day of innocence, to the praise of their Maker.2 For the same reason that pastoral poetry was the first employment of the human imagination, it is generally the first literary amusement of our minds. We have seen fields, and meadows, and groves from the time that our eyes opened upon life; and are pleased with birds, and brooks, and breezes, much earlier than we engage among the actions and passions of mankind. We are therefore delighted with rural pictures, 1. Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad, xviii.609–10. This is part of the description of the images on the shield of Achilles. 2. Paradise Lost, v.153–208.

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because we know the original at an age when our curiosity can be very little awak­ ened, by descriptions of courts which we never beheld, or representations of pas­ sion which we never felt. The satisfaction received from this kind of writing not only begins early, but lasts long; we do not, as we advance into the intellectual world, throw it away among other childish amusements and pastimes, but willingly return to it in any hour of indolence and relaxation. The images of true pastoral have always the power of ex­ citing delight, because the works of nature, from which they are drawn, have always the same order and beauty, and continue to force themselves upon our thoughts, being at once obvious to the most careless regard, and more than adequate to the strongest reason, and severest contemplation. Our inclination to stillness and tran­ quillity is seldom much lessened by long knowledge of the busy and tumultuary part of the world. In childhood we turn our thoughts to the country, as to the region of pleasure, we recur to it in old age as a port of rest, and perhaps with that secondary and adventitious gladness, which every man feels on reviewing those places, or rec­ ollecting those occurrences, that contributed to his youthful enjoyments, and bring him back to the prime of life, when the world was gay with the bloom of novelty, when mirth wantoned at his side, and hope sparkled before him. The sense of this universal pleasure has invited “numbers without number”3 to try their skill in pastoral performances, in which they have generally succeeded after the manner of other imitators, transmitting the same images in the same combina­ tion from one to another, till he that reads the title of a poem, may guess at the whole series of the composition; nor will a man, after the perusal of thousands of these per­ formances, find his knowledge enlarged with a single view of nature not produced before, or his imagination amused with any new application of those views to moral purposes. The range of pastoral is indeed narrow, for though nature itself, philosophi­ cally considered, be inexhaustible, yet its general effects on the eye and on the ear are uniform, and incapable of much variety of description. Poetry cannot dwell upon the minuter distinctions, by which one species differs from another, without de­ parting from that simplicity of grandeur which fills the imagination; nor dissect the latent qualities of things, without losing its general power of gratifying every mind by recalling its conceptions. However, as each age makes some discoveries, and those discoveries are by degrees generally known, as new plants or modes of cul­ ture are introduced, and by little and little become common, pastoral might receive, from time to time, small augmentations, and exhibit once in a century a scene some­ what varied. But pastoral subjects have been often, like others, taken into the hands of those 3. Paradise Lost, iii.346, describing the angels in heaven singing hosannas to God.

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that were not qualified to adorn them, men to whom the face of nature was so little known, that they have drawn it only after their own imagination, and changed or dis­ torted her features, that their portraits might appear something more than servile copies from their predecessors. Not only the images of rural life, but the occasions on which they can be prop­ erly produced, are few and general. The state of a man confined to the employments and pleasures of the country, is so little diversified, and exposed to so few of those accidents which produce perplexities, terrors, and surprises, in more complicated transactions, that he can be shewn but seldom in such circumstances as attract curi­ osity. His ambition is without policy, and his love without intrigue. He has no com­ plaints to make of his rival, but that he is richer than himself; nor any disasters to lament, but a cruel mistress, or a bad harvest. The conviction of the necessity of some new source of pleasure induced Sanna­ zarius to remove the scene from the fields to the sea, to substitute fishermen for shepherds, and derive his sentiments from the piscatory life; for which he has been censured by succeeding criticks, because the sea is an object of terrour, and by no means proper to amuse the mind, and lay the passions asleep.4 Against this objec­ tion he might be defended by the established maxim, that the poet has a right to select his images, and is no more obliged to shew the sea in a storm, than the land under an inundation; but may display all the pleasures, and conceal the dangers of the water, as he may lay his shepherd under a shady beech, without giving him an ague, or letting a wild beast loose upon him. 
 There are however two defects in the piscatory eclogue, which perhaps cannot be supplied. The sea, though in hot countries it is considered by those who live, like Sannazarius, upon the coast, as a place of pleasure and diversion, has notwithstand­ ing much less variety than the land, and therefore will be sooner exhausted by a de­ scriptive writer. When he has once shewn the sun rising or setting upon it, curled its waters with the vernal breeze, rolled the waves in gentle succession to the shore, and enumerated the fish sporting in the shallows, he has nothing remaining but what is common to all other poetry, the complaint of a nymph for a drowned lover, or the indignation of a fisher that his oysters are refused, and Mycon’s accepted. Another obstacle to the general reception of this kind of poetry, is the igno­ rance of maritime pleasures, in which the greater part of mankind must always live. To all the inland inhabitants of every region, the sea is only known as an immense diffusion of waters, over which men pass from one country to another, and in which 4. Jacopo Sannazaro (1457–1530), author of the Italian Arcadia (1504), wrote five Eclogae piscatoriae, in which he substitutes fishermen for shepherds. Following Fontenelle (1657–1757) and Nicolas Rapin (1535–1608), Thomas Tickell (1685–1740) criticized these eclogues for focusing on the “uncomfortable and dreadful” sea (Guardian 28, 13 April 1713).



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life is frequently lost. They have, therefore, no opportunity of tracing, in their own thoughts, the descriptions of winding shores, and calm bays, nor can look on the poem in which they are mentioned, with other sensations, than on a sea-­chart, or the metrical geography of Dionysius.5 This defect Sannazarius was hindered from perceiving, by writing in a learned language to readers generally acquainted with the works of nature; but if he had made his attempt in any vulgar tongue, he would soon have discovered how vainly he had endeavoured to make that loved, which was not understood. I am afraid it will not be found easy to improve the pastorals of antiquity, by any great additions or diversifications. Our descriptions may indeed differ from those of Virgil, as an English from an Italian summer, and, in some respects, as modern from ancient life; but as nature is in both countries nearly the same, and as poetry has to do rather with the passions of men, which are uniform, than their cus­ toms, which are changeable, the varieties, which time or place can furnish, will be inconsiderable: and I shall endeavour to shew, in the next paper,6 how little the latter ages have contributed to the improvement of the rustick muse.

5. Dionysius “Periegetes” (fl. c. 130 CE) wrote Periegesis, a Greek didactic poem on the geography of the world. SJ quotes a line of it at the end of the last Rambler (see p. 19 above). 6. Rambler 37, below.

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R A M B L E R , No. 37 Tuesday, 24 July 1750 Canto quae solitus, si quando armenta vocabat, Amphion Dircaeus. —Virgil, Eclogues, ii.23–24 Such strains I sing as once Amphion play’d, When list’ning flocks the pow’rful call obey’d. —Elphinston

In writing or judging of pastoral poetry, neither the authors nor criticks of lat­ ter times seem to have paid sufficient regard to the originals left us by antiquity, but have entangled themselves with unnecessary difficulties, by advancing principles, which, having no foundation in the nature of things, are wholly to be rejected from a species of composition in which, above all others, mere nature is to be regarded. It is, therefore, necessary to enquire after some more distinct and exact idea of this kind of writing. This may, I think, be easily found in the pastorals of Virgil, from whose opinion it will not appear very safe to depart, if we consider that every advan­ tage of nature, and of fortune, concurred to complete his productions; that he was born with great accuracy and severity of judgment, enlightened with all the learning of one of the brightest ages, and embellished with the elegance of the Roman court; that he employed his powers rather in improving, than inventing, and therefore must have endeavoured to recompense the want of novelty by exactness; that taking The­ ocritus for his original,1 he found pastoral far advanced towards perfection, and that having so great a rival, he must have proceeded with uncommon caution. If we search the writings of Virgil, for the true definition of a pastoral, it will be found “a poem in which any action or passion is represented by its effects upon a country life.”2 Whatsoever therefore may, according to the common course of things, happen in the country, may afford a subject for a pastoral poet. In this definition, it will immediately occur to those who are versed in the writ­ ings of the modern criticks, that there is no mention of the golden age.3 I cannot 1. Theocritus (third century BCE), Greek poet from Sicily, credited with inventing the bucolic genre. 2. This definition is exactly the same as the first half of the definition in Dictionary, which goes on, “or according to the common practice in which speakers take upon them the character of shepherds; an idyl; a bu­ colick.” The quotation is not directly from Virgil but drawn from study of his Eclogues. 3. Yet, Tickell says, “to form a right judgment of pastoral poetry, it will be necessary to cast back our eyes on the first ages of the world” (Guardian 22, 6 April 1713).

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indeed easily discover why it is thought necessary to refer descriptions of a rural state to remote times, nor can I perceive that any writer has consistently preserved the Arcadian manners and sentiments. The only reason, that I have read, on which this rule has been founded, is, that, according to the customs of modern life, it is improbable that shepherds should be capable of harmonious numbers, or delicate sentiments; and therefore the reader must exalt his ideas of the pastoral character, by carrying his thoughts back to the age in which the care of herds and flocks was the employment of the wisest and greatest men. These reasoners seem to have been led into their hypothesis, by considering pastoral, not in general, as a representation of rural nature, and consequently as ex­ hibiting the ideas and sentiments of those, whoever they are, to whom the country affords pleasure or employment, but simply as a dialogue, or narrative of men actu­ ally tending sheep, and busied in the lowest and most laborious offices; from whence they very readily concluded, since characters must necessarily be preserved, that either the sentiments must sink to the level of the speakers, or the speakers must be raised to the height of the sentiments. In consequence of these original errors, a thousand precepts have been given, which have only contributed to perplex and to confound. Some have thought it nec­ essary that the imaginary manners of the golden age should be universally preserved, and have therefore believed, that nothing more could be admitted in pastoral, than lilies and roses, and rocks and streams, among which are heard the gentle whispers of chaste fondness, or the soft complaints of amorous impatience.4 In pastoral, as in other writings, chastity of sentiment ought doubtless to be observed, and purity of manners to be represented; not because the poet is confined to the images of the golden age, but because, having the subject in his own choice, he ought always to consult the interest of virtue. These advocates for the golden age lay down other principles, not very con­ sistent with their general plan; for they tell us, that, to support the character of the shepherd, it is proper that all refinement should be avoided, and that some slight instances of ignorance should be interspersed. Thus the shepherd in Virgil is sup­ posed to have forgot the name of Anaximander, and in Pope the term Zodiack is too hard for a rustick apprehension.5 But if we place our shepherds in their primitive condition, we may give them learning among their other qualifications; and if we suf­ fer them to allude at all to things of later existence, which, perhaps, cannot with any great propriety be allowed, there can be no danger of making them speak with too 4. Tickell expresses this view in Guardian 22 and 23 (6–7 April 1713). 5. Pope, “Spring,” ll. 39–40, where the shepherd does not know the word zodiac, imitates Virgil, Eclogues, iii.40–41, where he forgets the name of an astronomer, whom SJ here calls Anaximander. Pope’s lines and their connection to Virgil’s are adduced in Guardian 40 (27 April 1713).

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much accuracy, since they conversed with divinities, and transmitted to succeeding ages the arts of life. Other writers, having the mean and despicable condition of a shepherd always before them, conceive it necessary to degrade the language of pastoral, by obsolete terms and rustick words, which they very learnedly call Dorick,6 without reflecting, that they thus become authors of a mingled dialect, which no human being ever could have spoken, that they may as well refine the speech as the sentiments of their personages, and that none of the inconsistencies which they endeavour to avoid, is greater than that of joining elegance of thought with coarseness of diction. Spenser begins one of his pastorals with studied barbarity;   Diggon Davie, I bid her good-­day:   Or, Diggon her is, or I missay. Dig. Her was her while it was day-­light,   But now her is a most wretched wight. —Shepherd’s Calendar, “September,” ll. 1–4.7

What will the reader imagine to be the subject on which speakers like these exercise their eloquence? Will he not be somewhat disappointed, when he finds them met together to condemn the corruptions of the church of Rome? Surely, at the same time that a shepherd learns theology, he may gain some acquaintance with his native language. Pastoral admits of all ranks of persons, because persons of all ranks inhabit the country. It excludes not, therefore, on account of the characters necessary to be introduced, any elevation or delicacy of sentiment; those ideas only are improper, which, not owing their original to rural objects, are not pastoral. Such is the excla­ mation in Virgil, Nunc scio quid sit Amor, duris in cautibus illum Ismarus, aut Rhodope, aut extremi Garamantes, Nec generis nostri puerum nec sanguinis, edunt; —Eclogues, viii.43–45. I know thee, love, in desarts thou wert bred, And at the dugs of savage tygers fed: Alien of birth, usurper of the plains. —Dryden. 6. Doric is a dialect of ancient Greek much used in pastoral poetry. 7. These lines are also quoted in Guardian 40, introduced as written in the Welsh dialect “in an unusual and elegant manner.”



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which Pope endeavouring to copy, was carried to still greater impropriety. I know thee, Love, wild as the raging main, More fierce than tigers on the Libyan plain; Thou wert from Ætna’s burning entrails torn, Begot in tempests, and in thunders born! —“Autumn,” ll. 89–92.

Sentiments like these, as they have no ground in nature, are indeed of little value in any poem, but in pastoral they are particularly liable to censure, because it wants that exaltation above common life, which in tragick or heroick writings often recon­ ciles us to bold flights and daring figures. Pastoral being the “representation of an action or passion, by its effects upon a country life,” has nothing peculiar but its confinement to rural imagery, without which it ceases to be pastoral. This is its true characteristick, and this it cannot lose by any dignity of sentiment, or beauty of diction. The Pollio of Virgil,8 with all its elevation, is a composition truly bucolic, though rejected by the criticks;9 for all the images are either taken from the country, or from the religion of the age common to all parts of the empire. The Silenus10 is indeed of a more disputable kind, because though the scene lies in the country, the song being religious and historical, had been no less adapted to any other audience or place. Neither can it well be defended as a fiction, for the introduction of a god seems to imply the golden age, and yet he alludes to many sub­ sequent transactions, and mentions Gallus, the poet’s contemporary.11 It seems necessary, to the perfection of this poem, that the occasion which is supposed to produce it, be at least not inconsistent with a country life, or less likely to interest those who have retired into places of solitude and quiet, than the more busy part of mankind. It is therefore improper to give the title of a pastoral to verses, in which the speakers, after the slight mention of their flocks, fall to complaints of errors in the church, and corruptions in the government, or to lamentations of the death of some illustrious person, whom when once the poet has called a shep­ herd, he has no longer any labour upon his hands, but can make the clouds weep, 8. Eclogue IV celebrates the reign of Augustus and the birth of a child born to the consul C. Asinius Pol­ lio, but it was taken by later interpreters as a prediction of the birth of Jesus. 9. The critics include J. C. Scaliger (1484–1558; Poetices, 5.5) and Thomas Tickell (see Guardian 28, p. 122 and n. 2). 10. Eclogue VI, in which the captive Silenus, a Dionysian demigod, sings tales of creation and metamor­ phosis. 11. Eclogue VI, ll. 64 ff.

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and lilies wither, and the sheep hang their heads, without art or learning, genius or study.12 It is part of Claudian’s character of his rustick, that he computes his time not by the succession of consuls, but of harvests.13 Those who pass their days in retreats distant from the theatres of business, are always least likely to hurry their imagina­ tion with publick affairs. The facility of treating actions or events in the pastoral stile, has incited many writers, from whom more judgment might have been expected, to put the sorrow or the joy which the occasion required into the mouth of Daphne or of Thyrsis, and as one absurdity must naturally be expected to make way for another, they have writ­ ten with an utter disregard both of life and nature, and filled their productions with mythological allusions, with incredible fictions, and with sentiments which neither passion nor reason could have dictated, since the change which religion has made in the whole system of the world.

12. SJ refers to Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar (above) but also to Milton’s famous pastoral elegy Lycidas, which SJ vigorously attacked in his “Milton” (see pp. 684–85 below). 13. Claudius Claudianus (c. 370–404 CE), De sene Veronensi qui Suburbium numquam egressus est, ll. 11–12.



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R A M B L E R , No. 60 Saturday, 13 October 1750 ——Quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non, Plenius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit. —Horace, Epistles, i.2.3–4 Whose works1 the beautiful and base contain; Of vice and virtue more instructive rules, Than all the sober sages of the schools. —Francis

All joy or sorrow for the happiness or calamities of others is produced by an act of the imagination, that realises the event however fictitious, or approximates it however remote, by placing us, for a time, in the condition of him whose fortune we contemplate; so that we feel, while the deception lasts, whatever motions would be excited by the same good or evil happening to ourselves. Our passions are therefore more strongly moved, in proportion as we can more readily adopt the pains or pleasure proposed to our minds, by recognising them as once our own, or considering them as naturally incident to our state of life. It is not easy for the most artful writer to give us an interest in happiness or misery, which we think ourselves never likely to feel, and with which we have never yet been made acquainted. Histories of the downfal of kingdoms, and revolutions of empires, are read with great tranquillity; the imperial tragedy pleases common auditors only by its pomp of ornament, and grandeur of ideas; and the man whose faculties have been engrossed by business, and whose heart never fluttered but at the rise or fall of stocks, wonders how the attention can be seized, or the affection agitated by a tale of love. Those parallel circumstances, and kindred images, to which we readily con­ form our minds, are, above all other writings, to be found in the narratives of the lives of particular persons; and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography, since none can be more delightful or more useful, none can more certainly enchain the heart by irresistible interest, or more widely diffuse instruction to every diversity of condition. The general and rapid narratives of history, which involve a thousand fortunes 1. The works of Homer.

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in the business of a day, and complicate innumerable incidents in one great trans­ action, afford few lessons applicable to private life, which derives its comforts and its wretchedness from the right or wrong management of things which nothing but their frequency makes considerable, Parva, si non fiunt quotidie,2 says Pliny, and which can have no place in those relations which never descend below the consulta­ tions of senates, the motions of armies, and the schemes of conspirators. I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful. For, not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world, great numbers in the same condition with himself, to whom his mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate and ap­ parent use; but there is such an uniformity in the state of man, considered apart from adventitious and separable decorations and disguises, that there is scarce any possi­ bility of good or ill, but is common to human kind. A great part of the time of those who are placed at the greatest distance by fortune, or by temper, must unavoidably pass in the same manner; and though, when the claims of nature are satisfied, ca­ price, and vanity, and accident, begin to produce discriminations and peculiarities, yet the eye is not very heedful, or quick, which cannot discover the same causes still terminating their influence in the same effects, though sometimes accelerated, sometimes retarded, or perplexed by multiplied combinations. We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, ob­ structed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure. It is frequently objected to relations of particular lives, that they are not dis­ tinguished by any striking or wonderful vicissitudes. The scholar who passed his life among his books, the merchant who conducted only his own affairs, the priest, whose sphere of action was not extended beyond that of his duty, are considered as no proper objects of publick regard, however they might have excelled in their sev­ eral stations, whatever might have been their learning, integrity, and piety. But this notion arises from false measures of excellence and dignity, and must be eradicated by considering, that, in the esteem of uncorrupted reason, what is of most use is of most value. It is, indeed, not improper to take honest advantages of prejudice, and to gain attention by a celebrated name; but the business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents, which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestick privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, where exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and by virtue. The account of Thuanus is, with great propriety, said by its author to have been written, that it might lay open to posterity the private and famil­ 2. These things are insignificant if they are not done every day. Pliny, Epistles, iii.1.3.



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iar character of that man, cujus ingenium et candorem ex ipsius scriptis sunt olim semper miraturi, whose candour and genius will to the end of time be by his writings preserved in admiration.3 There are many invisible circumstances which, whether we read as enquirers after natural or moral knowledge, whether we intend to enlarge our science, or in­ crease our virtue, are more important than publick occurrences. Thus Salust, the great master of nature, has not forgot, in his account of Catiline, to remark that “his walk was now quick, and again slow,” as an indication of a mind revolving something with violent commotion.4 Thus the story of Melancthon affords a striking lecture on the value of time, by informing us, that when he made an appointment, he expected not only the hour, but the minute to be fixed, that the day might not run out in the idleness of suspense;5 and all the plans and enterprizes of De Wit are now of less importance to the world, than that part of his personal character which represents him as “careful of his health, and negligent of his life.”6 But biography has often been allotted to writers who seem very little acquainted with the nature of their task, or very negligent about the performance. They rarely afford any other account than might be collected from publick papers, but imagine themselves writing a life when they exhibit a chronological series of actions or pre­ ferments; and so little regard the manners or behaviour of their heroes, that more knowledge may be gained of a man’s real character, by a short conversation with one of his servants, than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral. If now and then they condescend to inform the world of particular facts, they are not always so happy as to select the most important. I know not well what advan­ tage posterity can receive from the only circumstance by which Tickell has distin­ guished Addison from the rest of mankind, “the irregularity of his pulse”:7 nor can I think myself overpaid for the time spent in reading the life of Malherb, by being enabled to relate, after the learned biographer, that Malherb had two predominant opinions; one, that the looseness of a single woman might destroy all her boast of ancient descent; the other, that the French beggars made use very improperly and 3. From the commentary of Nicolas Rigault and Pierre Du Puy in their edition of Jacques Auguste de Thou (1553–1617), Historiarum Sui Temporis, 7 vols. (1620; rpt. 1733), Vol. VII, Part IV, p. 3n. SJ substitutes miraturi for cognituri (“admiration” for “knowledge”). 4. Sallust (86–35 BCE), The Catilinarian Conspiracy, 15. 5. Joachim Camerarius (1500–1574), De Philippi Melanchthonis ortu, totius vitae curriculo et morte (1566), pp. 62–63. Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) was an important Protestant theologian and church reformer. 6. SJ paraphrases William Temple (1628–1699), “Of the Cure of the Gout,” Works (1770), iii.244. Johann de Witt (1625–1672), an important Dutch statesman, was deposed and lynched, with his brother, in 1672. 7. The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Esq., ed. Thomas Tickell, 4 vols. (1721), i.xvi.

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barbarously of the phrase “noble Gentleman,” because either word included the sense of both.8 There are, indeed, some natural reasons why these narratives are often writ­ ten by such as were not likely to give much instruction or delight, and why most ac­ counts of particular persons are barren and useless. If a life be delayed till interest and envy are at an end, we may hope for impartiality, but must expect little intel­ ligence; for the incidents which give excellence to biography are of a volatile and evanescent kind, such as soon escape the memory, and are rarely transmitted by tradition. We know how few can portray a living acquaintance, except by his most prominent and observable particularities, and the grosser features of his mind; and it may be easily imagined how much of this little knowledge may be lost in impart­ ing it, and how soon a succession of copies will lose all resemblance of the original. If the biographer writes from personal knowledge, and makes haste to gratify the publick curiosity, there is danger lest his interest, his fear, his gratitude, or his tenderness, overpower his fidelity, and tempt him to conceal, if not to invent. There are many who think it an act of piety to hide the faults or failings of their friends, even when they can no longer suffer by their detection; we therefore see whole ranks of characters adorned with uniform panegyrick, and not to be known from one an­ other, but by extrinsick and casual circumstances. “Let me remember,” says Hale, “when I find myself inclined to pity a criminal, that there is likewise a pity due to the country.”9 If we owe regard to the memory of the dead, there is yet more respect to be paid to knowledge, to virtue, and to truth.

8. The learned biographer is Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan (1589–1670). In his Vie, prefaced to Les Oeuvres, Vol. I (Paris, 1723), Racan recounts many of the terse and witty remarks of the scholar and critic François de Malherbe (1555–1628). The ones cited here appear on pp. 29 and 17, respectively. 9. Paraphrased from Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715), The Life and Death of Sir Matthew Hale, Kt. (1682), p. 35, memorial VIII. SJ paraphrases the same passage in a note to Measure for Measure, ii.ii (Yale, vii.184–85).



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I D L E R , No. 84 Saturday, 24 November 1759 Biography is, of the various kinds of narrative writing, that which is most eagerly read, and most easily applied to the purposes of life.1 In romances, when the wide field of possibility lies open to invention, the inci­ dents may easily be made more numerous, the vicissitudes more sudden, and the events more wonderful; but from the time of life when fancy begins to be over-­ruled by reason and corrected by experience,2 the most artful tale raises little curiosity when it is known to be false; tho’ it may, perhaps, be sometimes read as a model of a neat or elegant stile, not for the sake of knowing what it contains, but how it is written; or those that are weary of themselves, may have recourse to it as a pleasing dream, of which, when they awake, they voluntarily dismiss the images from their minds. The examples and events of history press, indeed, upon the mind with the weight of truth; but when they are reposited in the memory, they are oftener em­ ployed for shew than use, and rather diversify conversation than regulate life. Few are engaged in such scenes as give them opportunities of growing wiser by the down­ fal of statesmen or the defeat of generals. The stratagems of war, and the intrigues of courts, are read by far the greater part of mankind with the same indifference as the adventures of fabled heroes, or the revolutions of a fairy region. Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which he cannot apply will make no man wise. The mischievous consequences of vice and folly, of irregular desires and pre­ dominant passions, are best discovered by those relations which are levelled with the general surface of life, which tell not how any man became great, but how he was made happy; not how he lost the favour of his prince, but how he became dis­ contented with himself. Those relations are therefore commonly of most value in which the writer tells his own story. He that recounts the life of another, commonly dwells most upon con­ spicuous events, lessens the familiarity of his tale to increase its dignity, shews his favourite at a distance decorated and magnified like the ancient actors in their tragick dress,3 and endeavours to hide the man that he may produce a hero. 1. Cf. Rambler 60 (p. 132 above). 2. Cf. SJ’s sketch of the “periods of mental change” in Rambler 151 (Yale, v.39–40). 3. In productions of classical tragedy, the actors wore masks and elevated shoes to make them appear larger than life.

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But if it be true which was said by a French prince, “that no man was a hero to the servants of his chamber,”4 it is equally true that every man is yet less a hero to himself. He that is most elevated above the croud by the importance of his employ­ ments or the reputation of his genius, feels himself affected by fame or business but as they influence his domestick life. The high and low, as they have the same faculties and the same senses, have no less similitude in their pains and pleasures. The sensa­ tions are the same in all, tho’ produced by very different occasions. The prince feels the same pain when an invader seizes a province, as the farmer when a thief drives away his cow. Men thus equal in themselves will appear equal in honest and impar­ tial biography; and those whom fortune or nature place at the greatest distance may afford instruction to each other. The writer of his own life has at least the first qualification of an historian, the knowledge of the truth; and though it may be plausibly objected that his temptations to disguise it are equal to his opportunities of knowing it, yet I cannot but think that impartiality may be expected with equal confidence from him that relates the pas­ sages of his own life, as from him that delivers the transactions of another. Certainty of knowledge not only excludes mistake but fortifies veracity. What we collect by conjecture, and by conjecture only can one man judge of another’s mo­ tives or sentiments, is easily modified by fancy or by desire; as objects imperfectly discerned, take forms from the hope or fear of the beholder. But that which is fully known cannot be falsified but with reluctance of understanding, and alarm of con­ science; of understanding, the lover of truth; of conscience, the sentinel of virtue. He that writes the life of another is either his friend or his enemy, and wishes either to exalt his praise or aggravate his infamy; many temptations to falsehood will occur in the disguise of passions, too specious to fear much resistance. Love of virtue will animate panegyrick, and hatred of wickedness imbitter censure. The zeal of gratitude, the ardour of patriotism, fondness for an opinion, or fidelity to a party, may easily overpower the vigilance of a mind habitually well disposed, and prevail over unassisted and unfriended veracity. But he that speaks of himself has no motive to falshood or partiality except self-­ love, by which all have so often been betrayed, that all are on the watch against its artifices. He that writes an apology for a single action, to confute an accusation, or recommend himself to favour, is indeed always to be suspected of favouring his own cause; but he that sits down calmly and voluntarily to review his life for the admo­ nition of posterity, or to amuse himself, and leaves this account unpublished, may be commonly presumed to tell truth, since falshood cannot appease his own mind, and fame will not be heard beneath the tomb. 4. Variously attributed to Anne-Marie Bigot de Cornuel (1605–1694), Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), and Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (1621–1686).



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I D L E R , No. 102 Saturday, 29 March 1760 It very seldom happens to man that his business is his pleasure. What is done from necessity, is so often to be done when against the present inclination, and so often fills the mind with anxiety, that an habitual dislike steals upon us, and we shrink involuntarily from the remembrance of our task. This is the reason why al­ most every one wishes to quit his employment; he does not like another state, but is disgusted with his own. From this unwillingness to perform more than is required of that which is commonly performed with reluctance, it proceeds that few authors write their own lives. Statesmen, courtiers, ladies, generals and seamen, have given to the world their own stories, and the events with which their different stations have made them acquainted. They retired to the closet as to a place of quiet and amusement, and pleased themselves with writing, because they could lay down the pen whenever they were weary. But the author, however conspicuous, or however important, either in the publick eye or in his own, leaves his life to be related by his successors, for he cannot gratify his vanity but by sacrificing his ease. It is commonly supposed that the uniformity of a studious life affords no mat­ ter for a narration; but the truth is, that of the most studious life a great part passes without study. An author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and disappoint­ ments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies, like a courtier or a statesman; nor can I conceive why his affairs should not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a drawing-­room, or the factions of a camp. Nothing detains the reader’s attention more powerfully than deep involutions of distress or sudden vicissitudes of fortune, and these might be abundantly af­ forded by memoirs of the sons of literature. They are entangled by contracts which they know not how to fulfil, and obliged to write on subjects which they do not understand. Every publication is a new period of time from which some encrease or declension of fame is to be reckoned. The gradations of a hero’s life are from battle to battle, and of an author’s from book to book. Success and miscarriage have the same effects in all conditions. The prosper­ ous are feared, hated and flattered; and the unfortunate avoided, pitied, and de­ spised. No sooner is a book published than the writer may judge of the opinion of the world. If his acquaintance press round him in publick places, or salute him from the other side of the street; if invitations to dinner come thick upon him, and those

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with whom he dines keep him to supper;1 if the ladies turn to him when his coat is plain, and the footmen serve him with attention and alacrity, he may be sure that his work has been praised by some leader of literary fashions. Of declining reputation the symptoms are not less easily observed. If the au­ thor enters a coffee-­house, he has a box to himself; if he calls at a bookseller’s, the boy turns his back; and, what is the most fatal of all prognosticks, authors will visit him in a morning, and talk to him hour after hour of the malevolence of criticks, the neglect of merit, the bad taste of the age, and the candour2 of posterity. All this modified and varied by accident and custom would form very amusing scenes of biography, and might recreate many a mind which is very little delighted with conspiracies or battles, intrigues of a court or debates of a parliament: to this might be added all the changes of the countenance of a patron,3 traced from the first glow which flattery raises in his cheek, through ardour of fondness, vehemence of promise, magnificence of praise, excuse of delay, and lamentation of inability, to the last chill look of final dismission, when the one grows weary of solliciting, and the other of hearing sollicitation. Thus copious are the materials which have been hitherto suffered to lie ne­ glected, while the repositories of every family that has produced a soldier or a minis­ ter are ransacked, and libraries are crouded with useless folios of state papers which will never be read, and which contribute nothing to valuable knowledge. I hope the learned will be taught to know their own strength and their value, and instead of devoting their lives to the honour of those who seldom thank them for their labours, resolve at last to do justice to themselves.

1. Dinner is “the chief meal; the meal eaten about the middle of the day,” whereas supper is “the last meal of the day; the evening repast” (Dictionary). 2. “Sweetness of temper; purity of mind; openness; ingenuity; kindness” (Dictionary). 3. “One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery” (Dictionary).



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R A M B L E R , No. 94 Saturday, 9 February 1751 ————————Bonus atque fidus Judex —— per obstantes catervas    Explicuit sua victor arma. —Horace, Odes, iv.9.40–41, 43–44 Perpetual magistrate is he,    Who keeps strict justice full in sight; Who bids the crowd at awful distance gaze,    And virtue’s arms victoriously displays. —Francis

The resemblance of poetick numbers to the subject which they mention or describe, may be considered as general or particular; as consisting in the flow and structure of a whole passage taken together, or as comprised in the sound of some emphatical and descriptive words, or in the cadence and harmony of single verses. The general resemblance of the sound to the sense is to be found in every lan­ guage which admits of poetry, in every author whose force of fancy enables him to impress images strongly on his own mind, and whose choice and variety of language readily supply him with just representations. To such a writer it is natural to change his measures with his subject, even without any effort of the understanding, or inter­ vention of the judgment. To revolve jollity and mirth necessarily tunes the voice of a poet to gay and sprightly notes, as it fires his eye with vivacity; and reflection on gloomy situations and disastrous events, will sadden his numbers, as it will cloud his countenance. But in such passages there is only the similitude of pleasure to plea­ sure, and of grief to grief, without any immediate application to particular images. The same flow of joyous versification will celebrate the jollity of marriage, and the exultation of triumph; and the same languor of melody will suit the complaints of an absent lover, as of a conquered king. It is scarcely to be doubted, that on many occasions we make the musick which we imagine ourselves to hear, that we modulate the poem by our own disposition, and ascribe to the numbers the effects of the sense. We may observe in life, that it is not easy to deliver a pleasing message in an unpleasing manner, and that we readily associate beauty and deformity with those whom for any reason we love or hate. Yet it would be too daring to declare that all the celebrated adaptations of harmony are

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chimerical; that Homer had no extraordinary attention to the melody of his verse when he described a nuptial festivity; Νύμφας δ᾽ ἐκ θαλάμων, δαίδων ὑπο λαμπομενάων, Ηγίνεον ἀνα ἂστυ, πολὺς δ᾽ ὑμέναιος ὀρώρει

—Iliad, xviii.492–93. Here sacred pomp, and genial feast delight, And solemn dance, and hymeneal rite; Along the street the new made brides are led, With torches flaming, to the nuptial bed: The youthful dancers in a circle bound To the soft flute, and cittern’s silver sound. —Pope.

that Vida was merely fanciful, when he supposed Virgil endeavouring to represent by uncommon sweetness of numbers the adventitious beauty of Æneas;1 Os, humerosque Deo similis: namque ipsa decoram Caesariem nato genetrix, lumenque juventae Purpureum, & laetos oculis afflarat honores; —Aeneid, i.589–91. The Trojan chief appear’d in open sight, August in visage, and serenely bright. His mother goddess, with her hands divine, Had form’d his curling locks, and made his temples shine; And giv’n his rolling eyes a sparkling grace, And breath’d a youthful vigor on his face. —Dryden.

or that Milton did not intend to exemplify the harmony which he mentions: Fountains! and ye that warble as ye flow, Melodious murmurs! warbling tune his praise. —Paradise Lost, v.195–196.

1. Marco Girolamo Vida (c. 1485–1566), De arte Poetica (1556; Oxford, 1723).



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That Milton understood the force of sounds well adjusted, and knew the com­ pass and variety of the ancient measures, cannot be doubted, since he was both a musician and a critick; but he seems to have considered these conformities of cadence, as either not often attainable in our language, or as petty excellencies un­ worthy of his ambition; for it will not be found that he has always assigned the same cast of numbers to the same objects. He has given in two passages very minute de­ scriptions of angelick beauty; but though the images are nearly the same, the num­ bers will be found upon comparison very different. And now a stripling cherub he appears, Not of the prime, yet such as in his face Youth smil’d celestial, and to ev’ry limb Suitable grace diffus’d, so well he feign’d; Under a coronet his flowing hair In curls on either cheek play’d; wings he wore Of many a colour’d plume, sprinkled with gold. —iii.636–42

Some of the lines of this description are remarkably defective in harmony, and there­ fore by no means correspondent with that symmetrical elegance and easy grace which they are intended to exhibit. The failure, however, is fully compensated by the representation of Raphael, which equally delights the ear and imagination. A seraph wing’d: six wings he wore to shade His lineaments divine; the pair that clad Each shoulder broad, came mantling o’er his breast With regal ornament: the middle pair Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round Skirted his loins and thighs, with downy gold, And colours dipp’d in heav’n: the third his feet Shadow’d from either heel with feather’d mail, Sky-­tinctur’d grain! like Maia’s son he stood, And shook his plumes, that heav’nly fragrance fill’d The circuit wide.——————— —v.277–87.

The adumbration of particular and distinct images by an exact and perceptible resemblance of sound, is sometimes studied, and sometimes casual. Every language has many words formed in imitation of the noises which they signify. Such are stri-

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dor, balo, and boatus, in Latin;2 and in English to growl, to buzz, to hiss, and to jarr. Words of this kind give to a verse the proper similitude of sound, without much labour of the writer, and such happiness is therefore to be attributed rather to for­ tune than skill; yet they are sometimes combined with great propriety, and undeni­ ably contribute to enforce the impression of the idea. We hear the passing arrow in this line of Virgil; et fugit horrendum stridens elapsa sagitta; —Aeneid, ix.632. Th’ impetuous arrow whizzes on the wing. —Pope.3

and the creaking of hell-­gates, in the description by Milton;              Open fly With impetuous recoil, and jarring sound Th’ infernal doors; and on their hinges grate Harsh thunder. —ii.879–82.

But many beauties of this kind, which the moderns, and perhaps the ancients, have observed, seem to be the product of blind reverence acting upon fancy. Diony­ sius himself tells us, that the sound of Homer’s verses sometimes exhibits the idea of corporeal bulk.4 Is not this a discovery nearly approaching to that of the blind man, who, after long enquiry into the nature of the scarlet colour, found that it repre­ sented nothing so much as the clangour of a trumpet?5 The representative power of poetick harmony consists of sound and measure; of the force of the syllables singly considered, and of the time in which they are pronounced. Sound can resemble nothing but sound, and time can measure nothing but motion and duration. The criticks, however, have struck out other similitudes; nor is there any ir­ regularity of numbers which credulous admiration cannot discover to be eminently

2. Stridor, “a high-­pitched sound”; balo, “To bleat; baa”; boatus, “A shouting” (Oxford Latin Dictionary). 3. Pope’s Homer, Iliad, iv.156: “The impatient weapon whizzes on the wing.” 4. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (fl. about 20 BCE), On Literary Composition, c.15 (ed. and trans. W. Rhys Roberts [1910]), pp. 156–57. Cf. Rambler 92. 5. SJ recalls here John Locke (1632–1704), An Essay concerning Human Understanding, iii.4.11.



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beautiful. Thus the propriety of each of these lines has been celebrated by writers whose opinion the world has reason to regard:6 Vertitur interea coelum & ruit oceano nox.—————— —Aeneid, ii.250. Meantime the rapid heav’ns rowl’d down the light, And on the shaded ocean rush’d the night. —Dryden. Sternitur, exanimisque tremens procumbit humi bos.——— —Aeneid, v.481. Down drops the beast, nor needs a second wound; But sprawls in pangs of death, and spurns the ground. —Dryden. Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.———— —Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 139. The mountains labour, and a mouse is born. —Roscommon.

If all these observations are just, there must be some remarkable conformity between the sudden succession of night to day, the fall of an ox under a blow, and the birth of a mouse from a mountain; since we are told of all these images, that they are very strongly impressed by the same form and termination of the verse. We may, however, without giving way to enthusiasm, admit that some beauties of this kind may be produced. A sudden stop at an unusual syllable may image the cessation of action, or the pause of discourse; and Milton has very happily imitated the repetitions of an echo,    I fled, and cried out death: Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sigh’d From all her caves, and back resounded death. —ii.787–89. 6. The first two citations are suggested in Vida, De arte Poetica, iii.425–26. Servius (fourth-­century gram­ marian) commented on the third in a note on Aeneid, viii.83 (see C. O. Brink, Horace on Poetry [1971], p. 215).

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The measure or time in pronouncing may be varied so as very strongly to rep­ resent, not only the modes of external motion, but the quick or slow succession of ideas, and consequently the passions of the mind. This at least was the power of the spondaick and dactylick harmony, but our language can reach no eminent diversities of sound. We can indeed sometimes, by encumbering and retarding the line, shew the difficulty of a progress made by strong efforts and with frequent interruptions, or mark a slow and heavy motion. Thus Milton has imaged the toil of Satan strug­ gling through chaos, So he with difficulty and labour hard Mov’d on: with difficulty and labour he ——— —ii.1021–22.

thus he has described the leviathans or whales, Wallowing, unwieldy, enormous in their gait. —vii.411.

But he has at other times neglected such representations, as may be observed in the volubility and levity of these lines, which express an action tardy and reluctant.            Descent and fall To us is adverse. Who but felt of late, When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear Insulting, and pursu’d us through the deep, With what confusion and laborious flight We sunk thus low? Th’ ascent is easy then. —ii.76–81.

In another place, he describes the gentle glide of ebbing waters in a line re­ markably rough and halting.     Tripping ebb; that stole With soft foot tow’rds the deep who now had stopp’d His sluices. —xi.847–49.

It is not indeed to be expected, that the sound should always assist the mean­ ing, but it ought never to counteract it; and therefore Milton has here certainly com­



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mitted a fault like that of a player, who looked on the earth when he implored the heavens, and to the heavens when he addressed the earth. Those who are determined to find in Milton an assemblage of all the excel­ lencies which have ennobled all other poets, will perhaps be offended that I do not celebrate his versification in higher terms; for there are readers who discover that in this passage, So stretch’d out huge in length the arch-­fiend lay, i.209

a long form is described in a long line; but the truth is, that length of body is only mentioned in a slow line, to which it has only the resemblance of time to space, of an hour to a maypole. The same turn of ingenuity might perform wonders upon the description of the ark: Then from the mountains hewing timber tall, Began to build a vessel of huge bulk; Measur’d by cubit, length, and breadth, and height. —xi.728–30.

In these lines the poet apparently designs to fix the attention upon bulk; but this is effected by the enumeration, not by the measure; for what analogy can there be be­ tween modulations of sound, and corporeal dimensions. Milton, indeed, seems only to have regarded this species of embellishment so far as not to reject it when it came unsought; which would often happen to a mind so vigorous, employed upon a subject so various and extensive. He had, indeed, a greater and nobler work to perform; a single sentiment of moral or religious truth, a single image of life or nature, would have been cheaply lost for a thousand echoes of the cadence of the sense; and he who had undertaken to “vindicate the ways of God to man,”7 might have been accused of neglecting his cause, had he lavished much of his attention upon syllables and sounds.

7. The phrase is actually from Pope, Essay on Man, I.16. Paradise Lost, I.26, has “justifie the wayes of God to men.” Cf. “Milton” (p. 689 and n. 185 below).

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R A M B L E R , No. 168 Saturday, 26 October 1751 ——————————— Decipit Frons prima multos, rara mens intelligit Quod interiore condidit cura angulo. —Phaedrus, Fabulae Aesopiae, iv.2.5–71 The tinsel glitter, and the specious mein, Delude the most; few pry behind the scene.

It has been observed by Boileau, that “a mean or common thought expressed in pompous diction, generally pleases more than a new or noble sentiment delivered in low and vulgar language; because the number is greater of those whom custom has enabled to judge of words, than whom study has qualified to examine things.”2 This solution might satisfy, if such only were offended with meanness of ex­ pression as are unable to distinguish propriety of thought, and to separate proposi­ tions or images from the vehicles by which they are conveyed to the understanding. But this kind of disgust is by no means confined to the ignorant or superficial; it operates uniformly and universally upon readers of all classes; every man, however profound or abstracted, perceives himself irresistibly alienated by low terms; they who profess the most zealous adherence to truth are forced to admit that she owes part of her charms to her ornaments, and loses much of her power over the soul, when she appears disgraced by a dress uncouth or ill-­adjusted. We are all offended by low terms, but are not disgusted alike by the same com­ positions, because we do not all agree to censure the same terms as low. No word is naturally or intrinsically meaner than another; our opinion therefore of words, as of other things arbitrarily and capriciously established, depends wholly upon accident and custom. The cottager thinks those apartments splendid and spacious, which an inhabitant of palaces will despise for their inelegance; and to him who has passed most of his hours with the delicate and polite, many expressions will seem sordid, which another, equally acute, may hear without offence; but a mean term never fails to dis­ please him to whom it appears mean, as poverty is certainly and invariably despised, though he who is poor in the eyes of some, may by others be envied for his wealth. Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the general 1. Phaedrus (c. 15 BCE–­c. 50 CE), a slave of Thracian birth whose fables drew mostly on Aesopic tales. 2. Nicolas Boileau-­Despréaux (1636–1711), Reflections on Longinus, Works (trans., 1711), ii.121.

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character of them who use them; and the disgust which they produce, arises from the revival of those images with which they are commonly united. Thus if, in the most solemn discourse, a phrase happens to occur which has been successfully em­ ployed in some ludicrous narrative, the gravest auditor finds it difficult to refrain from laughter, when they who are not prepossessed by the same accidental asso­ ciation, are utterly unable to guess the reason of his merriment. Words which con­ vey ideas of dignity in one age, are banished from elegant writing or conversation in another, because they are in time debased by vulgar mouths, and can be no longer heard without the involuntary recollection of unpleasing images. When Mackbeth is confirming himself in the horrid purpose of stabbing his king, he breaks out amidst his emotions into a wish natural to a murderer, ———————Come, thick night! And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes; Nor heav’n peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, hold, hold ! ——————3

In this passage is exerted all the force of poetry, that force which calls new powers into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates matter; yet perhaps scarce any man now peruses it without some disturbance of his attention from the counteraction of the words to the ideas. What can be more dreadful than to implore the presence of night, invested not in common obscurity, but in the smoke of hell? Yet the efficacy of this invocation is destroyed by the insertion of an epithet now seldom heard but in the stable, and dun night may come or go without any other notice than contempt. If we start into raptures when some hero of the Iliad tells us that δόρυ μαίνεται,4 his lance rages with eagerness to destroy; if we are alarmed at the terror of the sol­ diers commanded by Caesar to hew down the sacred grove, who dreaded, says Lu­ can, lest the axe aimed at the oak should fly back upon the striker, —————Si robora sacra ferirent, In sua credebant redituras membra secures, —Pharsalia, iii.430–31.5 3. i.5.48–52. Lady Macbeth is speaking. SJ quoted these lines three times in Dictionary (s.v. dark, dun, peep). Cf. “Cowley”: “the force of metaphors is lost, when the mind by the mention of particulars is turned more upon the original than the secondary sense, more upon that from which the illustration is drawn than that to which it is applied” (Yale, xxi.59). Thick is defined in Dictionary as “Not clear; not transparent; muddy; fecu­ lent” (sense 3). 4. Iliad, viii.111. 5. Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (39–65 CE); see p. 47, n. 3 above.

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None dares with impious steel the grove to rend, Lest on himself the destin’d stroke descend.

we cannot surely but sympathise with the horrors of a wretch about to murder his master, his friend, his benefactor, who suspects that the weapon will refuse its office, and start back from the breast which he is preparing to violate. Yet this sentiment is weakened by the name of an instrument used by butchers and cooks in the meanest employments; we do not immediately conceive that any crime of importance is to be committed with a knife;6 or who does not, at last, from the long habit of connecting a knife with sordid offices, feel aversion rather than terror? Mackbeth proceeds to wish, in the madness of guilt, that the inspection of heaven may be intercepted, and that he may in the involutions of infernal darkness escape the eye of providence. This is the utmost extravagance of determined wicked­ ness; yet this is so debased by two unfortunate words, that while I endeavour to impress on my reader the energy of the sentiment, I can scarce check my risibility, when the expression forces itself upon my mind; for who, without some relaxation of his gravity, can hear of the avengers of guilt “peeping through a blanket”? These imperfections of diction are less obvious to the reader, as he is less ac­ quainted with common usages; they are therefore wholly imperceptible to a for­ eigner, who learns our language from books, and will strike a solitary academick less forcibly than a modish lady. Among the numerous requisites that must concur to complete an author, few are of more importance than an early entrance into the living world. The seeds of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in publick. Argumen­ tation may be taught in colleges, and theories formed in retirement, but the artifice of embellishment, and the powers of attraction, can be gained only by general con­ verse. An acquaintance with prevailing customs and fashionable elegance is neces­ sary likewise for other purposes. The injury that grand imagery suffers from un­ suitable language, personal merit may fear from rudeness and indelicacy. When the success of Æneas depended on the favour of the queen upon whose coasts he was driven, his celestial protectress thought him not sufficiently secured against rejec­ tion by his piety or bravery, but decorated him for the interview with preternatu­ ral beauty.7 Whoever desires, for his writings or himself, what none can reasonably contemn, the favour of mankind, must add grace to strength, and make his thoughts agreeable as well as useful. Many complain of neglect who never tried to attract re­

6. “An instrument edged and pointed; wherewith meat is cut, and animals killed” (Dictionary). 7. Athena enhances the appearance of Aeneas in Aeneid i.586–93.



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gard. It cannot be expected that the patrons of science8 or virtue should be solici­ tous to discover excellencies which they who possess them shade and disguise. Few have abilities so much needed by the rest of the world as to be caressed on their own terms; and he that will not condescend to recommend himself by external embellish­ ments, must submit to the fate of just sentiments meanly expressed, and be ridiculed and forgotten before he is understood.

8. Knowledge.

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R A M B L E R , No. 158 Saturday, 21 September 1751 Grammatici certant, et adhuc sub judice lis est. —Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 78 ———————Criticks yet contend, And of their vain disputings find no end. —Francis

Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labours of men emi­ nent for knowledge and sagacity; and, since the revival of polite literature, the favourite study of European scholars, has not yet attained the certainty and stability of science. The rules hitherto received are seldom drawn from any settled principle or self-­evident postulate, or adapted to the natural and invariable constitution of things; but will be found upon examination the arbitrary edicts of legislators, autho­ rised only by themselves, who, out of various means by which the same end may be attained, selected such as happened to occur to their own reflexion, and then by a law which idleness and timidity were too willing to obey, prohibited new experi­ ments of wit, restrained fancy from the indulgence of her innate inclination to haz­ ard and adventure, and condemned all future flights of genius to pursue the path of the Meonian eagle.1 This authority may be more justly opposed, as it is apparently derived from them whom they endeavour to controul; for we owe few of the rules of writing to the acuteness of criticks, who have generally no other merit than that having read the works of great authors with attention, they have observed the arrangement of their matter, or the graces of their expression, and then expected honour and reverence for precepts which they never could have invented: so that practice has introduced rules, rather than rules have directed practice. For this reason the laws of every species of writing have been settled by the ideas of him who first raised it to reputation, without enquiry whether his perfor­ mances were not yet susceptible of improvement. The excellencies and faults of cele­ brated writers have been equally recommended to posterity; and so far has blind

1. Homer, after an old name for Lydia, the western part of modern Turkey, often assumed to be the place of Homer’s birth.

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reverence prevailed, that even the number of their books has been thought worthy of imitation.2 The imagination of the first authors of lyrick poetry was vehement and rapid, and their knowledge various and extensive. Living in an age when science had been little cultivated, and when the minds of their auditors, not being accustomed to accurate inspection, were easily dazzled by glaring ideas, they applied themselves to instruct, rather by short sentences and striking thoughts, than by regular argumen­ tation; and finding attention more successfully excited by sudden sallies and unex­ pected exclamations, than by the more artful and placid beauties of methodical de­ duction, they loosed their genius to its own course, passed from one sentiment to another without expressing the intermediate ideas, and roved at large over the ideal world with such lightness and agility, that their footsteps are scarcely to be traced. From this accidental peculiarity of the ancient writers the criticks deduce the rules of lyrick poetry, which they have set free from all the laws by which other com­ positions are confined, and allow to neglect the niceties of transition, to start into remote digressions, and to wander without restraint from one scene of imagery to another. A writer of later times has, by the vivacity of his essays, reconciled mankind to the same licentiousness in short dissertations;3 and he therefore who wants skill to form a plan, or diligence to pursue it, needs only entitle his performance an essay, to acquire the right of heaping together the collections of half his life without order, coherence, or propriety. In writing, as in life, faults are endured without disgust when they are asso­ ciated with transcendent merit, and may be sometimes recommended to weak judg­ ments by the lustre which they obtain from their union with excellence; but it is the business of those who presume to superintend the taste or morals of mankind, to separate delusive combinations and distinguish that which may be praised from that which can only be excused. As vices never promote happiness, though when overpowered by more active and more numerous virtues, they cannot totally destroy it; so confusion and irregularity produce no beauty, though they cannot always ob­ struct the brightness of genius and learning. To proceed from one truth to another, and connect distant propositions by regular consequences, is the great prerogative of man. Independent and unconnected sentiments flashing upon the mind in quick succession, may, for a time, delight by their novelty, but they differ from systemati­ 2. The division into twelve books of Virgil’s Aeneid was especially taken as canonical by later epic poets, such as Edmund Spenser and John Milton. 3. Perhaps Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), whose Essaies (1580) gave rise to the genre and its name (see OED, sense 8).

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cal reasoning, as single notes from harmony, as glances of lightning from the radi­ ance of the sun. When rules are thus drawn, rather from precedents than reason, there is dan­ ger not only from the faults of an author, but from the errors of those who criticise his works; since they may often mislead their pupils by false representations, as the Ciceronians of the sixteenth century were betrayed into barbarisms by corrupt copies of their darling writer.4 It is established at present, that the proemial lines of a poem, in which the gen­ eral subject is proposed, must be void of glitter and embellishment. “The first lines of Paradise Lost,” says Addison, “are perhaps as plain, simple, and unadorned, as any of the whole poem, in which particular the author has conformed himself to the example of Homer, and the precept of Horace.”5 This observation seems to have been made by an implicit adoption of the com­ mon opinion, without consideration either of the precept or example. Had Horace been consulted, he would have been found to direct only what should be comprised in the proposition, not how it should be expressed, and to have commended Homer in opposition to a meaner poet, not for the gradual elevation of his diction, but the judicious expansion of his plan; for displaying unpromised events, not for produc­ ing unexpected elegancies. ————Speciosa dehinc miracula promit,     Antiphaten Scyllamque, & cum Cyclope Charybdim. —Horace, Ars Poetica, ll. 144–45 But from a cloud of smoke he breaks to light, And pours his specious miracles to sight; Antiphates his hideous feast devours, Charybdis barks, and Polyphemus roars. —Francis

If the exordial6 verses of Homer be compared with the rest of the poem, they will not appear remarkable for plainness or simplicity, but rather eminently adorned and illuminated:

4. Ciceronians of the sixteenth century, including their leader, Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), contended that Cicero was the best, if not the only, model of pure Latinity. They were attacked by Erasmus (1466–1536) in Ciceronianus (1528) and defended by J. C. Scaliger (1484–1558). 5. Spectator 303, 16 February 1712; Bond, iii.84. 6. Introductory.



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Ἂνδρά μοι ἒννεπε Μοῦσα πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ Πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ίερὸν πτολίεθρον ἒπερσε· Πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἲδεν ἂστεα, καὶ νόον ἒγνω. Πολλὰ δ᾽ ὃγ᾽ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἂλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν, Ἀρνύμενος ἡν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων· Ἀλλ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ὥς ἑτάρους ἐῤῥύσσατο ἱέμενός περ· Αυτῶν γὰρ σφετέρησιν ἀτασθαλίησιν ὂλοντο, Νήπιοι οἳ κατὰ Βοῦς ὑπερίονος ἠελίοιο Ἤσθιον· αὐτὰρ ὃ τοῖσιν αφείλετο νόστιμον ἦμαρ· Τῶν ἁμόθεν γε, θεὰ, θύγατερ Διὸς, εἰπὲ και ἡμῖν. —Odyssey, i.1–10

The man, for wisdom’s various arts renown’d, Long exercised in woes, O muse ! resound. Who, when his arms had wrought the destin’d fall Of sacred Troy, and raz’d her heav’n-­built wall, Wand’ring from clime to clime, observant stray’d, The manners noted, and their states survey’d. On stormy seas unnumber’d toils he bore, Safe with his friends to gain his natal shore: Vain toils! their impious folly dar’d to prey On herds devoted to the god of day; The god vindictive doom’d them never more (Ah! men unbless’d) to touch that natal shore. O snatch some portion of these acts from fate, Celestial muse! and to our world relate. —Pope

The first verses of the Iliad are in like manner particularly splendid, and the proposition of the Eneid closes with dignity and magnificence not often to be found even in the poetry of Virgil. The intent of the introduction is to raise expectation, and suspend it; some­ thing therefore must be discovered, and something concealed; and the poet, while the fertility of his invention is yet unknown, may properly recommend himself by the grace of his language. He that reveals too much, or promises too little; he that never irritates the intel­ lectual appetite, or that immediately satiates it, equally defeats his own purpose. It is necessary to the pleasure of the reader, that the events should not be anticipated, and how then can his attention be invited, but by grandeur of expression?

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R A M B L E R , No. 176 Saturday, 23 November 1751 ——— Naso suspendere adunco. —Horace, Satires, i.6.5 On me you turn the nose ———

There are many vexatious accidents and uneasy situations which raise little compassion for the sufferer, and which no man but those whom they immediately distress, can regard with seriousness. Petty mischiefs, that have no influence on futurity, nor extend their effects to the rest of life, are always seen with a kind of ma­ licious pleasure. A mistake or embarrassment, which for the present moment fills the face with blushes, and the mind with confusion, will have no other effect upon those who observe it than that of convulsing them with irresistible laughter. Some circum­ stances of misery are so powerfully ridiculous, that neither kindness nor duty can withstand them; they bear down love, interest, and reverence, and force the friend, the dependent, or the child, to give way to instantaneous motions of merriment. Among the principal of comick calamities, may be reckoned the pain which an author, not yet hardened into insensibility, feels at the onset of a furious crit­ ick, whose age, rank or fortune gives him confidence to speak without reserve; who heaps one objection upon another, and obtrudes his remarks, and enforces his cor­ rections without tenderness or awe. The author, full of the importance of his work, and anxious for the justification of every syllable, starts and kindles at the slightest attack; the critick, eager to estab­ lish his superiority, triumphing in every discovery of failure, and zealous to impress the cogency of his arguments, pursues him from line to line without cessation or re­ morse. The critick, who hazards little, proceeds with vehemence, impetuosity and fearlessness; the author, whose quiet and fame, and life and immortality are involved in the controversy, tries every art of subterfuge and defence; maintains modestly what he resolves never to yield, and yields unwillingly what cannot be maintained. The critick’s purpose is to conquer, the author only hopes to escape; the critick therefore knits his brow, and raises his voice, and rejoices whenever he perceives any tokens of pain excited by the pressure of his assertions, or the point of his sar­ casms. The author, whose endeavour is at once to mollify and elude his persecutor, composes his features, and softens his accent, breaks the force of assault by retreat, and rather steps aside than flies or advances. As it very seldom happens that the rage of extemporary criticism inflicts fatal or

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lasting wounds, I know not that the laws of benevolence entitle this distress to much sympathy. The diversion of baiting an author has the sanction of all ages and nations, and is more lawful than the sport of teizing other animals, because for the most part he comes voluntarily to the stake, furnished, as he imagines, by the patron powers of literature, with resistless weapons, and impenetrable armour, with the mail of the boar of Erymanth, and the paws of the lion of Nemea.1 But the works of genius are sometimes produced by other motives than vanity; and he whom necessity or duty enforces to write, is not always so well satisfied with himself, as not to be discouraged by censorious impudence. It may therefore be nec­ essary to consider how they whom publication lays open to the insults of such as their obscurity secures against reprisals, may extricate themselves from unexpected encounters. Vida, a man of considerable skill in the politicks of literature, directs his pupil wholly to abandon his defence, and even when he can irrefragably2 refute all objec­ tions, to suffer tamely the exultations of his antagonist.3 This rule may perhaps be just, when advice is asked, and severity solicited, because no man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with im­ plicit veneration; and critics ought never to be consulted but while errors may yet be rectified or insipidity suppressed. But when the book has once been dismissed into the world, and can be no more retouched, I know not whether a very different conduct should not be prescribed, and whether firmness and spirit may not some­ times be of use to overpower arrogance and repel brutality. Softness, diffidence and moderation will often be mistaken for imbecility and dejection; they lure cowardice to the attack by the hopes of easy victory, and it will soon be found that he whom every man thinks he can conquer, shall never be at peace. The animadversions of criticks are commonly such as may easily provoke the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of reply. A man who by long consideration has familiarised a subject to his own mind, carefully surveyed the series of his thoughts, and planned all the parts of his composition into a regu­ 1. Terrifying animals killed by Hercules as two of his twelve Labors. 2. Incontrovertibly. 3. Marco Girolamo Vida (see Rambler 94, p. 140, n. 1, above), De arte Poetica, iii.469–72: Grates laetus agit vitii, & peccata fatetur Sponte sua, quamvis etiam damnetur iniquo Judicio, & falsum queat ore refellere crimen. He thanks each critic that detects a vice; Tho’ charg’d with what his judgment can defend, He joins the partial sentence of his friend. (trans. Christopher Pitt [1725], p. 110)

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lar dependance on each other, will often start at the sinistrous4 interpretations or absurd remarks of haste and ignorance, and wonder by what infatuation they have been led away from the obvious sense, and upon what peculiar principles of judg­ ment they decide against him. The eye of the intellect, like that of the body, is not equally perfect in all, nor equally adapted in any to all objects; the end of criticism is to supply its defects; rules are the instruments of mental vision, which may indeed assist our faculties when properly used, but produce confusion and obscurity by unskilful application. Some seem always to read with the microscope of criticism, and employ their whole attention upon minute elegance, or faults scarcely visible to common observa­ tion. The dissonance of a syllable, the recurrence of the same sound, the repetition of a particle, the smallest deviation from propriety, the slightest defect in construction or arrangement, swell before their eyes into enormities. As they discern with great exactness, they comprehend but a narrow compass, and know nothing of the just­ ness of the design, the general spirit of the performance, the artifice of connection, or the harmony of the parts; they never conceive how small a proportion that which they are busy in contemplating bears to the whole, or how the petty inaccuracies with which they are offended, are absorbed and lost in general excellence. Others are furnished by criticism with a telescope. They see with great clear­ ness whatever is too remote to be discovered by the rest of mankind, but are totally blind to all that lies immediately before them. They discover in every passage some secret meaning, some remote allusion, some artful allegory, or some occult imitation which no other reader ever suspected; but they have no perception of the cogency of arguments, the force of pathetick5 sentiments, the various colours6 of diction, or the flowery embellishments of fancy; of all that engages the attention of others, they are totally insensible, while they pry into worlds of conjecture, and amuse themselves with phantoms in the clouds. In criticism, as in every other art, we fail sometimes by our weakness, but more frequently by our fault. We are sometimes bewildered by ignorance, and sometimes by prejudice, but we seldom deviate far from the right, but when we deliver our­ selves up to the direction of vanity.

4. “Absurd; perverse; wrong-­headed: in French gauche” (Dictionary). 5. “Affecting the passions; passionate; moving” (Dictionary). 6. “Rhetorical figures or devices; ornaments or embellishments of style and diction intended to persuade the reader or listener” (OED, sense 15).



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I D L E R , No. 20 Saturday, 26 August 1758 There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is em­ ployed only as the vehicle of falshood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave, and seek prey only for himself. Yet the law of truth, thus sacred and necessary, is broken without punishment, without censure, in compliance with inveterate prejudice and prevailing passions. Men are willing to credit what they wish, and encourage rather those who gratify them with pleasure, than those that instruct them with fidelity. For this reason every historian discovers his country, and it is impossible to read the different accounts of any great event, without a wish that truth had more power over partiality. Amidst the joy of my countrymen for the acquisition of Louisbourg,1 I could not forbear to consider how differently this revolution of American power is not only now mentioned by the contending nations, but, will be represented by the writers of another century. The English historian will imagine himself barely doing justice to English virtue, when he relates the capture of Louisbourg in the following manner. “The English had hitherto seen, with great indignation, their attempts baffled and their force defied by an enemy, whom they considered themselves as intitled to conquer by the right of prescription, and whom many ages of hereditary superi­ ority had taught them to despise. Their fleets were more numerous, and their sea­ men braver than those of France, yet they only floated useless on the ocean, and the French derided them from their ports. Misfortunes, as is usual, produced discon­ 1. The British siege of Louisbourg, a fort on the northeast coast of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, lasted from 8 June to 26 July 1758 and resulted in the deportation to France of eight thousand civilians from the surround­ ing area (see Fred Anderson, Crucible of War [2000], pp. 250–56).

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tent, the people murmured at the ministers, and the ministers censured the com­ manders. “In the summer of this year, the English began to find their success answerable to their cause. A fleet and an army were sent to America to dislodge the enemies from the settlements which they had so perfidiously made, and so insolently maintained, and to repress that power which was growing more every day by the association of the Indians, with whom these degenerate Europeans intermarried, and whom they secured to their party by presents and promises. “In the beginning of June the ships of war, and vessels containing the land forces appeared before Louisbourg, a place so secured by nature, that art was al­ most superfluous, and yet fortified by art as if nature had left it open. The French boasted that it was impregnable, and spoke with scorn of all attempts that could be made against it. The garrison was numerous, the stores equal to the longest siege, and their engineers and commanders high in reputation. The mouth of the harbour was so narrow, that three ships within might easily defend it against all attacks from the sea. The French had, with that caution which cowards borrow from fear and at­ tribute to policy, eluded our fleets, and sent into that port five great ships and six smaller, of which they sunk four in the mouth of the passage, having raised batteries, and posted troops at all the places, where they thought it possible to make a descent. The English, however, had more to dread from the roughness of the sea, than from the skill or bravery of the defendants. Some days passed before the surges which rise very high round that island, would suffer them to land: at last their impatience could be restrained no longer; they got possession of the shore with little loss by the sea, and with less by the enemy.2 In a few days the artillery was landed, the batteries were raised, and the French had no other hope than to escape from one post to another. A shot from the batteries fired the powder in one of their largest ships, the flame spread to the two next, and all three were destroyed; the English admiral3 sent his boats against the two large ships yet remaining, took them without resistance, and terrified the garrison to an immediate capitulation.”4 Let us now oppose to this English narrative the relation which will be pro­ duced, about the same time, by the writer of the age of Louis XV.5 “About this time the English admitted to the conduct of affairs, a man6 who undertook to save from destruction that ferocious and turbulent people, who, from 2. Field Marshal Jeffrey Amherst (1717–1797) landed troops at Gabrus Bay on 8 June with about one hun­ dred casualties (Anderson, Crucible of War, p. 250). 3. Admiral Edward Boscawen (1711–1761) captured the French flagship on 25 July (Anderson, Crucible of War, p. 253). 4. The Chevalier de Drucour (1703–1762) capitulated on 26 July. 5. Louis XV was king of France until his death in 1774. 6. William Pitt (1708–1778) was effectively prime minister from 1757 to 1761.



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the mean insolence of wealthy traders, and the lawless confidence of successful rob­ bers, were now sunk in despair and stupified with horror. He called in the ships which had been dispersed over the ocean to guard their merchants, and sent a fleet and an army, in which almost the whole strength of England was comprised, to secure their possessions in America, which were endangered alike by the French arms and the French virtue. We had taken the English fortresses by force, and gained the Indian nations by humanity. The English, wherever they come, are sure to have the natives for their enemies; for the only motive of their settlements is avarice, and the only consequence of their success is oppression. In this war they acted like other barbarians, and, with a degree of outrageous cruelty, which the gentleness of our manners scarcely suffers us to conceive, offered rewards by open proclamation to those who should bring in the scalps of Indian women and children.7 A trader always makes war with the cruelty of a pirate. “They had long looked with envy and with terror upon the influence which the French exerted over all the northern regions of America by the possession of Louis­ bourg, a place naturally strong, and new fortified with some slight outworks. They hoped to surprize the garrison unprovided; but that sluggishness which always de­ feats their malice, gave us time to send supplies, and to station ships for the defence of the harbour. They came before Louisbourg in June, and were for some time in doubt whether they should land. But the commanders, who had lately seen an admi­ ral beheaded for not having done what he had not power to do,8 durst not leave the place unassaulted. An Englishman has no ardour for honour, nor zeal for duty; he neither values glory nor loves his king; but balances one danger with another, and will fight rather than be hanged. They therefore landed, but with great loss; their engineers had, in the last war with the French, learned something of the military sciences, and made their approaches with sufficient skill, but all their efforts had been without effect had not a ball unfortunately fallen into the powder of one of our ships, which communicated the fire to the rest, and by opening the passage of the harbour, obliged the garrison to capitulate. Thus was Louisbourg lost, and our troops marched out with the admiration of their enemies, who durst hardly think themselves masters of the place.”

7. Scalping was common in this war on both sides and officially sanctioned by General James Wolfe in the case of “Indians and Canadians dressed like Indians” (Anderson, Crucible of War, p. 788, n. 1). 8. Admiral John Byng was executed on 14 March 1757, being blamed for the loss of Minorca to the French. SJ deplored the punishment (see Yale, x.213–60).

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I D L E R , [No. 22] 1 Saturday, 9 September 1758 Many naturalists are of opinion, that the animals which we commonly consider as mute, have the power of imparting their thoughts to one another. That they can express general sensations is very certain; every being that can utter sounds, has a different voice for pleasure and for pain. The hound informs his fellows when he scents his game; the hen calls her chickens to their food by her cluck, and drives them from danger by her scream. Birds have the greatest variety of notes; they have indeed a variety, which seems almost sufficient to make a speech adequate to the purposes of a life which is regu­ lated by instinct, and can admit little change or improvement. To the cries of birds, curiosity or superstition has been always attentive, many have studied the language of the feathered tribes, and some have boasted that they understood it. The most skilful or most confident interpreters of the silvan dialogues have been commonly found among the philosophers of the East, in a country where the calmness of the air, and the mildness of the seasons, allow the student to pass a great part of the year in groves and bowers. But what may be done in one place by peculiar opportunities, may be performed in another by peculiar diligence. A shepherd of Bohemia2 has, by long abode in the forests, enabled himself to understand the voice of birds, at least he relates with great confidence a story of which the credibility may be considered by the learned. “As I was sitting, (said he) within a hollow rock, and watching my sheep that fed in the valley, I heard two vultures interchangeably crying on the summit of the cliff. Both voices were earnest and deliberate. My curiosity prevailed over my care of the flock; I climbed slowly and silently from crag to crag, concealed among the shrubs, till I found a cavity where I might sit and listen without suffering or giving disturbance. “I soon perceived, that my labour would be well repaid; for an old vulture was sitting on a naked prominence, with her young about her, whom she was instructing in the arts of a vulture’s life, and preparing, by the last lecture, for their final dismis­ sion to the mountains and the skies. “ ‘My children,’ said the old vulture, ‘you will the less want my instructions

1. This essay was the original Idler 22 in the Universal Chronicle. Johnson or his publishers, however, decided to exclude it from the collected edition of 1761, which is the basis of all later editions, including the Yale Edition. 2. A former country of central Europe, mainly occupying much of the current Czech Republic.

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because you have had my practice before your eyes; you have seen me snatch from the farm the household fowl, you have seen me seize the leveret3 in the bush, and the kid in the pasture, you know how to fix your talons, and how to balance your flight when you are laden with your prey. But you remember the taste of more deli­ cious food; I have often regaled you with the flesh of man.’ ‘Tell us,’ said the young vultures, ‘where man may be found, and how he may be known; his flesh is surely the natural food of a vulture. Why have you never brought a man in your talons to the nest?’ ‘He is too bulky,’ said the mother; ‘when we find a man, we can only tear away his flesh, and leave his bones upon the ground.’ ‘Since man is so big,’ said the young ones, ‘how do you kill him. You are afraid of the wolf and of the bear, by what power are vultures superior to man, is man more defenseless than a sheep?’ ‘We have not the strength of man,’ returned the mother, ‘and I am sometimes in doubt whether we have the subtilty; and the vultures would seldom feast upon his flesh, had not nature, that devoted him to our uses, infused into him a strange ferocity, which I have never observed in any other being that feeds upon the earth. Two herds of men will often meet and shake the earth with noise, and fill the air with fire. When you hear noise and see fire which flashes along the ground, hasten to the place with your swiftest wing, for men are surely destroying one another; you will then find the ground smoaking with blood and covered with carcasses, of which many are dis­ membered and mangled for the convenience of the vulture.’ ‘But when men have killed their prey,’ said the pupil, ‘why do they not eat it? When the wolf has killed a sheep, he suffers not the vulture to touch it till he has satisfied himself. Is not man another kind of wolf ?’ ‘Man,’ said the mother, ‘is the only beast who kills that which he does not devour, and this quality makes him so much a benefactor to our species.’ ‘If men kill our prey and lay it in our way,’ said the young one, ‘what need shall we have of labouring for ourselves.’ ‘Because man will, sometimes,’ replied the mother, ‘remain for a long time quiet in his den. The old vultures will tell you when you are to watch his motions. When you see men in great numbers moving close together, like a flight of storks, you may conclude that they are hunting, and that you will soon revel in human blood.’ ‘But still,’ said the young one, ‘I would gladly know the reason of this mutual slaughter. I could never kill what I could not eat.’ ‘My child,’ said the mother, ‘this is a question which I cannot answer, tho’ I am reckoned the most sub­ tile bird of the mountain. When I was young I used frequently to visit the ayry of an old vulture who dwelt upon the Carpathian rocks;4 he had made many observations; he knew the places that afforded prey round his habitation, as far in every direction as the strongest wing can fly between the rising and setting of the summer sun; he had fed year after year on the entrails of men. His opinion was, that men had only 3. “A young hare” (Dictionary). 4. A range of mountains running through current Slovakia and Romania.

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the appearance of animal life, being really vegetables with a power of motion; and that as the boughs of an oak are dashed together by the storm, that swine may fatten upon the fallen acorns, so men are by some unaccountable power driven one against another, till they lose their motion, that vultures may be fed. Others think they have observed something of contrivance and policy among these mischievous beings, and those that hover more closely round them, pretend, that there is, in every herd, one that gives directions to the rest, and seems to be more eminently delighted with a wide carnage. What it is that intitles him to such pre-­eminence we know not; he is seldom the biggest or the swiftest, but he shews by his eagerness and diligence that he is, more than any of the others, a friend to vultures.’ ”



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I D L E R , No. 81 Saturday, 3 November 1759 As the English army was passing towards Quebec1 along a soft savanna2 be­ tween a mountain and a lake, one of the petty chiefs of the inland regions stood upon a rock surrounded by his clan, and from behind the shelter of the bushes contem­ plated the art and regularity of European war. It was evening, the tents were pitched, he observed the security with which the troops rested in the night, and the order with which the march was renewed in the morning. He continued to pursue them with his eye till they could be seen no longer, and then stood for some time silent and pensive. Then turning to his followers, “My children, (said he) I have often heard from men hoary with long life, that there was a time when our ancestors were absolute lords of the woods, the meadows and the lakes, wherever the eye can reach or the foot can pass. They fished and hunted, feasted and danced, and when they were weary lay down under the first thicket, without danger and without fear. They changed their habitations as the seasons required, convenience prompted, or curi­ osity allured them, and sometimes gathered the fruits of the mountain, and some­ times sported in canoes along the coast. “Many years and ages are supposed to have been thus passed in plenty and security; when at last, a new race of men entered our country from the great ocean. They inclosed themselves in habitations of stone, which our ancestors could neither enter by violence, nor destroy by fire. They issued from those fastnesses, some­ times covered like the armadillo with shells, from which the lance rebounded on the striker, and sometimes carried by mighty beasts which had never been seen in our vales or forests, of such strength and swiftness, that flight and opposition were vain alike.3 Those invaders ranged over the continent, slaughtering in their rage those that resisted, and those that submitted, in their mirth. Of those that remained, some were buried in caverns, and condemned to dig metals for their masters; some were employed in tilling the ground, of which foreign tyrants devour the produce; and when the sword and the mines have destroyed the natives, they supply their place by human beings of another colour, brought from some distant country to perish here under toil and torture. 1. The battle of Québec took place on 13 September 1759; the French capitulated on 18 September. Both James Wolfe, the British commanding officer, and the Marquis de Montcalm, the French commander, died in the battle. 2. “An open meadow without wood; pasture-­ground in America” (Dictionary). 3. Spanish conquistadors first introduced horses to North America.

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“Some there are who boast their humanity, and content themselves to seize our chaces4 and fisheries, who drive us from every track of ground where fertility and pleasantness invite them to settle, and make no war upon us except when we intrude upon our own lands. “Others pretend to have purchased a right of residence and tyranny; but surely the insolence of such bargains is more offensive than the avowed and open domin­ ion of force. What reward can induce the possessor of a country to admit a stranger more powerful than himself ? Fraud or terror must operate in such contracts; either they promised protection which they never have afforded, or instruction which they never imparted. We hoped to be secured by their favour from some other evil, or to learn the arts of Europe, by which we might be able to secure ourselves. Their power they have never exerted in our defence, and their arts they have studiously concealed from us. Their treaties are only to deceive, and their traffick only to defraud us. They have a written law among them, of which they boast as derived from him who made the earth and sea, and by which they profess to believe that man will be made happy when life shall forsake him. Why is not this law communicated to us? It is concealed because it is violated. For how can they preach it to an Indian nation, when I am told that one of its first precepts forbids them to do to others what they would not that others should do to them. “But the time, perhaps is now approaching when the pride of usurpation shall be crushed, and the cruelties of invasion shall be revenged. The sons of rapacity have now drawn their swords upon each other, and referred their claims to the decision of war; let us look unconcerned upon the slaughter, and remember that the death of every European delivers the country from a tyrant and a robber; for what is the claim of either nation, but the claim of the vulture to the leveret, of the tiger to the fawn? Let them then continue to dispute their title to regions which they cannot people, to purchase by danger and blood the empty dignity of dominion over mountains which they will never climb, and rivers which they will never pass. Let us endeavour, in the mean time, to learn their discipline, and to forge their weapons; and when they shall be weakened with mutual slaughter, let us rush down upon them, force their remains to take shelter in their ships, and reign once more in our native country.”

4. “Open ground stored with such beasts as are hunted” (Dictionary, sense 7).



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Fiction

�

For many readers of Johnson, Rasselas is his most delightful work. It is demonstrably his most popular, having been translated into fifty languages and reproduced in over four hun­ dred editions. Johnson wrote the work very quickly in 1759 in order to defray the expenses of his mother’s funeral. Although he had written several “oriental tales” in the Rambler, this was his first—and last—attempt at an extended piece of fiction. Rasselas is sometimes called a novel, but it bears little resemblance to that emerging eighteenth-­century genre. Although the main characters undertake many adventures after their escape from the Happy Valley, they do not change in any fundamental way, and they cannot be said to have the sort of depth that one finds in the principal characters of a true novel. Johnson does not attempt to give his characters a particular point of view, and he does not try to effect any changes in their basic ways of experiencing life. That said, each episode in Rasselas obliges the characters and the readers to assess a “choice of life” or an answer to the questions “What shall I do?” and “How should I live?” These are questions that full-­fledged novels will ask in the nineteenth century, but here the answers are tested out philosophically, in short order, without the application of changing perspectives and varied experiences. Rasselas is a philosophical work of fiction that asks some of the basic human questions, but it rejects every solution of the problems it presents. In fact, the work seems to say that there may not be any satisfactory answers. At a minimum, it says that it would be presumptuous of a mortal, fallible author of fictions to offer such answers, although we must nonetheless continue our search for them. For these reasons, it has sometimes been compared to existentialist writings of the twentieth century, particularly those of Samuel Beckett, who was an admirer of Johnson’s work. The other work of Johnsonian fiction offered here is also philosophical. Although it deals with the vanity of human wishes, “The Fountains” is easier and lighter than Rasselas. He wrote “The Fountains: A Fairy Tale” in an evening at the Thrales’ house in Streatham to help fill out Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1766), a book published for the benefit of his friend Anna Williams. Johnson told Mrs. Thrale that Floretta, the heroine of “The Foun­ tains,” was a portrait of her character. Mrs. Thrale evidently accepted this characterization,

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and there is evidence that she even tailored some sentences to fit her character more closely (see Yale, xvi.217–18). The work is both an expression of Johnson’s constant literary themes in a lighter key, and a memorial to one of his closest friendships.

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T H E H I S TO RY O F R A S S E L A S , PRINCE OF ABISSINIA. Chap. I. Description of a palace in a valley.

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eager­ ness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas prince of Abissinia.1 Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty emperour, in whose dominions the Father of waters2 begins his course; whose bounty pours down the streams of plenty, and scatters over half the world the harvests of Egypt. According to the custom which has descended from age to age among the monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was confined in a private palace, with the other sons and daughters of Abissinian royalty, till the order of succession should call him to the throne. The place, which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for the resi­ dence of the Abissinian princes, was a spacious valley in the kingdom of Amhara,3 surrounded on every side by mountains, of which the summits overhang the middle part. The only passage, by which it could be entered, was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it has long been disputed whether it was the work of nature or of human industry. The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth which opened into the valley was closed with gates of iron, forged by the artificers of ancient days, so massy that no man could, without the help of engines, open or shut them. From the mountains on every side, rivulets descended that filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl whom nature has taught to dip the wing in water. This lake discharged its superfluities by a stream which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on the northern side, and fell with dreadful noise from precipice to precipice till it was heard no more. 1. In Father Jerome Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia, which SJ translated in 1735, there is mention of “Rassela Christos lieutenant general to Sultan Segued” (Yale, xv.85); the same person is called Rasselach in Hiob Lu­ dolf ’s Historia Aethiopica (1681). A ras is an Abyssinian leader or chief (OED). 2. The Nile. 3. A kingdom in Abyssinia, on a summit where “princes of the blood-­royal pass’d their melancholy life, being guarded by officers who treated them often with great rigour and severity” (Yale, xv.167).

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The sides of the mountains were covered with trees, the banks of the brooks were diversified with flowers; every blast4 shook spices from the rocks, and every month dropped fruits upon the ground. All animals that bite the grass, or brouse the shrub, whether wild or tame, wandered in this extensive circuit, secured from beasts of prey by the mountains which confined them. On one part were flocks and herds feeding in the pastures, on another all the beasts of chase frisking in the lawns; the sprightly kid was bounding on the rocks, the subtle5 monkey frolicking in the trees, and the solemn elephant reposing in the shade. All the diversities of the world were brought together, the blessings of nature were collected, and its evils extracted and excluded.6 The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with the necessaries of life, and all delights and superfluities were added at the annual visit which the em­ perour paid his children, when the iron gate was opened to the sound of musick; and during eight days every one that resided in the valley was required to pro­ pose whatever might contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacan­ cies of attention, and lessen the tediousness of time. Every desire was immediately granted. All the artificers of pleasure were called to gladden the festivity; the musi­ cians exerted the power of harmony, and the dancers shewed their activity before the princes, in hope that they should pass their lives in this blissful captivity, to which these only were admitted whose performance was thought able to add novelty to lux­ ury. Such was the appearance of security and delight which this retirement afforded, that they to whom it was new always desired that it might be perpetual; and as those, on whom the iron gate had once closed, were never suffered to return, the effect of longer experience could not be known. Thus every year produced new schemes of delight, and new competitors for imprisonment. The palace stood on an eminence raised about thirty paces7 above the sur­ face of the lake. It was divided into many squares or courts, built with greater or less magnificence according to the rank of those for whom they were designed. The roofs were turned into arches of massy stone joined by a cement that grew harder by time, and the building stood from century to century, deriding the solstitial rains and equinoctial hurricanes, without need of reparation. This house, which was so large as to be fully known to none but some ancient officers who successively inherited the secrets of the place, was built as if suspicion herself had dictated the plan. To every room there was an open and secret passage, 4. “A gust or puff of wind” (Dictionary, sense 1). 5. “Sly; artful; cunning” (Dictionary). 6. SJ’s description of the valley and the palace resembles the royal prison in Luis de Urreta’s Historia Ecclesiastica, Politica, Natural y Moral de los Grandes y Remotos Reynos de la Etiopia (Valencia, 1610). For other sources of SJ’s depictions of Amhara, see Yale, xvi.xxvi–­xxxiii. 7. Pace: “A measure of five feet” (Dictionary, sense 5).

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every square had a communication with the rest, either from the upper stories by private galleries, or by subterranean passages from the lower apartments. Many of the columns had unsuspected cavities, in which a long race of monarchs had re­ posited their treasures. They then closed up the opening with marble, which was never to be removed but in the utmost exigencies of the kingdom; and recorded their accumulations in a book which was itself concealed in a tower not entered but by the emperour, attended by the prince who stood next in succession. Chap. II. The discontent of Rasselas in the Happy Valley.

Here the sons and daughters of Abissinia lived only to know the soft vicissi­ tudes8 of pleasure and repose, attended by all that were skilful to delight, and grati­ fied with whatever the senses can enjoy. They wandered in gardens of fragrance, and slept in the fortresses of security. Every art was practised to make them pleased with their own condition. The sages who instructed them, told them of nothing but the miseries of publick life, and described all beyond the mountains as regions of calamity, where discord was always raging, and where man preyed upon man. To heighten their opinion of their own felicity, they were daily entertained with songs, the subject of which was the Happy Valley. Their appetites were excited by frequent enumerations of different enjoyments, and revelry and merriment was the business of every hour from the dawn of morning to the close of even. These methods were generally successful; few of the princes had ever wished to enlarge their bounds, but passed their lives in full conviction that they had all within their reach that art or nature could bestow, and pitied those whom fate had excluded from this seat of tranquility, as the sport of chance, and the slaves of misery. Thus they rose in the morning, and lay down at night, pleased with each other and with themselves, all but Rasselas, who, in the twenty-­sixth year of his age, began to withdraw himself from their pastimes and assemblies, and to delight in solitary walks and silent meditation. He often sat before tables covered with luxury,9 and for­ got to taste the dainties that were placed before him: he rose abruptly in the midst of the song, and hastily retired beyond the sound of musick. His attendants observed the change and endeavoured to renew his love of pleasure: he neglected their offi­ ciousness, repulsed their invitations, and spent day after day on the banks of rivu­ lets sheltered with trees, where he sometimes listened to the birds in the branches, sometimes observed the fish playing in the stream, and anon10 cast his eyes upon the 8. “Regular change; return of the same things in the same succession” (Dictionary, sense 1). 9. “Delicious fare” (Dictionary, sense 4). 10. “Sometimes; now and then; at other times” (Dictionary, sense 2).



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pastures and mountains filled with animals, of which some were biting the herbage, and some sleeping among the bushes. This singularity of his humour11 made him much observed. One of the sages, in whose conversation he had formerly delighted, followed him secretly, in hope of discovering the cause of his disquiet. Rasselas, who knew not that any one was near him, having for some time fixed his eyes upon the goats that were brousing among the rocks, began to compare their condition with his own. “What,” said he, “makes the difference between man and all the rest of the ani­ mal creation? Every beast that strays beside me has the same corporal necessities with myself; he is hungry and crops the grass, he is thirsty and drinks the stream, his thirst and hunger are appeased, he is satisfied and sleeps; he rises again and is hun­ gry, he is again fed and is at rest. I am hungry and thirsty like him, but when thirst and hunger cease I am not at rest; I am, like him, pained with want, but am not, like him, satisfied with fulness. The intermediate hours are tedious and gloomy; I long again to be hungry that I may again quicken my attention. The birds peck the berries or the corn, and fly away to the groves where they sit in seeming happiness on the branches, and waste their lives in tuning one unvaried series of sounds. I likewise can call the lutanist and the singer, but the sounds that pleased me yesterday weary me to day, and will grow yet more wearisome to morrow. I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man has surely some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification, or he has some desires distinct from sense which must be satisfied before he can be happy.”12 After this he lifted up his head, and seeing the moon rising, walked towards the palace. As he passed through the fields, and saw the animals around him, “Ye,” said he, “are happy, and need not envy me that walk thus among you, burthened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy your felicity; for it is not the felicity of man. I have many distresses from which ye are free; I fear pain when I do not feel it; I some­ times shrink at evils recollected, and sometimes start at evils anticipated: surely the equity of providence has ballanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.” With observations like these the prince amused himself as he returned, utter­ ing them with a plaintive voice, yet with a look that discovered13 him to feel some complacence in his own perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the miseries of life, from consciousness of the delicacy with which he felt, and the eloquence with 11. “Present disposition” (Dictionary, sense 4). 12. Cf. Rambler 41: “I cannot but consider this necessity of searching on every side for matter on which the attention may be employed as a strong proof of the superiour and celestial nature of the soul of man” (Yale, iii.221–22). 13. “To shew; to disclose; to bring to light” (Dictionary, sense 1).

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which he bewailed them. He mingled cheerfully in the diversions of the evening, and all rejoiced to find that his heart was lightened. Chap. III. The wants of him that wants nothing.

On the next day his old instructor, imagining that he had now made himself acquainted with his disease of mind, was in hope of curing it by counsel, and offi­ ciously sought an opportunity of conference, which the prince, having long con­ sidered him as one whose intellects were exhausted, was not very willing to afford: “Why,” said he, “does this man thus intrude upon me; shall I be never suffered to forget those lectures which pleased only while they were new, and to become new again must be forgotten?” He then walked into the wood, and composed14 himself to his usual meditations; when, before his thoughts had taken any settled form, he perceived his persuer at his side, and was at first prompted by his impatience to go hastily away; but, being unwilling to offend a man whom he had once reverenced and still loved, he invited him to sit down with him on the bank. The old man, thus encouraged, began to lament the change which had been lately observed in the prince, and to enquire why he so often retired from the plea­ sures of the palace, to loneliness and silence. “I fly from pleasure,” said the prince, “because pleasure has ceased to please; I am lonely because I am miserable, and am unwilling to cloud with my presence the happiness of others.” “You, Sir,” said the sage, “are the first who has complained of misery in the Happy Valley. I hope to con­ vince you that your complaints have no real cause. You are here in full possession of all that the emperour of Abissinia can bestow; here is neither labour to be endured nor danger to be dreaded, yet here is all that labour or danger can procure or pur­ chase. Look round and tell me which of your wants is without supply: if you want nothing, how are you unhappy?” “That I want nothing,” said the prince, “or that I know not what I want, is the cause of my complaint; if I had any known want, I should have a certain wish; that wish would excite endeavour, and I should not then repine to see the sun move so slowly towards the western mountain, or lament when the day breaks and sleep will no longer hide me from myself. When I see the kids and the lambs chasing one an­ other, I fancy that I should be happy if I had something to persue. But, possessing all that I can want, I find one day and one hour exactly like another, except that the latter is still more tedious than the former. Let your experience inform me how the day may now seem as short as in my childhood, while nature was yet fresh, and every 14. “To adjust the mind to any business, by freeing it from disturbance (Dictionary, sense 7).



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moment shewed me what I never had observed before.15 I have already enjoyed too much; give me something to desire.” The old man was surprised at this new species of affliction, and knew not what to reply, yet was unwilling to be silent. “Sir,” said he, “if you had seen the miseries of the world, you would know how to value your present state.” “Now,” said the prince, “you have given me something to desire; I shall long to see the miseries of the world, since the sight of them is necessary to happiness.”16 Chap. IV. The prince continues to grieve and muse.

At this time the sound of musick proclaimed the hour of repast, and the con­ versation was concluded. The old man went away sufficiently discontented to find that his reasonings had produced the only conclusion which they were intended to prevent. But in the decline of life shame and grief are of short duration; whether it be that we bear easily what we have born long, or that, finding ourselves in age less regarded, we less regard others; or, that we look with slight regard upon afflictions, to which we know that the hand of death is about to put an end. The prince, whose views were extended to a wider space, could not speedily quiet his emotions. He had been before terrified at the length of life which nature promised him, because he considered that in a long time much must be endured; he now rejoiced in his youth, because in many years much might be done. This first beam of hope, that had been ever darted into his mind, rekindled youth in his cheeks, and doubled the lustre of his eyes. He was fired with the desire of doing something, though he knew not yet with distinctness, either end or means. He was now no longer gloomy and unsocial; but, considering himself as mas­ ter of a secret stock of happiness, which he could enjoy only by concealing it, he affected to be busy in all schemes of diversion, and endeavoured to make others pleased with the state of which he himself was weary. But pleasures never can be so multiplied or continued, as not to leave much of life unemployed; there were many hours, both of the night and day, which he could spend without suspicion in solitary thought. The load of life was much lightened: he went eagerly into the as­ semblies, because he supposed the frequency of his presence necessary to the suc­ cess of his purposes; he retired gladly to privacy, because he had now a subject of thought. 15. Cf. Idler 44: “We are naturally delighted with novelty, and there is a time when all that we see is new” (Yale, ii.137). 16. Cf. Adventurer 111: Seneca “might have said with rigorous propriety, that no man is happy, but as he is compared with the miserable” (Yale, ii.451).

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His chief amusement was to picture to himself that world which he had never seen; to place himself in various conditions; to be entangled in imaginary difficul­ ties, and to be engaged in wild17 adventures: but his benevolence always terminated his projects in the relief of distress, the detection of fraud, the defeat of oppression, and the diffusion of happiness. Thus passed twenty months of the life of Rasselas. He busied himself so in­ tensely in visionary bustle, that he forgot his real solitude; and, amidst hourly prepa­ rations for the various incidents of human affairs, neglected to consider by what means he should mingle with mankind. One day, as he was sitting on a bank, he feigned to himself an orphan virgin robbed of her little portion18 by a treacherous lover, and crying after him for resti­ tution and redress. So strongly was the image impressed upon his mind, that he started up in the maid’s defence, and run19 forward to seize the plunderer with all the eagerness of real persuit. Fear naturally quickens the flight of guilt. Rasselas could not catch the fugitive with his utmost efforts; but, resolving to weary, by per­ severance, him whom he could not surpass in speed, he pressed on till the foot of the mountain stopped his course. Here he recollected himself, and smiled at his own useless impetuosity. Then raising his eyes to the mountain, “This,” said he, “is the fatal20 obstacle that hinders at once the enjoyment of pleasure, and the exercise of virtue. How long is it that my hopes and wishes have flown beyond this boundary of my life, which yet I never have attempted to surmount!” Struck with this reflection, he sat down to muse, and remembered, that since he first resolved to escape from his confinement, the sun had passed twice over him in his annual course. He now felt a degree of regret with which he had never been before acquainted. He considered how much might have been done in the time which had passed, and left nothing real behind it. He compared twenty months with the life of man. “In life,” said he, “is not to be counted the ignorance of infancy, or imbecility21 of age. We are long before we are able to think, and we soon cease from the power of acting. The true period of human existence may be reasonably esti­ mated as forty years, of which I have mused away the four and twentieth part. What I have lost was certain, for I have certainly possessed it; but of twenty months to come who can assure me?”22 17. “Meerly [sic] imaginary” (Dictionary, sense 11). 18. “Part of an inheritance given to a child; a fortune” (Dictionary, sense 3). 19. In his “Grammar of the English Tongue,” SJ identifies run as the proper past tense and ran as “obso­ lete” (Yale, xviii.327). 20. “Appointed by destiny” (Dictionary, sense 3). 21. “Weakness, feebleness of mind or body” (Dictionary). 22. Self-­recrimination for idleness is a constant theme in SJ’s diaries and prayers; e.g., 18 September



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The consciousness of his own folly pierced him deeply, and he was long be­ fore he could be reconciled to himself. “The rest of my time,” said he, “has been lost by the crime or folly of my ancestors, and the absurd institutions of my coun­ try; I remember it with disgust,23 yet without remorse: but the months that have passed since new light darted into my soul, since I formed a scheme of reasonable felicity, have been squandered by my own fault. I have lost that which can never be restored: I have seen the sun rise and set for twenty months, an idle gazer on the light of heaven: In this time the birds have left the nest of their mother, and com­ mitted themselves to the woods and to the skies: the kid has forsaken the teat, and learned by degrees to climb the rocks in quest of independant sustenance. I only have made no advances, but am still helpless and ignorant. The moon, by more than twenty changes, admonished me of the flux of life; the stream that rolled before my feet upbraided my inactivity. I sat feasting on intellectual luxury, regardless alike of the examples of the earth, and the instructions of the planets. Twenty months are past, who shall restore them!” These sorrowful meditations fastened upon his mind; he past four months in resolving to lose no more time in idle resolves, and was awakened to more vigorous exertion by hearing a maid, who had broken a porcelain cup, remark, that what can­ not be repaired is not to be regretted. This was obvious; and Rasselas reproached himself that he had not discov­ ered it, having not known, or not considered, how many useful hints are obtained by chance, and how often the mind, hurried by her own ardour to distant views, ne­ glects the truths that lie open before her. He, for a few hours, regretted his regret, and from that time bent his whole mind upon the means of escaping from the valley of happiness. Chap. V. The prince meditates his escape.

He now found that it would be very difficult to effect that which it was very easy to suppose effected. When he looked round about him, he saw himself confined by the bars of nature which had never yet been broken, and by the gate, through which none that once had passed it were ever able to return. He was now impatient as an eagle in a grate.24 He passed week after week in clambering the mountains, to see if

1764: “I have now spent five years in resolving. . . . I have done nothing; the need of doing therefore is pressing, since the time of doing is short” (Yale, i.81). 23. “Ill-­humour; malevolence; offence conceived” (Dictionary, sense 2). 24. “A partition made with bars placed near to one another, or crossing each other: such as are in cloys­ ters or prisons” (Dictionary, sense 1).

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there was any aperture which the bushes might conceal, but found all the summits inaccessible by their prominence.25 The iron gate he despaired to open; for it was not only secured with all the power of art, but was always watched by successive sentinels, and was by its position exposed to the perpetual observation of all the in­ habitants. He then examined the cavern through which the waters of the lake were dis­ charged; and, looking down at a time when the sun shone strongly upon its mouth, he discovered it to be full of broken rocks, which, though they permitted the stream to flow through many narrow passages, would stop any body of solid bulk. He re­ turned discouraged and dejected; but, having now known the blessing of hope,26 resolved never to despair. In these fruitless searches he spent ten months. The time, however, passed cheerfully away: in the morning he rose with new hope, in the evening applauded his own diligence, and in the night slept sound after his fatigue. He met a thousand amusements which beguiled his labour, and diversified his thoughts. He discerned the various instincts of animals, and properties of plants, and found the place replete with wonders, of which he purposed to solace himself with the contemplation, if he should never be able to accomplish his flight; rejoicing that his endeavours, though yet unsuccessful, had supplied him with a source of inexhaustible enquiry. But his original curiosity was not yet abated; he resolved to obtain some knowl­ edge of the ways of men. His wish still continued, but his hope grew less. He ceased to survey any longer the walls of his prison, and spared to search by new toils for interstices which he knew could not be found, yet determined to keep his design always in view, and lay hold on any expedient that time should offer. Chap. VI. A dissertation on the art of flying.27

Among the artists that had been allured into the Happy Valley, to labour for the accommodation and pleasure of its inhabitants, was a man eminent for his knowl­ edge of the mechanick powers, who had contrived many engines both of use and recreation. By a wheel, which the stream turned, he forced the water into a tower, whence it was distributed to all the apartments of the palace. He erected a pavillion 25. “Protuberance; extant part”; protuberance: “Something swelling above the rest; prominence; tu­ mour” (Dictionary). 26. Cf. Idler 58: “it is necessary to hope, tho’ hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happi­ ness” (Yale, ii.182). 27. Although there is a long tradition of works on flight before 1759, SJ draws most heavily on Bishop John Wilkins’s Mathematicall Magic (1648), particularly Book 2, which discusses “divers kinds of automata,” including “a sailing chariot.”



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in the garden, around which he kept the air always cool by artificial showers. One of the groves, appropriated to the ladies, was ventilated by fans, to which the rivulet that run28 through it gave a constant motion; and instruments of soft musick were placed at proper distances, of which some played by the impulse of the wind, and some by the power of the stream. This artist was sometimes visited by Rasselas, who was pleased with every kind of knowledge, imagining that the time would come when all his acquisitions should be of use to him in the open world. He came one day to amuse himself in his usual manner, and found the master busy in building a sailing chariot: he saw that the de­ sign was practicable upon a level surface, and with expressions of great esteem so­ licited its completion. The workman was pleased to find himself so much regarded by the prince, and resolved to gain yet higher honours. “Sir,” said he, “you have seen but a small part of what the mechanick sciences can perform. I have been long of opinion, that, instead of the tardy conveyance of ships and chariots, man might use the swifter migration of wings; that the fields of air are open to knowledge, and that only ignorance and idleness need crawl upon the ground.” This hint rekindled the prince’s desire of passing the mountains; having seen what the mechanist had already performed, he was willing to fancy that he could do more; yet resolved to enquire further before he suffered hope to afflict him by disap­ pointment. “I am afraid,” said he to the artist, “that your imagination prevails over your skill, and that you now tell me rather what you wish than what you know. Every animal has his element assigned him; the birds have the air, and man and beasts the earth.” “So,” replied the mechanist, “fishes have the water, in which yet beasts can swim by nature, and men by art. He that can swim needs not despair to fly: to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler.29 We are only to propor­ tion our power of resistance to the different density of the matter through which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborn by the air, if you can renew any impulse upon it, faster than the air can recede from the pressure.” “But the exercise of swimming,” said the prince, “is very laborious; the strong­ est limbs are soon wearied; I am afraid the act of flying will be yet more violent, and wings will be of no great use, unless we can fly further than we can swim.” “The labour of rising from the ground,” said the artist, “will be great, as we see it in the heavier domestick fowls; but, as we mount higher, the earth’s attraction, and the body’s gravity, will be gradually diminished, till we shall arrive at a region where the man will float in the air without any tendency to fall: no care will then be neces­ sary, but to move forwards, which the gentlest impulse will effect. You, Sir, whose curiosity is so extensive, will easily conceive with what pleasure a philosopher, fur­ 28. See p. 175, n. 19, above. 29. Subtle: “Thin; not dense; not gross” (Dictionary, sense 1).

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nished with wings, and hovering in the sky, would see the earth, and all its inhabi­ tants, rolling beneath him, and presenting to him successively, by its diurnal motion, all the countries within the same parallel. How must it amuse the pendent spectator to see the moving scene of land and ocean, cities and desarts! To survey with equal security the marts of trade, and the fields of battle; mountains infested by barbari­ ans, and fruitful regions gladdened by plenty, and lulled by peace! How easily shall we then trace the Nile through all his passage; pass over to distant regions, and ex­ amine the face of nature from one extremity of the earth to the other!” “All this,” said the prince, “is much to be desired, but I am afraid that no man will be able to breathe in these regions of speculation30 and tranquility. I have been told, that respiration is difficult upon lofty mountains, yet from these precipices, though so high as to produce great tenuity31 of the air, it is very easy to fall: therefore I suspect, that from any height, where life can be supported, there may be danger of too quick descent.” “Nothing,” replied the artist, “will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome. If you will favour my project I will try the first flight at my own hazard. I have considered the structure of all volant32 animals, and find the folding continuity of the bat’s wings most easily accommodated to the human form. Upon this model I shall begin my task to morrow, and in a year expect to tower into the air beyond the malice or persuit of man. But I will work only on this condition, that the art shall not be divulged, and that you shall not require me to make wings for any but ourselves.” “Why,” said Rasselas, “should you envy others so great an advantage? All skill ought to be exerted for universal good; every man has owed much to others, and ought to repay the kindness that he has received.” “If men were all virtuous,” returned the artist, “I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good, if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky? Against an army sailing through the clouds neither walls, nor mountains, nor seas, could afford any security. A flight of northern savages might hover in the wind, and light at once with irresistible violence upon the capital of a fruitful region that was rolling under them. Even this valley, the retreat of princes, the abode of happiness, might be violated by the sudden descent of some of the naked nations that swarm on the coast of the southern sea.”33 The prince promised secrecy, and waited for the performance, not wholly 30. “Examination by the eye; view” (Dictionary, sense 1). 31. Thinness. 32. Flying (Latinate words such as tenuity, levity, and volant were part of the vocabulary of contemporary scientists and projectors like Wilkins [see n. 27 above]). 33. Presumably, Africans to the south of Ethiopia in what is now Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique— contested in the eighteenth century by Portuguese, Arab, and African tribal slave traders.



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hopeless of success. He visited the work from time to time, observed its progress, and remarked many ingenious contrivances to facilitate motion, and unite levity34 with strength. The artist was every day more certain that he should leave vultures and eagles behind him, and the contagion of his confidence seized upon the prince. In a year the wings were finished, and, on a morning appointed, the maker ap­ peared furnished for flight on a little promontory: he waved his pinions a while to gather air, then leaped from his stand, and in an instant dropped into the lake. His wings, which were of no use in the air, sustained him in the water, and the prince drew him to land, half dead with terrour and vexation. Chap. VII. The prince finds a man of learning.

The prince was not much afflicted by this disaster, having suffered himself to hope for a happier event, only because he had no other means of escape in view. He still persisted in his design to leave the Happy Valley by the first opportunity. His imagination was now at a stand; he had no prospect of entering into the world; and, notwithstanding all his endeavours to support35 himself, discontent by degrees preyed upon him, and he began again to lose his thoughts in sadness, when the rainy season, which in these countries is periodical,36 made it inconvenient to wander in the woods. The rain continued longer and with more violence than had been ever known: the clouds broke on the surrounding mountains, and the torrents streamed into the plain on every side, till the cavern was too narrow to discharge the water. The lake overflowed its banks, and all the level of the valley was covered with the inunda­ tion. The eminence, on which the palace was built, and some other spots of rising ground, were all that the eye could now discover. The herds and flocks left the pas­ tures, and both the wild beasts and the tame retreated to the mountains. This inundation confined all the princes to domestick37 amusements, and the attention of Rasselas was particularly seized by a poem, which Imlac38 rehearsed upon the various conditions of humanity. He commanded the poet to attend him in his apartment, and recite his verses a second time; then entering into familiar talk, he thought himself happy in having found a man who knew the world so well, and could so skilfully paint the scenes of life. He asked a thousand questions about 34. Lightness. 35. “To endure any thing painful without being overcome” (Dictionary, sense 2). 36. “Happening by [planetary] revolution at some stated time” (Dictionary, sense 2). 37. “Private; done at home; not open” (Dictionary, sense 2). 38. One Icon-­Imlac, “a prince of the Salomonean race,” appears in Hiob Ludolf ’s Historia Aethiopica (p. 171).

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things, to which, though common to all other mortals, his confinement from child­ hood had kept him a stranger. The poet pitied his ignorance, and loved his curiosity, and entertained him from day to day with novelty and instruction, so that the prince regretted the necessity of sleep, and longed till the morning should renew his plea­ sure. As they were sitting together, the prince commanded Imlac to relate his his­ tory, and to tell by what accident he was forced, or by what motive induced, to close his life in the Happy Valley. As he was going to begin his narrative, Rasselas was called to a concert, and obliged to restrain his curiosity till the evening. Chap. VIII. The history of Imlac.

The close of the day is, in the regions of the torrid zone, the only season of di­ version and entertainment, and it was therefore mid-­night before the musick ceased, and the princesses retired. Rasselas then called for his companion and required him to begin the story of his life. “Sir,” said Imlac, “my history will not be long: the life that is devoted to knowl­ edge passes silently away, and is very little diversified by events. To talk in publick, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire, and answer inquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders about the world without pomp or terrour, and is neither known nor valued but by men like himself. “I was born in the kingdom of Goiama, at no great distance from the fountain of the Nile. My father was a wealthy merchant, who traded between the inland coun­ tries of Africk and the ports of the Red Sea. He was honest, frugal and diligent, but of mean sentiments, and narrow comprehension: he desired only to be rich, and to conceal his riches, lest he should be spoiled39 by the governours of the province.” “Surely,” said the prince, “my father must be negligent of his charge, if any man in his dominions dares take that which belongs to another. Does he not know that kings are accountable for injustice permitted as well as done? If I were em­ perour, not the meanest of my subjects should be oppressed with impunity. My blood boils when I am told that a merchant durst not enjoy his honest gains for fear of losing them by the rapacity of power. Name the governour who robbed the people, that I may declare his crimes to the emperour.” “Sir,” said Imlac, “your ardour is the natural effect of virtue animated by youth: the time will come when you will acquit your father, and perhaps hear with less im­ patience of the governour. Oppression is, in the Abissinian dominions, neither fre­ quent nor tolerated; but no form of government has been yet discovered, by which 39. “To plunder; to strip of goods” (Dictionary, sense 2).



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cruelty can be wholly prevented. Subordination40 supposes power on one part and subjection on the other; and if power be in the hands of men, it will sometimes be abused. The vigilance of the supreme magistrate may do much, but much will still remain undone. He can never know all the crimes that are committed, and can sel­ dom punish all that he knows.” “This,” said the prince, “I do not understand, but I had rather hear thee than dispute. Continue thy narration.” “My father,” proceeded Imlac, “originally intended that I should have no other education, than such as might qualify me for commerce; and discovering in me great strength of memory, and quickness of apprehension, often declared his hope that I should be some time the richest man in Abissinia.” “Why,” said the prince, “did thy father desire the increase of his wealth, when it was already greater than he durst discover or enjoy? I am unwilling to doubt thy veracity, yet inconsistencies cannot both be true.” “Inconsistencies,” answered Imlac, “cannot both be right, but, imputed to man, they may both be true. Yet diversity is not inconsistency. My father might ex­ pect a time of greater security. However, some desire is necessary to keep life in mo­ tion, and he, whose real wants are supplied, must admit those of fancy.” “This,” said the prince, “I can in some measure conceive. I repent that I inter­ rupted thee.” “With this hope,” proceeded Imlac, “he sent me to school; but when I had once found the delight of knowledge, and felt the pleasure of intelligence and the pride of invention, I began silently to despise riches, and determined to disappoint the purpose of my father, whose grossness of conception raised my pity. I was twenty years old before his tenderness would expose me to the fatigue of travel, in which time I had been instructed, by successive masters, in all the literature41 of my native country. As every hour taught me something new, I lived in a continual course of gratifications; but, as I advanced towards manhood, I lost much of the reverence with which I had been used to look on my instructors; because, when the lesson was ended, I did not find them wiser or better than common men. “At length my father resolved to initiate me in commerce, and, opening one of his subterranean treasuries, counted out ten thousand pieces of gold. ‘This, young man,’ said he, ‘is the stock with which you must negociate.42 I began with less than the fifth part, and you see how diligence and parsimony have increased it. This is 40. On 25 June 1763, Boswell reports SJ said, “I am a friend to subordination, as most conducive to the happiness of society. There is a reciprocal pleasure in governing and being governed” (Boswell, Life, i.408). 41. “Learning; skill in letters” (Dictionary). 42. “To have intercourse of business; to traffick; to treat: whether of publick affairs, or private matters” (Dictionary).

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your own to waste or to improve. If you squander it by negligence or caprice, you must wait for my death before you will be rich: if, in four years, you double your stock, we will thenceforward let subordination cease, and live together as friends and partners; for he shall always be equal with me, who is equally skilled in the art of growing rich.’ “We laid our money upon camels, concealed in bales of cheap goods, and trav­ elled to the shore of the Red Sea. When I cast my eye on the expanse of waters my heart bounded like that of a prisoner escaped. I felt an unextinguishable curiosity kindle in my mind, and resolved to snatch this opportunity of seeing the manners of other nations, and of learning sciences43 unknown in Abissinia. “I remembered that my father had obliged me to the improvement of my stock, not by a promise which I ought not to violate, but by a penalty which I was at liberty to incur, and therefore determined to gratify my predominant desire, and by drink­ ing at the fountains of knowledge, to quench the thirst of curiosity. “As I was supposed to trade without connexion with my father, it was easy for me to become acquainted with the master of a ship, and procure a passage to some other country. I had no motives of choice to regulate my voyage; it was sufficient for me that, wherever I wandered, I should see a country which I had not seen before. I therefore entered a ship bound for Surat,44 having left a letter for my father declar­ ing my intention. Chap. IX. The history of Imlac continued.

“When I first entered upon the world of waters, and lost sight of land, I looked round about me with pleasing terrour, and thinking my soul enlarged by the bound­ less prospect, imagined that I could gaze round for ever without satiety; but, in a short time, I grew weary of looking on barren uniformity, where I could only see again what I had already seen. I then descended into the ship, and doubted for a while whether all my future pleasures would not end like this in disgust and disap­ pointment. ‘Yet, surely,’ said I, ‘the ocean and the land are very different; the only variety of water is rest and motion, but the earth has mountains and vallies, desarts and cities: it is inhabited by men of different customs and contrary opinions; and I may hope to find variety in life, though I should miss it in nature.’ “With this thought I quieted my mind, and amused myself during the voy­ age; sometimes by learning from the sailors the art of navigation, which I have never 43. “Any art or species of knowledge” (Dictionary, sense 4). 44. The capital of Gujarat and once the most important commercial city in India.



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practised, and sometimes by forming schemes for my conduct in different situations, in not one of which I have been ever placed. “I was almost weary of my naval amusements when we landed safely at Surat. I secured my money, and purchasing some commodities for show, joined myself to a caravan that was passing into the inland country. My companions, for some reason or other, conjecturing that I was rich, and, by my inquiries and admiration,45 find­ ing that I was ignorant, considered me as a novice whom they had a right to cheat, and who was to learn at the usual expence the art of fraud. They exposed me to the theft of servants, and the exaction of officers, and saw me plundered upon false pre­ tences, without any advantage to themselves, but that of rejoicing in the superiority of their own knowledge.” “Stop a moment,” said the prince. “Is there such depravity in man, as that he should injure another without benefit to himself ? I can easily conceive that all are pleased with superiority; but your ignorance was merely accidental, which, being neither your crime nor your folly, could afford them no reason to applaud them­ selves; and the knowledge which they had, and which you wanted, they might as effectually have shewn by warning, as betraying you.” “Pride,” said Imlac, “is seldom delicate, it will please itself with very mean ad­ vantages; and envy feels not its own happiness, but when it may be compared with the misery of others. They were my enemies because they grieved to think me rich, and my oppressors because they delighted to find me weak.” “Proceed,” said the prince: “I doubt not of the facts which you relate, but imagine that you impute them to mistaken motives.” “In this company,” said Imlac, “I arrived at Agra, the capital of Indostan, the city in which the great Mogul commonly resides.46 I applied myself to the language of the country,47 and in a few months was able to converse with the learned men; some of whom I found morose and reserved, and others easy and communicative; some were unwilling to teach another what they had with difficulty learned them­ selves; and some shewed that the end of their studies was to gain the dignity of in­ structing. “To the tutor of the young princes I recommended myself so much, that I was presented to the emperour as a man of uncommon knowledge. The emperour asked me many questions concerning my country and my travels; and though I cannot now 45. “Wonder; the act of admiring or wondering” (Dictionary, sense 1). 46. Agra, which ceased to be the capital of Industan in 1653, is situated “about 700 miles north-­east of Surat, a journey which the caravans generally perform in nine weeks” (Emanuel Bowen, A Complete System of Geography, 2 vols. [1747], ii.315). The mogul (or Mughal) was the head of the “Muslim dynasty . . . which ruled an empire covering a large part of South Asia from the 16th to the 19th centuries” (OED). 47. Persian was the official language of the empire, though it was gradually replaced by Urdu.

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recollect any thing that he uttered above the power of a common man, he dismissed me astonished at his wisdom, and enamoured of his goodness. “My credit was now so high, that the merchants, with whom I had travelled, applied to me for recommendations to the ladies of the court. I was surprised at their confidence of solicitation, and gently reproached them with their practices on the road. They heard me with cold indifference, and shewed no tokens of shame or sorrow. “They then urged their request with the offer of a bribe; but what I would not do for kindness I would not do for money; and refused them, not because they had injured me, but because I would not enable them to injure others; for I knew they would have made use of my credit to cheat those who should buy their wares. “Having resided at Agra, till there was no more to be learned, I travelled into Persia, where I saw many remains of ancient magnificence, and observed many new accommodations48 of life. The Persians are a nation eminently social, and their as­ semblies afforded me daily opportunities of remarking characters and manners, and of tracing human nature through all its variations.49 “From Persia I passed into Arabia, where I saw a nation at once pastoral and warlike; who live without any settled habitation; whose only wealth is their flocks and herds; and who have yet carried on, through all ages, an hereditary war with all mankind, though they neither covet nor envy their possessions.50 Chap. X. Imlac’s history continued. A dissertation upon poetry.

“Wherever I went, I found that poetry was considered as the highest learning, and regarded with a veneration somewhat approaching to that which man would pay to the Angelick Nature.51 And it yet fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift con­ ferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent which it received by accident at first: or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe Nature and passion, which are always the same, 48. “Conveniences, things requisite to ease or refreshment” (Dictionary). 49. Traditionally, “one of the most commendable qualities of the Persians is their kindness to strangers . . . and their universal hospitality” (Bowen, Geography, ii.173). 50. This characterization of the Arabs, also traditional, is found in Bowen, who quotes the Roman histo­ rian Ammianus Marcellinus (Geography, ii.125–26). 51. Cf. SJ’s Preface to his Dictionary: “The chief glory of every people arises from its authours” (see p. 416 below).



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the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them, but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images.52 Whatever be the reason, it is commonly observed that the early writers are in pos­ session of nature, and their followers of art: that the first excel in strength and inven­ tion, and the latter in elegance and refinement.53 “I was desirous to add my name to this illustrious fraternity. I read all the poets of Persia and Arabia, and was able to repeat by memory the volumes that are sus­ pended in the mosque of Mecca.54 But I soon found that no man was ever great by imitation. My desire of excellence impelled me to transfer my attention to nature and to life. Nature was to be my subject, and men to be my auditors: I could never de­ scribe what I had not seen: I could not hope to move those with delight or terrour, whose interests and opinions I did not understand. “Being now resolved to be a poet, I saw every thing with a new purpose; my sphere of attention was suddenly magnified: no kind of knowledge was to be over­ looked. I ranged mountains and deserts for images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of the forest and flower of the valley. I observed with equal care the crags of the rock and the pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I wandered along the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the changes of the summer clouds. To a poet nothing can be useless. Whatever is beautiful, and whatever is dreadful, must be familiar to his imagination: he must be conversant with all that is awfully55 vast or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors56 of the sky, must all concur to store his mind with inexhaustible variety: for every idea is useful for the inforcement or decoration of moral or religious truth; and he, who knows most, will have most power of di­ versifying his scenes, and of gratifying his reader with remote allusions and unex­ pected instruction. “All the appearances of nature I was therefore careful to study, and every coun­ try which I have surveyed has contributed something to my poetical powers.”

52. Cf. Adventurer 99: “human nature is always the same” (Yale, ii.431); Adventurer 95: “Writers of all ages have had the same sentiments, because . . . the interests and passions . . . of mankind, have been diversified in different times, only by unessential and casual varieties” (Yale, ii.425). 53. This common distinction was often exemplified by a contrast between Homer and Virgil; cf. John­ son’s Life of Dryden: “the discriminative excellence of Homer is elevation and comprehension of thought, and that of Virgil is grace and splendor of diction” (Yale, xxi.475). 54. The Mu’allaqat, seven pre-­Islamic poems said to have hung in the Kaaba, the great cubical building at Mecca. 55. Inducing awe or astonishment. 56. “Any bodies in the air or sky that are of a flux and transitory nature” (Dictionary).

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“In so wide a survey,” said the prince, “you must surely have left much unob­ served. I have lived, till now, within the circuit of these mountains, and yet cannot walk abroad without the sight of something which I had never beheld before, or never heeded.” “The business of a poet,” said Imlac, “is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances: he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features, as recal the original to every mind; and must neglect the minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked, and another have neglected, for those characteristicks which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelesness.57 “But the knowledge of nature is only half the task of a poet; he must be ac­ quainted likewise with all the modes of life. His character requires that he estimate the happiness and misery of every condition; observe the power of all the passions in all their combinations, and trace the changes of the human mind as they are modi­ fied by various institutions and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the spriteliness of infancy to the despondence of decrepitude.58 He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental59 truths, which will always be the same: he must therefore content himself with the slow progress of his name; contemn the applause of his own time, and commit his claims to the justice of posterity. He must write as the interpreter of nature, and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as pre­ siding over the thoughts and manners of future generations; as a being superiour to time and place. “His labour is not yet at an end: he must know many languages and many sci­ ences; and, that his stile may be worthy of his thoughts, must, by incessant practice, familiarize to himself every delicacy of speech and grace of harmony.”60

57. Cf. Rambler 36: “Poetry cannot dwell upon the minuter distinctions, by which one species differs from another, without departing from that simplicity of grandeur which fills the imagination; nor dissect the latent qualities of things, without losing its general power of gratifying every mind by recalling its conceptions” (p. 124 above). 58. “The last stage of decay; the last effects of old age” (Dictionary). 59. “General; pervading many particulars” (Dictionary, sense 1). 60. Cf. SJ on the qualifications of an epic poet in the Life of Milton (pp. 688–89 below).



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Chap. XI. Imlac’s narrative continued. A hint on pilgrimage.

Imlac now felt the enthusiastic61 fit, and was proceeding to aggrandize his own profession, when the prince cried out, “Enough! Thou hast convinced me, that no human being can ever be a poet. Proceed with thy narration.” “To be a poet,” said Imlac, “is indeed very difficult.” “So difficult,” returned the prince, “that I will at present hear no more of his labours. Tell me whither you went when you had seen Persia.” “From Persia,” said the poet, “I travelled through Syria, and for three years re­ sided in Palestine, where I conversed with great numbers of the northern and west­ ern nations of Europe; the nations which are now in possession of all power and all knowledge; whose armies are irresistible, and whose fleets command the remotest parts of the globe. When I compared these men with the natives of our own king­ dom, and those that surround us, they appeared almost another order of beings. In their countries it is difficult to wish for any thing that may not be obtained: a thou­ sand arts, of which we never heard, are continually labouring for their convenience and pleasure; and whatever their own climate has denied them is supplied by their commerce.” “By what means,” said the prince, “are the Europeans thus powerful? or why, since they can so easily visit Asia and Africa for trade or conquest, cannot the Asiat­ icks and Africans invade their coasts, plant colonies in their ports, and give laws to their natural princes? The same wind that carries them back would bring us thither.” “They are more powerful, Sir, than we,” answered Imlac, “because they are wiser; knowledge will always predominate over ignorance, as man governs the other animals. But why their knowledge is more than ours, I know not what reason can be given, but the unsearchable will of the Supreme Being.” “When,” said the prince with a sigh, “shall I be able to visit Palestine, and mingle with this mighty confluence of nations? Till that happy moment shall arrive, let me fill up the time with such representations as thou canst give me. I am not igno­ rant of the motive that assembles such numbers in that place, and cannot but con­ sider it as the center of wisdom and piety, to which the best and wisest men of every land must be continually resorting.” “There are some nations,” said Imlac, “that send few visitants to Palestine; for many numerous and learned sects in Europe, concur to censure pilgrimage as super­ stitious, or deride it as ridiculous.” “You know,” said the prince, “how little my life has made me acquainted with 61. “Vehemently hot in any sense” (Dictionary, sense 2).

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diversity of opinions: it will be too long to hear the arguments on both sides; you, that have considered them, tell me the result.” “Pilgrimage,” said Imlac, “like many other acts of piety, may be reasonable or superstitious, according to the principles upon which it is performed. Long journies in search of truth are not commanded. Truth, such as is necessary to the regulation of life, is always found where it is honestly sought. Change of place is no natural cause of the increase of piety, for it inevitably produces dissipation of mind. Yet, since men go every day to view the fields where great actions have been performed, and return with stronger impressions of the event, curiosity of the same kind may naturally dis­ pose us to view that country whence our religion had its beginning; and I believe no man surveys those awful scenes without some confirmation of holy resolutions. That the Supreme Being may be more easily propitiated in one place than in another, is the dream of idle superstition; but that some places may operate upon our own minds in an uncommon manner, is an opinion which hourly experience will justify.62 He who supposes that his vices may be more successfully combated in Palestine, will, per­ haps, find himself mistaken, yet he may go thither without folly: he who thinks they will be more freely pardoned, dishonours at once his reason and religion.” “These,” said the prince, “are European distinctions. I will consider them an­ other time. What have you found to be the effect of knowledge? Are those nations happier than we?” “There is so much infelicity,” said the poet, “in the world, that scarce any man has leisure from his own distresses to estimate the comparative happiness of others. Knowledge is certainly one of the means of pleasure, as is confessed by the natural desire which every mind feels of increasing its ideas.63 Ignorance is mere privation, by which nothing can be produced: it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction; and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget. I am therefore inclined to conclude, that, if nothing counteracts the natural consequence of learning, we grow more happy as our minds take a wider range. “In enumerating the particular comforts of life we shall find many advantages on the side of the Europeans. They cure wounds and diseases with which we lan­ guish and perish. We suffer inclemencies of weather which they can obviate. They have engines for the despatch of many laborious works, which we must perform by manual industry. There is such communication between distant places, that one 62. Cf. SJ’s remark in his Journey to the Western Islands: “That man is little to be envied, whose patriot­ ism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona!” (p. 510 below). 63. “Sir [said SJ to Boswell], a desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind” (Boswell, Life, i.458).



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friend can hardly be said to be absent from another. Their policy64 removes all pub­ lick inconveniencies: they have roads cut through their mountains, and bridges laid upon their rivers. And, if we descend to the privacies of life, their habitations are more commodious, and their possessions are more secure.” “They are surely happy,” said the prince, “who have all these conveniencies, of which I envy none so much as the facility with which separated friends interchange their thoughts.” “The Europeans,” answered Imlac, “are less unhappy than we, but they are not happy. Human life is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.”65 Chap. XII. The story of Imlac continued.

“I am not yet willing,” said the prince, “to suppose that happiness is so par­ simoniously distributed to mortals; nor can believe but that, if I had the choice of life,66 I should be able to fill every day with pleasure. I would injure no man, and should provoke no resentment: I would relieve every distress, and should enjoy the benedictions of gratitude. I would choose my friends among the wise, and my wife among the virtuous; and therefore should be in no danger from treachery, or unkind­ ness. My children should, by my care, be learned and pious, and would repay to my age what their childhood had received. What would dare to molest him who might call on every side to thousands enriched by his bounty, or assisted by his power? And why should not life glide quietly away in the soft reciprocation of protection and reverence? All this may be done without the help of European refinements, which appear by their effects to be rather specious than useful. Let us leave them and persue our journey.” “From Palestine,” said Imlac, “I passed through many regions of Asia; in the more civilized kingdoms as a trader, and among the barbarians of the mountains as a pilgrim. At last I began to long for my native country, that I might repose after my travels, and fatigues, in the places where I had spent my earliest years, and gladden my old companions with the recital of my adventures. Often did I figure to myself those, with whom I had sported away the gay hours of dawning life, sitting round me in its evening, wondering at my tales, and listening to my counsels. 64. “The art of government, chiefly with respect to foreign powers” (Dictionary, sense 1); “Art; prudence; management of affairs; stratagem” (sense 2). 65. A common sentiment in SJ’s writing; cf. Rambler 165: “the utmost felicity which we can ever attain, will be little better than alleviation of misery” (Yale, v.111). 66. SJ planned to entitle Rasselas “The Choice of Life or The History of ______ Prince of Abissinia” (SJ Letters, i.178).

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“When this thought had taken possession of my mind, I considered every mo­ ment as wasted which did not bring me nearer to Abissinia. I hastened into Egypt, and, notwithstanding my impatience, was detained ten months in the contemplation of its ancient magnificence, and in enquiries after the remains of its ancient learn­ ing. I found in Cairo a mixture of all nations; some brought thither by the love of knowledge, some by the hope of gain, and many by the desire of living after their own manner without observation, and of lying hid in the obscurity of multitudes: for, in a city, populous as Cairo, it is possible to obtain at the same time the gratifi­ cations of society, and the secrecy of solitude. “From Cairo I travelled to Suez, and embarked on the Red Sea, passing along the coast till I arrived at the port from which I had departed twenty years before. Here I joined myself to a caravan and re-­entered my native country. “I now expected the caresses of my kinsmen, and the congratulations of my friends, and was not without hope that my father, whatever value he had set upon riches, would own with gladness and pride a son who was able to add to the felicity and honour of the nation. But I was soon convinced that my thoughts were vain. My father had been dead fourteen years, having divided his wealth among my brothers, who were removed to some other provinces. Of my companions the greater part was in the grave, of the rest some could with difficulty remember me, and some consid­ ered me as one corrupted by foreign manners. “A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected. I forgot, after a time, my disappointment, and endeavoured to recommend myself to the nobles of the king­ dom: they admitted me to their tables, heard my story, and dismissed me. I opened a school, and was prohibited to teach. I then resolved to sit down in the quiet of do­ mestick life, and addressed a lady that was fond of my conversation, but rejected my suit, because my father was a merchant. “Wearied at last with solicitation and repulses, I resolved to hide myself for ever from the world, and depend no longer on the opinion or caprice of others. I waited for the time when the gate of the Happy Valley should open, that I might bid farewell to hope and fear: the day came; my performance was distinguished with favour, and I resigned myself with joy to perpetual confinement.” “Hast thou here found happiness at last?” said Rasselas. “Tell me without re­ serve; art thou content with thy condition? or, dost thou wish to be again wandering and inquiring? All the inhabitants of this valley celebrate their lot, and, at the annual visit of the emperour, invite others to partake of their felicity.” “Great prince,” said Imlac, “I shall speak the truth: I know not one of all your attendants who does not lament the hour when he entered this retreat. I am less un­ happy than the rest, because I have a mind replete with images, which I can vary and combine at pleasure. I can amuse my solitude by the renovation of the knowledge which begins to fade from my memory, and by recollection of the accidents of my



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past life. Yet all this ends in the sorrowful consideration, that my acquirements are now useless, and that none of my pleasures can be again enjoyed. The rest, whose minds have no impression but of the present moment, are either corroded by malig­ nant passions, or sit stupid in the gloom of perpetual vacancy.” “What passions can infest those,” said the prince, “who have no rivals? We are in a place where impotence precludes malice, and where all envy is repressed by community of enjoyments.” “There may be community,” said Imlac, “of material possessions, but there can never be community of love or of esteem. It must happen that one will please more than another; he that knows himself despised will always be envious; and still more envious and malevolent, if he is condemned to live in the presence of those who de­ spise him. The invitations, by which they allure others to a state which they feel to be wretched, proceed from the natural malignity of hopeless misery. They are weary of themselves, and of each other, and expect to find relief in new companions. They envy the liberty which their folly has forfeited, and would gladly see all mankind imprisoned like themselves. “From this crime, however, I am wholly free. No man can say that he is wretched by my persuasion. I look with pity on the crowds who are annually soliciting admis­ sion to captivity, and wish that it were lawful for me to warn them of their danger.” “My dear Imlac,” said the prince, “I will open to thee my whole heart. I have long meditated an escape from the Happy Valley. I have examined the mountains on every side, but find myself insuperably barred: teach me the way to break my prison; thou shalt be the companion of my flight, the guide of my rambles, the partner of my fortune, and my sole director in the choice of life.” “Sir,” answered the poet, “your escape will be difficult, and, perhaps, you may soon repent your curiosity. The world, which you figure to yourself smooth and quiet as the lake in the valley, you will find a sea foaming with tempests, and boiling with whirlpools: you will be sometimes overwhelmed by the waves of violence, and sometimes dashed against the rocks of treachery. Amidst wrongs and frauds, com­ petitions and anxieties, you will wish a thousand times for these seats of quiet, and willingly quit hope to be free from fear.” “Do not seek to deter me from my purpose,” said the prince: “I am impatient to see what thou hast seen; and, since thou art thyself weary of the valley, it is evi­ dent, that thy former state was better than this. Whatever be the consequence of my experiment, I am resolved to judge with my own eyes of the various conditions of men, and then to make deliberately my choice of life.” “I am afraid,” said Imlac, “you are hindered by stronger restraints than my per­ suasions; yet, if your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill.”

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Chap. XIII. Rasselas discovers the means of escape.

The prince now dismissed his favourite to rest, but the narrative of wonders and novelties filled his mind with perturbation.67 He revolved all that he had heard, and prepared innumerable questions for the morning. Much of his uneasiness was now removed. He had a friend to whom he could impart his thoughts, and whose experience could assist him in his designs. His heart was no longer condemned to swell with silent vexation. He thought that even the Happy Valley might be endured with such a companion, and that, if they could range the world together, he should have nothing further to desire. In a few days the water was discharged, and the ground dried. The prince and Imlac then walked out together to converse without the notice of the rest. The prince, whose thoughts were always on the wing, as he passed by the gate, said, with a countenance of sorrow, “Why art thou so strong, and why is man so weak?” “Man is not weak,” answered his companion; “knowledge is more than equiva­ lent to force. The master of mechanicks laughs at strength. I can burst the gate, but cannot do it secretly. Some other expedient must be tried.” As they were walking on the side of the mountain, they observed that the conies,68 which the rain had driven from their burrows, had taken shelter among the bushes, and formed holes behind them, tending upwards in an oblique line. “It has been the opinion of antiquity,” said Imlac, “that human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals; let us, therefore, not think ourselves degraded by learning from the coney. We may escape by piercing the mountain in the same di­ rection. We will begin where the summit hangs over the middle part, and labour up­ ward till we shall issue out beyond the prominence.” The eyes of the prince, when he heard this proposal, sparkled with joy. The execution was easy, and the success certain. No time was now lost. They hastened early in the morning to chuse a place proper for their mine.69 They clambered with great fatigue among crags and brambles, and returned without having discovered any part that favoured their design. The second and the third day were spent in the same manner, and with the same frustration. But, on the fourth, they found a small cavern, concealed by a thicket, where they resolved to make their experiment. Imlac procured instruments proper to hew stone and remove earth, and they 67. “Commotion of passions” (Dictionary, sense 5). 68. “A rabbit; an animal that burroughs in the ground” (Dictionary). 69. “A subterranean cavity” (OED).



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fell to their work on the next day with more eagerness than vigour. They were pres­ ently exhausted by their efforts, and sat down to pant upon the grass. The prince, for the moment, appeared to be discouraged. “Sir,” said his companion, “practice will enable us to continue our labour for a longer time; mark, however, how far we have advanced, and you will find that our toil will some time have an end. Great works are performed, not by strength but perseverance:70 yonder palace was raised by single stones, yet you see its height and spaciousness. He that shall walk with vigour three hours a day will pass in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe.” They returned to their work day after day, and, in a short time, found a fissure in the rock, which enabled them to pass far with very little obstruction. This Ras­ selas considered as a good omen. “Do not disturb your mind,” said Imlac, “with other hopes or fears than reason may suggest: if you are pleased with prognosticks of good, you will be terrified likewise with tokens of evil, and your whole life will be a prey to superstition. Whatever facilitates our work is more than an omen, it is a cause of success. This is one of those pleasing surprises which often happen to active resolution. Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.” Chap. XIV. Rasselas and Imlac receive an unexpected visit.

They had now wrought their way to the middle, and solaced their toil with the approach of liberty, when the prince, coming down to refresh himself with air, found his sister Nekayah standing before the mouth of the cavity. He started and stood confused, afraid to tell his design, and yet hopeless to conceal it. A few mo­ ments determined him to repose on her fidelity, and secure her secrecy by a decla­ ration without reserve. “Do not imagine,” said the princess, “that I came hither as a spy: I had long observed from my window, that you and Imlac directed your walk every day towards the same point, but I did not suppose you had any better reason for the preference than a cooler shade, or more fragrant bank; nor followed you with any other design than to partake of your conversation. Since then not suspicion but fondness has de­ tected you, let me not lose the advantage of my discovery. I am equally weary of con­ finement with yourself, and not less desirous of knowing what is done or suffered in the world. Permit me to fly with you from this tasteless tranquility, which will yet grow more loathsome when you have left me. You may deny me to accompany you, but cannot hinder me from following.” The prince, who loved Nekayah above his other sisters, had no inclination to 70. Cf. Rambler 43: “All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are in­ stances of the resistless force of perseverance” (Yale, iii.235).

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refuse her request, and grieved that he had lost an opportunity of shewing his con­ fidence by a voluntary communication. It was therefore agreed that she should leave the valley with them; and that, in the mean time, she should watch, lest any other straggler71 should, by chance or curiosity, follow them to the mountain. At length their labour was at an end; they saw light beyond the prominence, and, issuing to the top of the mountain, beheld the Nile, yet a narrow current, wan­ dering beneath them. The prince looked round with rapture, anticipated all the pleasures of travel, and in thought was already transported beyond his father’s dominions. Imlac, though very joyful at his escape, had less expectation of pleasure in the world, which he had before tried, and of which he had been weary. Rasselas was so much delighted with a wider horizon, that he could not soon be persuaded to return into the valley. He informed his sister that the way was open, and that nothing now remained but to prepare for their departure. Chap. XV. The prince and princess leave the valley, and see many wonders.

The prince and princess had jewels sufficient to make them rich whenever they came into a place of commerce, which, by Imlac’s direction, they hid in their cloaths, and, on the night of the next full moon, all left the valley. The princess was followed only by a single favourite, who did not know whither she was going. They clambered through the cavity, and began to go down on the other side. The princess and her maid turned their eyes towards every part, and, seeing noth­ ing to bound their prospect, considered themselves as in danger of being lost in a dreary vacuity. They stopped and trembled. “I am almost afraid,” said the princess, “to begin a journey of which I cannot perceive an end, and to venture into this im­ mense plain where I may be approached on every side by men whom I never saw.” The prince felt nearly the same emotions, though he thought it more manly to con­ ceal them. Imlac smiled at their terrours,72 and encouraged them to proceed; but the prin­ cess continued irresolute till she had been imperceptibly drawn forward too far to return. In the morning they found some shepherds in the field, who set milk and fruits before them. The princess wondered that she did not see a palace ready for her re­ ception, and a table spread with delicacies; but, being faint and hungry, she drank 71. “A wanderer; a rover; one who forsakes his company; one who rambles without any settled direction” (Dictionary, sense 1). 72. “Fear received” (Dictionary, sense 2).



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the milk and eat73 the fruits, and thought them of a higher flavour than the products of the valley. They travelled forward by easy journeys, being all unaccustomed to toil or dif­ ficulty, and knowing, that though they might be missed, they could not be persued. In a few days they came into a more populous region, where Imlac was diverted with the admiration which his companions expressed at the diversity of manners, stations and employments. Their dress was such as might not bring upon them the suspicion of having any thing to conceal, yet the prince, wherever he came, expected to be obeyed, and the princess was frighted,74 because those that came into her presence did not prostrate themselves before her. Imlac was forced to observe them with great vigilance, lest they should betray their rank by their unusual behaviour, and detained them several weeks in the first village to accustom them to the sight of common mortals. By degrees the royal wanderers were taught to understand that they had for a time laid aside their dignity,75 and were to expect only such regard as liberality and courtesy could procure. And Imlac, having, by many admonitions, prepared them to endure the tumults of a port, and the ruggedness of the commercial race, brought them down to the sea-­coast. The prince and his sister, to whom every thing was new, were gratified equally at all places, and therefore remained for some months at the port without any incli­ nation to pass further. Imlac was content with their stay, because he did not think it safe to expose them, unpractised in the world, to the hazards of a foreign country. At last he began to fear lest they should be discovered, and proposed to fix a day for their departure. They had no pretensions to judge for themselves, and re­ ferred the whole scheme to his direction. He therefore took passage in a ship to Suez; and, when the time came, with great difficulty prevailed on the princess to enter the vessel. They had a quick and prosperous voyage, and from Suez travelled by land to Cairo. Chap. XVI. They enter Cairo, and find every man happy.

As they approached the city, which filled the strangers with astonishment, “This,” said Imlac to the prince, “is the place where travellers and merchants as­ semble from all the corners of the earth. You will here find men of every character,

73. According to SJ’s Dictionary, the past tense of to eat is “ate, or eat.” Cf. p. 231 below. 74. Both to fright and to frighten appear in SJ’s Dictionary. 75. “Rank of elevation” (Dictionary, sense 1).

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and every occupation. Commerce is here honourable: I will act as a merchant, and you shall live as strangers, who have no other end of travel than curiosity; it will soon be observed that we are rich; our reputation will procure us access to all whom we shall desire to know; you will see all the conditions of humanity, and enable yourself at leisure to make your choice of life.” They now entered the town, stunned by the noise, and offended76 by the crowds. Instruction had not yet so prevailed over habit but that they wondered to see themselves pass undistinguished along the street, and met by the lowest of the people without reverence or notice. The princess could not at first bear the thought of being levelled with the vulgar, and, for some days, continued in her chamber, where she was served by her favourite Pekuah as in the palace of the valley. Imlac, who understood traffick, sold part of the jewels the next day, and hired a house, which he adorned with such magnificence, that he was immediately con­ sidered as a merchant of great wealth. His politeness attracted many acquaintance, and his generosity made him courted by many dependants. His table was crowded by men of every nation, who all admired his knowledge, and solicited his favour. His companions, not being able to mix in the conversation, could make no discovery77 of their ignorance or surprise, and were gradually initiated in the world as they gained knowledge of the language. The prince had, by frequent lectures, been taught the use and nature of money; but the ladies could not, for a long time, comprehend what the merchants did with small pieces of gold and silver, or why things of so little use should be received as equivalent to the necessaries of life.78 They studied the language two years, while Imlac was preparing to set before them the various ranks and conditions of mankind. He grew acquainted with all who had any thing uncommon in their fortune or conduct. He frequented the volup­ tuous79 and the frugal, the idle and the busy, the merchants and the men of learning. The prince, being now able to converse with fluency, and having learned the caution necessary to be observed in his intercourse with strangers, began to accom­ pany Imlac to places of resort, and to enter into all assemblies, that he might make his choice of life. For some time he thought choice needless, because all appeared to him equally happy. Wherever he went he met gayety and kindness, and heard the song of joy, or the laugh of carelessness. He began to believe that the world overflowed with univer­ 76. “To assail; to attack” (Dictionary, sense 2). 77. “The act of revealing or disclosing any secret” (Dictionary, sense 2). 78. There was no money in the Happy Valley, nor, according to Lobo’s Voyage, in “Abyssinia, except in the eastern provinces” (Yale, xv.15). 79. “Given to excess of pleasure; luxurious” (Dictionary).



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sal plenty, and that nothing was withheld either from want or merit; that every hand showered liberality, and every heart melted with benevolence: “and who then,” says he, “will be suffered to be wretched?” Imlac permitted the pleasing delusion, and was unwilling to crush the hope of inexperience, till one day, having sat a while silent, “I know not,” said the prince, “what can be the reason that I am more unhappy than any of our friends. I see them perpetually and unalterably chearful, but feel my own mind restless and uneasy. I am unsatisfied with those pleasures which I seem most to court; I live in the crowds of jollity, not so much to enjoy company as to shun myself, and am only loud and merry to conceal my sadness.” “Every man,” said Imlac, “may, by examining his own mind, guess what passes in the minds of others: when you feel that your own gaiety is counterfeit, it may justly lead you to suspect that of your companions not to be sincere. Envy is com­ monly reciprocal. We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself. In the assembly, where you passed the last night, there appeared such spriteliness of air, and volatility of fancy as might have suited beings of an higher order, formed to inhabit serener regions inaccessible to care or sorrow: yet, believe me, prince, there was not one who did not dread the moment when solitude should deliver him to the tyranny of reflection.”80 “This,” said the prince, “may be true of others, since it is true of me; yet, what­ ever be the general infelicity of man, one condition is more happy than another, and wisdom surely directs us to take the least evil in the choice of life.” “The causes of good and evil,” answered Imlac, “are so various and uncer­ tain, so often entangled with each other, so diversified by various relations, and so much subject to accidents which cannot be foreseen, that he who would fix his con­ dition upon incontestable reasons of preference, must live and die enquiring and deliberating.”81 “But surely,” said Rasselas, “the wise men, to whom we listen with reverence and wonder, chose that mode of life for themselves which they thought most likely to make them happy.” “Very few,” said the poet, “live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not

80. Cf. Adventurer 120: “The world, in its best state, is nothing more than a larger assembly of beings, combining to counterfeit happiness which they do not feel, employing every art and contrivance to embellish life, and to hide their real condition from the eyes of one another” (Yale, ii.468). 81. Cf. SJ to Boswell, 21 August 1766: “To prefer one future mode of life to another upon just reasons requires faculties which it has not pleased our Creator to give us” (SJ Letters, i.273).

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always willingly co-­operate;82 and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbour better than his own.” “I am pleased to think,” said the prince, “that my birth has given me at least one advantage over others, by enabling me to determine for myself. I have here the world before me; I will review it at leisure: surely happiness is somewhere to be found.” Chap. XVII. The prince associates with young men of spirit and gaiety.

Rasselas rose next day, and resolved to begin his experiments upon life. “Youth,” cried he, “is the time of gladness: I will join myself to the young men, whose only business is to gratify their desires, and whose time is all spent in a suc­ cession of enjoyments.”83 To such societies he was readily admitted, but a few days brought him back weary and disgusted. Their mirth was without images,84 their laughter without mo­ tive; their pleasures were gross and sensual, in which the mind had no part; their conduct was at once wild and mean; they laughed at order and at law, but the frown of power dejected, and the eye of wisdom abashed them. The prince soon concluded, that he should never be happy in a course of life of which he was ashamed. He thought it unsuitable to a reasonable being to act with­ out a plan, and to be sad or chearful only by chance. “Happiness,” said he, “must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.” But his young companions had gained so much of his regard by their frankness and courtesy, that he could not leave them without warning and remonstrance. “My friends,” said he, “I have seriously considered our manners and our prospects, and find that we have mistaken our own interest. The first years of man must make pro­ vision for the last. He that never thinks never can be wise. Perpetual levity must end in ignorance; and intemperance, though it may fire the spirits for an hour, will make life short or miserable. Let us consider that youth is of no long duration, and that in maturer age, when the enchantments of fancy shall cease, and phantoms of delight dance no more about us, we shall have no comforts but the esteem of wise men, and 82. Cf. Rambler 184: “It is not commonly observed, how much, even of actions considered as particularly subject to choice, is to be attributed to accident . . .” (Yale, v.202). 83. Cf. Sermon 14: “The young and the gay imagine happiness to consist in shew, in merriment and noise, or in a constant succession of amusements, or in the gratification of their appetites, and the frequent repetition of sensual pleasures” (Yale, xv.150). 84. Image: “An idea; a representation of any thing to the mind; a picture drawn in the fancy” (Dictionary, sense 5).



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the means of doing good. Let us, therefore, stop, while to stop is in our power: let us live as men who are sometime to grow old, and to whom it will be the most dreadful of all evils not to count their past years but by follies, and to be reminded of their former luxuriance of health only by the maladies which riot has produced.” They stared a while in silence one upon another, and, at last, drove him away by a general chorus of continued laughter. The consciousness that his sentiments were just, and his intentions kind, was scarcely sufficient to support him against the horrour of derision. But he recovered his tranquility, and persued his search. Chap. XVIII. The prince finds a wise and happy man.

As he was one day walking in the street, he saw a spacious building which all were, by the open doors, invited to enter: he followed the stream of people, and found it a hall or school of declamation, in which professors read lectures to their auditory.85 He fixed his eye upon a sage raised above the rest, who discoursed with great energy on the government of the passions. His look was venerable, his action graceful, his pronunciation clear, and his diction elegant. He shewed, with great strength of sentiment, and variety of illustration, that human nature is degraded and debased, when the lower faculties predominate over the higher; that when fancy, the parent of passion, usurps the dominion of the mind, nothing ensues but the natural effect of unlawful government, perturbation and confusion; that she betrays the for­ tresses of the intellect to rebels, and excites her children to sedition against reason their lawful sovereign. He compared reason to the sun, of which the light is con­ stant, uniform, and lasting; and fancy to a meteor, of bright but transitory lustre, ir­ regular in its motion, and delusive in its direction.86 He then communicated the various precepts given from time to time for the conquest of passion, and displayed the happiness of those who had obtained the im­ portant victory, after which man is no longer the slave of fear, nor the fool of hope; is no more emaciated by envy, inflamed by anger, emasculated by tenderness, or de­ pressed by grief; but walks on calmly through the tumults or the privacies of life, as the sun persues alike his course through the calm or the stormy sky.87 85. “An audience; a collection of persons assembled to hear” (Dictionary, sense 1). 86. Cf. Rambler 125, where SJ describes the imagination as “a licentious and vagrant faculty, unsuscep­ tible of limitations, and impatient of restraint” (p. 79 above). 87. George Bennet’s New Translation of the Morals of Seneca (1745) uses similar language: “Good men . . . suffer many inconveniences; but virtue like the sun, still goes on with her work, and finishes her course, let the air be never so cloudy” (p. 100).

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He enumerated many examples of heroes immovable by pain or pleasure,88 who looked with indifference on those modes or accidents to which the vulgar give the names of good and evil. He exhorted his hearers to lay aside their prejudices, and arm themselves against the shafts of malice or misfortune, by invulnerable patience;89 concluding, that this state only was happiness, and that this happiness was in every one’s power. Rasselas listened to him with the veneration due to the instructions of a su­ perior being, and, waiting for him at the door, humbly implored the liberty of visit­ ing so great a master of true wisdom. The lecturer hesitated a moment, when Ras­ selas put a purse of gold into his hand, which he received with a mixture of joy and wonder. “I have found,” said the prince, at his return to Imlac, “a man who can teach all that is necessary to be known, who, from the unshaken throne of rational fortitude, looks down on the scenes of life changing beneath him.90 He speaks, and attention watches his lips. He reasons, and conviction closes his periods. This man shall be my future guide: I will learn his doctrines, and imitate his life.” “Be not too hasty,” said Imlac, “to trust, or to admire, the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels, but they live like men.”91 Rasselas, who could not conceive how any man could reason so forcibly with­ out feeling the cogency of his own arguments, paid his visit in a few days, and was denied admission. He had now learned the power of money, and made his way by a piece of gold to the inner apartment, where he found the philosopher in a room half darkened, with his eyes misty, and his face pale. “Sir,” said he, “you are come at a time when all human friendship is useless; what I suffer cannot be remedied, what I have lost cannot be supplied. My daughter, my only daughter, from whose tender­ ness I expected all the comforts of my age, died last night of a fever. My views, my purposes, my hopes are at an end: I am now a lonely being disunited from society.” “Sir,” said the prince, “mortality is an event by which a wise man can never be surprised: we know that death is always near, and it should therefore always be expected.”92 “Young man,” answered the philosopher, “you speak like one that has never felt the pangs of separation.” “Have you then forgot the precepts,” said Rasse­ 88. In Epictetus his Morals, Stanhope singles out Hercules, Theseus, Diogenes, and Socrates as “illus­ trious heroes,” whose steadfastness in various crises “recommend[s] their examples to posterity” (p. 108). 89. Bennet’s Seneca praises the power of “invincible patience” (p. 98). 90. SJ may allude to the proem of Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, Book II, lines 7–10, which he quoted in Rambler 117 (Yale, iv.80). 91. Cf. Le Grand’s statement in Man without Passion that the disciples of the stoics “are accounted but asses, only because they would approach too near the perfection of angels” (p. 5). 92. Stanhope’s Epictetus his Morals says of a man trained up in stoic thinking: “when a child is snatch’d away from him, he is prepared for the stroke, and cannot be surprised and confounded with passion” (p. 68).



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las, “which you so powerfully enforced? Has wisdom no strength to arm the heart against calamity? Consider, that external things are naturally variable, but truth and reason are always the same.”93 “What comfort,” said the mourner, “can truth and reason afford me? of what effect are they now, but to tell me, that my daughter will not be restored?” The prince, whose humanity would not suffer him to insult misery with re­ proof, went away convinced of the emptiness of rhetorical sound, and the inefficacy of polished periods and studied sentences. Chap. XIX. A glimpse of pastoral life.

He was still eager upon the same enquiry; and, having heard of a hermit, that lived near the lowest cataract of the Nile, and filled the whole country with the fame of his sanctity, resolved to visit his retreat, and enquire whether that felicity, which publick life could not afford, was to be found in solitude; and whether a man, whose age and virtue made him venerable, could teach any peculiar art of shunning evils, or enduring them. Imlac and the princess agreed to accompany him, and, after the necessary preparations, they began their journey. Their way lay through fields, where shep­ herds tended their flocks, and the lambs were playing upon the pasture. “This,” said the poet, “is the life which has been often celebrated for its innocence and quiet: let us pass the heat of the day among the shepherds’ tents, and know whether all our searches are not to terminate in pastoral simplicity.” The proposal pleased them, and they induced the shepherds, by small presents and familiar questions, to tell their opinion of their own state: they were so rude and ignorant, so little able to compare the good with the evil of the occupation, and so indistinct in their narratives and descriptions, that very little could be learned from them. But it was evident that their hearts were cankered with discontent; that they considered themselves as condemned to labour for the luxury of the rich, and looked up with stupid94 malevolence toward those that were placed above them. The princess pronounced with vehemence, that she would never suffer these envious savages to be her companions, and that she should not soon be desirous of seeing any more specimens of rustick happiness;95 but could not believe that all the 93. “That man should never suffer his happiness to depend upon external circumstances, is one of the chief precepts of the Stoical philosophy,” says SJ in Rambler 6; but he adds, “such extravagance of philosophy . . . is overthrown by the experience of every hour . . .” (Yale, iii.30). 94. Irrational (OED, sense 3c). 95. Cf. Idler 71, in which Dick Shifter experiences the same disappointment in “rusticks” (Yale, ii.220– 24).

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accounts of primeval pleasures were fabulous,96 and was yet in doubt whether life had any thing that could be justly preferred to the placid gratifications of fields and woods. She hoped that the time would come, when with a few virtuous and elegant companions, she should gather flowers planted by her own hand, fondle the lambs of her own ewe, and listen, without care, among brooks and breezes, to one of her maidens reading in the shade. Chap. XX. The danger of prosperity.

On the next day they continued their journey, till the heat compelled them to look round for shelter. At a small distance they saw a thick wood, which they no sooner entered than they perceived that they were approaching the habitations of men. The shrubs were diligently cut away to open walks where the shades were dark­ est; the boughs of opposite trees were artificially interwoven; seats of flowery turf were raised in vacant spaces, and a rivulet, that wantoned along the side of a winding path, had its banks sometimes opened into small basons, and its stream sometimes obstructed by little mounds of stone heaped together to increase its murmurs.97 They passed slowly through the wood, delighted with such unexpected ac­ commodations, and entertained each other with conjecturing what, or who, he could be, that, in those rude and unfrequented regions, had leisure and art for such harmless luxury. As they advanced, they heard the sound of musick, and saw youths and virgins dancing in the grove; and, going still further, beheld a stately palace built upon a hill surrounded with woods. The laws of eastern hospitality allowed them to enter, and the master welcomed them like a man liberal and wealthy. He was skilful enough in appearances soon to discern that they were no com­ mon guests, and spread his table with magnificence. The eloquence of Imlac caught his attention, and the lofty courtesy of the princess excited his respect. When they offered to depart he entreated their stay, and was the next day still more unwilling to dismiss them than before. They were easily persuaded to stop, and civility grew up in time to freedom and confidence. The prince now saw all the domesticks chearful, and all the face of nature smiling round the place, and could not forbear to hope that he should find here what he was seeking; but when he was congratulating the master upon his possessions, he answered with a sigh, “My condition has indeed the appearance of happiness, 96. Fictional. 97. As G. B. Hill noted in his edition of Rasselas (1887), SJ is “describing the landscape-­gardening that was in fashion in his time” (p. 179).



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but appearances are delusive. My prosperity puts my life in danger; the Bassa98 of Egypt is my enemy, incensed only by my wealth and popularity. I have been hitherto protected against him by the princes of the country; but, as the favour of the great is uncertain, I know not how soon my defenders may be persuaded to share the plun­ der with the Bassa. I have sent my treasures into a distant country, and, upon the first alarm, am prepared to follow them. Then will my enemies riot99 in my mansion, and enjoy the gardens which I have planted.” They all joined in lamenting his danger, and deprecating his exile; and the princess was so much disturbed with the tumult of grief and indignation, that she retired to her apartment. They continued with their kind inviter a few days longer, and then went forward to find the hermit. Chap. XXI. The happiness of solitude. The hermit’s history.

They came on the third day, by the direction of the peasants, to the hermit’s cell: it was a cavern in the side of a mountain, over-­shadowed with palm-­trees; at such a distance from the cataract, that nothing more was heard than a gentle uniform murmur,100 such as composed the mind to pensive meditation, especially when it was assisted by the wind whistling among the branches. The first rude essay of na­ ture had been so much improved by human labour, that the cave contained several apartments, appropriated to different uses, and often afforded lodging to travellers, whom darkness or tempests happened to overtake. The hermit sat on a bench at the door, to enjoy the coolness of the evening. On one side lay a book with pens and papers, on the other mechanical instruments of vari­ ous kinds. As they approached him unregarded, the princess observed that he had not the countenance of a man that had found, or could teach, the way to happiness. They saluted him with great respect, which he repaid like a man not unaccus­ tomed to the forms of courts. “My children,” said he, “if you have lost your way, you shall be willingly supplied with such conveniences for the night as this cavern will afford. I have all that nature requires, and you will not expect delicacies in a hermit’s cell.” They thanked him, and entering, were pleased with the neatness and regu­ larity of the place. The hermit set flesh and wine before them, though he fed only

98. In his Dictionary, SJ defines bashaw (“sometimes written bassa”) as “A title of honour and command among the Turks, the viceroy of a province; the general of an army.” 99. “To revel; to be dissipated in luxurious enjoyment” (Dictionary, sense 1). 100. SJ may allude to the traditional tale that the cataracts of the Nile were so loud that they made nearby dwellers deaf; see A Voyage to Abyssinia (Yale, xv.3).

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upon fruits and water. His discourse was chearful without levity, and pious without enthusiasm.101 He soon gained the esteem of his guests, and the princess repented of her hasty censure. At last Imlac began thus: “I do not now wonder that your reputation is so far extended; we have heard at Cairo of your wisdom, and came hither to implore your direction for this young man and maiden in the choice of life.” “To him that lives well,” answered the hermit, “every form of life is good; nor can I give any other rule for choice, than to remove from all apparent evil.” “He will remove most certainly from evil,” said the prince, “who shall devote himself to that solitude which you have recommended by your example.” “I have indeed lived fifteen years in solitude,” said the hermit, “but have no desire that my example should gain any imitators. In my youth I professed arms, and was raised by degrees to the highest military rank. I have traversed wide countries at the head of my troops, and seen many battles and sieges. At last, being disgusted by the preferment of a younger officer, and feeling that my vigour was beginning to decay, I resolved to close my life in peace, having found the world full of snares, dis­ cord, and misery. I had once escaped from the persuit of the enemy by the shelter of this cavern, and therefore chose it for my final residence. I employed artificers to form it into chambers, and stored it with all that I was likely to want. “For some time after my retreat, I rejoiced like a tempest-­beaten sailor at his entrance into the harbour, being delighted with the sudden change of the noise and hurry of war, to stillness and repose. When the pleasure of novelty went away, I em­ ployed my hours in examining the plants which grow in the valley, and the minerals which I collected from the rocks. But that enquiry is now grown tasteless and irk­ some. I have been for some time unsettled and distracted: my mind is disturbed with a thousand perplexities of doubt, and vanities of imagination, which hourly prevail upon me, because I have no opportunities of relaxation or diversion. I am sometimes ashamed to think that I could not secure myself from vice, but by retiring from the exercise of virtue,102 and begin to suspect that I was rather impelled by resentment, than led by devotion, into solitude. My fancy riots in scenes of folly, and I lament that I have lost so much, and have gained so little. In solitude, if I escape the ex­ ample of bad men, I want likewise the counsel and conversation of the good. I have been long comparing the evils with the advantages of society, and resolve to return into the world to morrow. The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout.” 101. “A vain belief of private revelation; a vain confidence of divine favour or communication” (Dictionary, sense 1). 102. Cf. Milton’s declaration in Areopagitica, “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue” (Complete Prose Works of John Milton [1953–82], ii.515).



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They heard his resolution with surprise, but, after a short pause, offered to conduct him to Cairo. He dug up a considerable treasure which he had hid among the rocks, and accompanied them to the city, on which, as he approached it, he gazed with rapture.103 Chap. XXII. The happiness of a life led according to nature.104

Rasselas went often to an assembly of learned men, who met at stated times to unbend their minds, and compare their opinions. Their manners were somewhat coarse, but their conversation was instructive, and their disputations acute, though sometimes too violent, and often continued till neither controvertist remembered upon what question they began. Some faults were almost general among them: every one was desirous to dictate to the rest, and every one was pleased to hear the genius or knowledge of another depreciated. In this assembly Rasselas was relating his interview with the hermit, and the wonder with which he heard him censure a course of life which he had so delib­ erately chosen, and so laudably followed. The sentiments of the hearers were vari­ ous. Some were of opinion, that the folly of his choice had been justly punished by condemnation to perpetual perseverance.105 One of the youngest among them, with great vehemence, pronounced him an hypocrite. Some talked of the right of society to the labour of individuals, and considered retirement as a desertion of duty.106 Others readily allowed, that there was a time when the claims of the publick were satisfied, and when a man might properly sequester himself, to review his life, and purify his heart.107 One, who appeared more affected with the narrative than the rest, thought it likely, that the hermit would, in a few years, go back to his retreat, and, perhaps, if shame did not restrain, or death intercept him, return once more from his retreat 103. Cf. Rambler 207: “every man . . . consoles himself with the hope of change; if . . . he is secluded from the world, he listens with a beating heart to distant noises, longs to mingle with living beings, and resolves to take hereafter his fill of diversions” (p. 13 above). 104. Zeno of Citium designated a “life in agreement with nature . . . the same as a virtuous life . . . the goal towards which nature guides us” (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 2 vols., trans. R. D. Hicks [1979], ii.195). 105. “Persistance in any design or attempt; steadiness in pursuits; constancy in progress. It is applied alike to good and ill” (Dictionary, sense 1). 106. In Idler 19, SJ entertains the argument that “mankind is one vast republick, where every individual receives many benefits from the labours of others, which, by laboring in his turn for others, he is obliged to repay” (Yale, ii.59). 107. In Idler 38, SJ says, “retirement ought rarely to be permitted, except to those who have paid their due proportion to society” (Yale, ii.119).

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into the world: “For the hope of happiness,” said he, “is so strongly impressed, that the longest experience is not able to efface it. Of the present state, whatever it be, we feel, and are forced to confess, the misery, yet, when the same state is again at a dis­ tance, imagination paints it as desirable. But the time will surely come, when desire will be no longer our torment, and no man shall be wretched but by his own fault.”108 “This,” said a philosopher, who had heard him with tokens of great impa­ tience, “is the present condition of a wise man. The time is already come, when none are wretched but by their own fault. Nothing is more idle, than to enquire after hap­ piness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach. The way to be happy is to live according to nature, in obedience to that universal and unalterable law with which every heart is originally impressed; which is not written on it by precept, but engraven by destiny, not instilled by education but infused at our nativity. He that lives according to nature will suffer nothing from the delusions of hope, or importu­ nities of desire: he will receive and reject with equability of temper; and act or suffer as the reason of things shall alternately prescribe. Other men may amuse themselves with subtle definitions, or intricate raciocination. Let them learn to be wise by easier means: let them observe the hind of the forest, and the linnet of the grove: let them consider the life of animals, whose motions are regulated by instinct; they obey their guide and are happy. Let us therefore, at length, cease to dispute, and learn to live; throw away the incumbrance of precepts, which they who utter them with so much pride and pomp do not understand, and carry with us this simple and intelligible maxim, That deviation from nature is deviation from happiness.” When he had spoken, he looked round him with a placid air, and enjoyed the consciousness of his own beneficence. “Sir,” said the prince, with great modesty, “as I, like all the rest of mankind, am desirous of felicity, my closest attention has been fixed upon your discourse: I doubt not the truth of a position which a man so learned has so confidently advanced. Let me only know what it is to live according to nature.” “When I find young men so humble and so docile,” said the philosopher, “I can deny them no information which my studies have enabled me to afford. To live according to nature, is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and un­ changeable scheme of universal felicity; to co-­operate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system of things.” The prince soon found that this was one of the sages whom he should under­ stand less as he heard him longer. He therefore bowed and was silent, and the phi­

108. So SJ concludes in Adventurer 120 after proposing that “the miseries of life, may, perhaps, afford some proof of a future state” (Yale, ii.469).



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losopher, supposing him satisfied, and the rest vanquished, rose up and departed with the air of a man that had co-­operated with the present system. Chap. XXIII. The prince and his sister divide between them the work of observation.

Rasselas returned home full of reflexions, doubtful how to direct his future steps. Of the way to happiness he found the learned and simple equally ignorant; but, as he was yet young, he flattered himself that he had time remaining for more ex­ periments, and further enquiries. He communicated to Imlac his observations and his doubts, but was answered by him with new doubts, and remarks that gave him no comfort. He therefore discoursed more frequently and freely with his sister, who had yet the same hope with himself, and always assisted him to give some reason why, though he had been hitherto frustrated, he might succeed at last. “We have hitherto,” said she, “known but little of the world: we have never yet been either great or mean. In our own country, though we had royalty, we had no power, and in this we have not yet seen the private recesses of domestick peace. Imlac favours not our search, lest we should in time find him mistaken. We will divide the task between us: you shall try what is to be found in the splendour of courts, and I will range the shades of humbler life. Perhaps command and authority may be the supreme blessings, as they afford most opportunities of doing good: or, perhaps, what this world can give may be found in the modest habitations of middle fortune; too low for great designs, and too high for penury and distress.” Chap. XXIV. The prince examines the happiness of high stations.

Rasselas applauded the design, and appeared next day with a splendid retinue at the court of the Bassa. He was soon distinguished for his magnificence, and ad­ mitted, as a prince whose curiosity had brought him from distant countries, to an intimacy with the great officers, and frequent conversation with the Bassa himself. He was at first inclined to believe, that the man must be pleased with his own condition, whom all approached with reverence, and heard with obedience, and who had the power to extend his edicts to a whole kingdom. “There can be no plea­ sure,” said he, “equal to that of feeling at once the joy of thousands all made happy by wise administration. Yet, since, by the law of subordination, this sublime delight can be in one nation but the lot of one, it is surely reasonable to think that there is some satisfaction more popular109 and accessible, and that millions can hardly be 109. “Relating to . . . ordinary people . . . democratic” (OED).

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subjected to the will of a single man, only to fill his particular breast with incommu­ nicable content.” These thoughts were often in his mind, and he found no solution of the diffi­ culty. But as presents and civilities gained him more familiarity, he found that almost every man who stood high in employment hated all the rest, and was hated by them, and that their lives were a continual succession of plots and detections, stratagems and escapes, faction and treachery. Many of those, who surrounded the Bassa, were sent only to watch and report his conduct; every tongue was muttering censure and every eye was searching for a fault. At last the letters of revocation110 arrived, the Bassa was carried in chains to Constantinople, and his name was mentioned no more. “What are we now to think of the prerogatives of power,” said Rasselas to his sister; “is it without any efficacy to good? or, is the subordinate degree only dan­ gerous, and the supreme safe and glorious? Is the Sultan the only happy man in his dominions? or, is the Sultan himself subject to the torments of suspicion, and the dread of enemies?” In a short time the second Bassa was deposed. The Sultan, that had advanced him, was murdered by the Janisaries,111 and his successor had other views and dif­ ferent favourites. Chap. XXV. The princess persues her enquiry with more diligence than success.

The princess, in the mean time, insinuated112 herself into many families; for there are few doors, through which liberality, joined with good humour, cannot find its way. The daughters of many houses were airy113 and chearful, but Nekayah had been too long accustomed to the conversation of Imlac and her brother to be much pleased with childish levity and prattle which had no meaning. She found their thoughts narrow, their wishes low, and their merriment often artificial. Their pleasures, poor as they were, could not be preserved pure, but were embittered by petty competitions and worthless emulation. They were always jealous of the beauty of each other; of a quality to which solicitude can add nothing, and from which de­ traction can take nothing away. Many were in love with triflers like themselves, and many fancied that they were in love when in truth they were only idle. Their affection

110. “Recall of a representative or ambassador from abroad” (OED, sense 3a). 111. “One of the guards of the Turkish king” (Dictionary). 112. To insinuate: “To push gently into favour or regard: commonly with the reciprocal pronoun” (Dictionary, sense 2). 113. “Gay; sprightly; full of mirth; vivacious; lively; spirited; light of heart” (Dictionary, sense 8).



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was seldom fixed on sense or virtue, and therefore seldom ended but in vexation. Their grief, however, like their joy, was transient; every thing floated in their mind unconnected with the past or future, so that one desire easily gave way to another, as a second stone cast into the water effaces and confounds the circles of the first. With these girls she played as with inoffensive animals, and found them proud of her countenance,114 and weary of her company. But her purpose was to examine more deeply, and her affability easily per­ suaded the hearts that were swelling with sorrow to discharge their secrets in her ear: and those whom hope flattered, or prosperity delighted, often courted her to partake their pleasures. The princess and her brother commonly met in the evening in a private summer-­house on the bank of the Nile, and related to each other the occurrences of the day. As they were sitting together, the princess cast her eyes upon the river that flowed before her. “Answer,” said she, “great father of waters, thou that rollest thy floods through eighty nations, to the invocations of the daughter of thy native king. Tell me if thou waterest, through all thy course, a single habitation from which thou dost not hear the murmurs of complaint?”115 “You are then,” said Rasselas, “not more successful in private houses than I have been in courts.” “I have, since the last partition of our provinces,”116 said the princess, “enabled myself to enter familiarly into many families, where there was the fairest show of prosperity and peace, and know not one house that is not haunted by some fury that destroys its quiet. “I did not seek ease among the poor, because I concluded that there it could not be found.117 But I saw many poor whom I had supposed to live in affluence. Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances: it is often concealed in splen­ dour, and often in extravagance. It is the care of a very great part of mankind to con­ ceal their indigence from the rest: they support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for the morrow. “This, however, was an evil, which, though frequent, I saw with less pain, be­ cause I could relieve it. Yet some have refused my bounties; more offended with my quickness to detect their wants, than pleased with my readiness to succour them:118 114. “Patronage; appearance of favour; appearance on any side; support” (Dictionary, sense 6). 115. In his Life of Thomas Gray, SJ criticizes the poet’s similar address to a river in Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College: “His supplication to father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or tosses the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames has no better way of knowing than himself ” (Yale, xxiii.1464). 116. “The proper office or business of any one” (Dictionary, sense 2). 117. Cf. Rambler 57: “mankind seem unanimous . . . in abhorring [poverty] as destructive to happiness” (Yale, iii.306). 118. While a relatively impoverished student at Oxford, SJ “threw . . . away with indignation” a new pair of shoes left on his doorstep by a wealthier student (Boswell, Life, i.77).

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and others, whose exigencies compelled them to admit my kindness, have never been able to forgive their benefactress. Many, however, have been sincerely grateful without the ostentation of gratitude, or the hope of other favours.” Chap. XXVI. The princess continues her remarks upon private life.

Nekayah perceiving her brother’s attention fixed, proceeded in her narrative. “In families, where there is or is not poverty, there is commonly discord: if a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, a great family, a family likewise is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions. An unpractised observer, expects the love of parents and children to be constant and equal; but this kindness seldom continues beyond the years of infancy: in a short time the children become rivals to their parents.119 Benefits are allayed120 by reproaches, and gratitude debased by envy. “Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavours to appro­ priate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temp­ tation, betray each other to their children; thus some place their confidence in the father, and some in the mother, and, by degrees, the house is filled with artifices and feuds.121 “The opinions of children and parents, of the young and the old, are naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope and despondence, of expectation and ex­ perience, without crime or folly on either side. The colours of life in youth and age appear different, as the face of nature in spring and winter. And how can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? “Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives. The old man trusts wholly to slow contrivance and gradual pro­ gression: the youth expects to force his way by genius, vigour, and precipitance. The old man pays regard to riches, and the youth reverences virtue. The old man deifies prudence: the youth commits himself to magnanimity and chance. The young man, who intends no ill, believes that none is intended, and therefore acts with openness and candour:122 but his father, having suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, and too often allured to practice it. Age looks with anger on the temerity of 119. Cf. Rambler 55, where a daughter asks Mr. Rambler, “by any arguments or persuasions” to “make mothers ashamed of rivalling their children” (Yale iv.299). 120. To allay: “To join any thing to another, so as to abate its predominant qualities” (Dictionary, sense 2). 121. In her Anecdotes (1786), Hester Thrale Piozzi comments that SJ and his brother Nathaniel “did not . . . much delight in each other’s company, being always rivals for the mother’s fondness; and many of the severe reflections on domestic life in Rasselas took their source from its author’s keen recollections of the time passed in his early years” ( Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. G. B. HIll, 2 vols. [1897], i.150–51). 122. “Sweetness of temper; purity of mind; openness; ingenuity; kindness” (Dictionary).



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youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age. Thus parents and chil­ dren, for the greatest part, live on to love less and less: and, if those whom nature has thus closely united are the torments of each other, where shall we look for ten­ derness and consolation?” “Surely,” said the prince, “you must have been unfortunate in your choice of acquaintance: I am unwilling to believe, that the most tender of all relations is thus impeded in its effects by natural necessity.” “Domestick discord,” answered she, “is not inevitably and fatally123 necessary; but yet is not easily avoided. We seldom see that a whole family is virtuous: the good and evil cannot well agree; and the evil can yet less agree with one another: even the virtuous fall sometimes to variance, when their virtues are of different kinds and tending to extremes. In general, those parents have most reverence who most de­ serve it: for he that lives well cannot be despised. “Many other evils infest private life. Some are the slaves of servants whom they have trusted with their affairs. Some are kept in continual anxiety to the caprice of rich relations, whom they cannot please, and dare not offend. Some husbands are imperious, and some wives perverse: and, as it is always more easy to do evil than good, though the wisdom or virtue of one can very rarely make many happy, the folly or vice of one may often make many miserable.” “If such be the general effect of marriage,” said the prince, “I shall, for the future, think it dangerous to connect my interest with that of another, lest I should be unhappy by my partner’s fault.” “I have met,” said the princess, “with many who live single for that reason; but I never found that their prudence ought to raise envy. They dream away their time without friendship, without fondness, and are driven to rid themselves of the day, for which they have no use, by childish amusements, or vicious delights. They act as beings under the constant sense of some known inferiority, that fills their minds with rancour, and their tongues with censure. They are peevish at home, and ma­ levolent abroad; and, as the out-­laws of human nature, make it their business and their pleasure to disturb that society which debars them from its privileges. To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude: it is not retreat but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.”124 “What then is to be done?” said Rasselas; “the more we enquire, the less we 123. “By the decree of fate; by inevitable and invincible determination” (Dictionary, sense 2). 124. Cf. SJ’s other comments on marriage: essays on pp. 102–17 above; Rambler 115 (Yale, iii.247); Bos­ well, Life, ii.457, 128; SJ Letters, i.214; and his funeral sermon for his wife (p. 352 below).

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can resolve. Surely he is most likely to please himself that has no other inclination to regard.” Chap. XXVII. Disquisition upon greatness.

The conversation had a short pause. The prince, having considered his sis­ ter’s observations, told her, that she had surveyed life with prejudice, and sup­ posed misery where she did not find it. “Your narrative,” says he, “throws yet a darker gloom upon the prospects of futurity: the predictions of Imlac were but faint sketches of the evils painted by Nekayah. I have been lately convinced that quiet is not the daughter of grandeur, or of power: that her presence is not to be bought by wealth, nor enforced by conquest. It is evident, that as any man acts in a wider compass, he must be more exposed to opposition from enmity or miscarriage from chance; whoever has many to please or to govern, must use the ministry of many agents, some of whom will be wicked, and some ignorant; by some he will be mis­ led, and by others betrayed. If he gratifies one he will offend another: those that are not favoured will think themselves injured; and, since favours can be conferred but upon few, the greater number will be always discontented.” “The discontent,” said the princess, “which is thus unreasonable, I hope that I shall always have spirit to despise, and you, power to repress.” “Discontent,” answered Rasselas, “will not always be without reason under the most just or vigilant administration of publick affairs. None, however attentive, can always discover that merit which indigence or faction may happen to obscure;125 and none, however powerful, can always reward it. Yet, he that sees inferiour desert ad­ vanced above him, will naturally impute that preference to partiality or caprice; and, indeed, it can scarcely be hoped that any man, however magnanimous by nature, or exalted by condition, will be able to persist for ever in fixed and inexorable justice of distribution: he will sometimes indulge his own affections, and sometimes those of his favourites; he will permit some to please him who can never serve him; he will discover in those whom he loves qualities which in reality they do not possess; and to those, from whom he receives pleasure, he will in his turn endeavour to give it. Thus will recommendations sometimes prevail which were purchased by money, or by the more destructive bribery of flattery and servility. “He that has much to do will do something wrong, and of that wrong must suf­ fer the consequences; and, if it were possible that he should always act rightly, yet 125. Cf. London, ll. 176–77: “This mournful truth is ev’ry where confess’d, / Slow rises worth, by poverty depress’d.”



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when such numbers are to judge of his conduct, the bad will censure and obstruct him by malevolence, and the good sometimes by mistake. “The highest stations cannot therefore hope to be the abodes of happiness, which I would willingly believe to have fled from thrones and palaces to seats of humble privacy and placid obscurity. For what can hinder the satisfaction, or inter­ cept the expectations, of him whose abilities are adequate to his employments, who sees with his own eyes the whole circuit of his influence, who chooses by his own knowledge all whom he trusts, and whom none are tempted to deceive by hope or fear? Surely he has nothing to do but to love and to be loved, to be virtuous and to be happy.” “Whether perfect happiness would be procured by perfect goodness,” said Nekayah, “this world will never afford an opportunity of deciding. But this, at least, may be maintained, that we do not always find visible happiness in proportion to visible virtue. All natural and almost all political evils, are incident alike to the bad and good: they are confounded in the misery of a famine, and not much distin­ guished in the fury of a faction; they sink together in a tempest, and are driven together from their country by invaders. All that virtue can afford is quietness of conscience, a steady prospect of a happier state;126 this may enable us to endure ca­ lamity with patience; but remember that patience must suppose pain.” Chap. XXVIII. Rasselas and Nekayah continue their conversation.

“Dear princess,” said Rasselas, “you fall into the common errours of exaggera­ tory declamation, by producing, in a familiar127 disquisition, examples of national calamities, and scenes of extensive misery, which are found in books rather than in the world, and which, as they are horrid, are ordained to be rare. Let us not imagine evils which we do not feel, nor injure life by misrepresentations. I cannot bear that querelous eloquence which threatens every city with a siege like that of Jerusalem,128 that makes famine attend on every flight of locusts, and suspends pestilence on the wing of every blast that issues from the south. “On necessary and inevitable evils, which overwhelm kingdoms at once, all disputation is vain: when they happen they must be endured. But it is evident, that these bursts of universal distress are more dreaded than felt: thousands and ten 126. Cf. SJ to Boswell, 3 July 1778: “There is but one solid basis of happiness; and that is, the reasonable hope of a happy futurity” (SJ Letters, iii.119). 127. “Unceremonious; free, as among persons long acquainted” (Dictionary, sense 3). 128. The eyewitness Flavius Josephus describes as unprecedented in the ancient world the famine and slaughter inflicted on the Jews by the Emperor Titus at the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE (History of the Jewish War, v–­v i).

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thousands flourish in youth, and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than domestick evils, and share the same pleasures and vexations whether their kings are mild or cruel, whether the armies of their country persue their enemies, or retreat before them. While courts are disturbed with intestine competitions, and ambassadours are negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still plies his anvil, and the husbandman drives his plow forward; the necessaries of life are required and ob­ tained, and the successive business of the seasons continues to make its wonted revolutions.129 “Let us cease to consider what, perhaps, may never happen, and what, when it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation. We will not endeavour to modify the motions of the elements, or to fix the destiny of kingdoms. It is our business to consider what beings like us may perform; each labouring for his own happiness, by promoting within his circle, however narrow, the happiness of others. “Marriage is evidently the dictate of nature; men and women were made to be companions of each other, and therefore I cannot be persuaded but that marriage is one of the means of happiness.”130 “I know not,” said the princess, “whether marriage be more than one of the innumerable modes of human misery. When I see and reckon the various forms of connubial infelicity, the unexpected causes of lasting discord, the diversities of tem­ per, the oppositions of opinion, the rude collisions of contrary desire where both are urged by violent impulses, the obstinate contests of disagreeing virtues, where both are supported by consciousness of good intention, I am sometimes disposed to think with the severer casuists131 of most nations, that marriage is rather permitted than approved, and that none, but by the instigation of a passion too much indulged, entangle themselves with indissoluble compacts.” “You seem to forget,” replied Rasselas, “that you have, even now, represented celibacy as less happy than marriage. Both conditions may be bad, but they can­ not both be worst. Thus it happens when wrong opinions are entertained, that they mutually destroy each other, and leave the mind open to truth.” “I did not expect,” answered the princess, “to hear that imputed to falshood which is the consequence only of frailty. To the mind, as to the eye, it is difficult to compare with exactness objects vast in their extent, and various in their parts. Where we see or conceive the whole at once we readily note the discriminations 129. Cf. the couplet SJ contributed to Goldsmith’s The Traveller (1764): “How small, of all that human hearts endure, / That part which laws or kings can cause or cure” (ll. 429–30). 130. On one occasion, however, SJ argued, “It is so far from being natural for a man and a woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilized society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together” (Boswell, Life, ii.165). 131. “One that studies and settles cases of conscience” (Dictionary).



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and decide the preference: but of two systems, of which neither can be surveyed by any human being in its full compass of magnitude and multiplicity of complication, where is the wonder, that judging of the whole by parts, I am alternately affected by one and the other as either presses on my memory or fancy? We differ from our­ selves just as we differ from each other, when we see only part of the question, as in the multifarious relations of politicks and morality: but when we perceive the whole at once, as in numerical computations, all agree in one judgment, and none ever varies his opinion.” “Let us not add,” said the prince, “to the other evils of life, the bitterness of controversy, nor endeavour to vie with each other in subtilties of argument. We are employed in a search, of which both are equally to enjoy the success, or suffer by the miscarriage. It is therefore fit that we assist each other. You surely conclude too hastily from the infelicity of marriage against its institution; will not the misery of life prove equally that life cannot be the gift of heaven? The world must be peopled by marriage, or peopled without it.” “How the world is to be peopled,” returned Nekayah, “is not my care, and needs not be yours. I see no danger that the present generation should omit to leave successors behind them: we are not now enquiring for the world, but for ourselves.” Chap. XXIX. The debate on marriage continued.

“The good of the whole,” says Rasselas, “is the same with the good of all its parts. If marriage be best for mankind it must be evidently best for individuals, or a permanent and necessary duty must be the cause of evil, and some must be inevi­ tably sacrificed to the convenience of others. In the estimate which you have made of the two states, it appears that the incommodities of a single life are, in a great mea­ sure, necessary and certain, but those of the conjugal state accidental and avoidable. “I cannot forbear to flatter myself that prudence and benevolence will make marriage happy. The general folly of mankind is the cause of general complaint. What can be expected but disappointment and repentance from a choice made in the immaturity of youth, in the ardour of desire, without judgment, without fore­ sight, without enquiry after conformity of opinions, similarity of manners, rectitude of judgment, or purity of sentiment. “Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but vol­

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untary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty. “From those early marriages proceeds likewise the rivalry of parents and chil­ dren: the son is eager to enjoy the world before the father is willing to forsake it, and there is hardly room at once for two generations. The daughter begins to bloom be­ fore the mother can be content to fade, and neither can forbear to wish for the ab­ sence of the other. “Surely all these evils may be avoided by that deliberation and delay which prudence prescribes to irrevocable choice. In the variety and jollity of youthful plea­ sures life may be well enough supported without the help of a partner. Longer time will increase experience, and wider views will allow better opportunities of enquiry and selection: one advantage, at least, will be certain; the parents will be visibly older than their children.” “What reason cannot collect,”132 said Nekayah, “and what experiment has not yet taught, can be known only from the report of others. I have been told that late marriages are not eminently happy. This is a question too important to be neglected, and I have often proposed it to those, whose accuracy of remark, and comprehen­ siveness of knowledge, made their suffrages133 worthy of regard. They have generally determined, that it is dangerous for a man and woman to suspend their fate upon each other, at a time when opinions are fixed, and habits are established; when friendships have been contracted on both sides, when life has been planned into method, and the mind has long enjoyed the contemplation of its own prospects. “It is scarcely possible that two travelling through the world under the conduct of chance, should have been both directed to the same path, and it will not often happen that either will quit the track which custom has made pleasing. When the desultory levity of youth has settled into regularity, it is soon succeeded by pride ashamed to yield, or obstinacy delighting to contend. And even though mutual esteem produces mutual desire to please, time itself, as it modifies unchangeably the external mien, determines likewise the direction of the passions, and gives an in­ flexible rigidity to the manners. Long customs are not easily broken: he that attempts to change the course of his own life, very often labours in vain; and how shall we do that for others which we are seldom able to do for ourselves?” “But surely,” interposed the prince, “you suppose the chief motive of choice forgotten or neglected. Whenever I shall seek a wife, it shall be my first question, whether she be willing to be led by reason?” “Thus it is,” said Nekayah, “that philosophers are deceived. There are a thou­ 132. “To infer as a consequence; to gather from premises” (Dictionary, sense 4). 133. “Vote; voice given in a controverted point” (Dictionary).



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sand familiar disputes which reason never can decide; questions that elude inves­ tigation, and make logick ridiculous; cases where something must be done, and where little can be said. Consider the state of mankind, and enquire how few can be supposed to act upon any occasions, whether small or great, with all the reasons of action present to their minds.134 Wretched would be the pair above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to adjust by reason every morning all the minute detail of a domestick day. “Those who marry at an advanced age, will probably escape the encroach­ ments of their children; but, in diminution of this advantage, they will be likely to leave them, ignorant and helpless, to a guardian’s mercy: or, if that should not hap­ pen, they must at least go out of the world before they see those whom they love best either wise or great. “From their children, if they have less to fear, they have less also to hope, and they lose, without equivalent the joys of early love and the convenience of uniting with manners pliant, and minds susceptible of new impressions, which might wear away their dissimilitudes by long cohabitation, as soft bodies, by continual attrition, conform their surfaces to each other.135 “I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children, and those who marry early with their partners.” “The union of these two affections,” said Rasselas, “would produce all that could be wished. Perhaps there is a time when marriage might unite them, a time neither too early for the father, nor too late for the husband.” “Every hour,” answered the princess, “confirms my prejudice in favour of the position so often uttered by the mouth of Imlac, ‘That nature sets her gifts on the right hand and on the left.’ Those conditions, which flatter hope and attract desire, are so constituted, that, as we approach one, we recede from another. There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either. This is often the fate of long con­ sideration; he does nothing who endeavours to do more than is allowed to humanity. Flatter not yourself with contrarieties of pleasure. Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile.”136

134. “How rarely reason guides the stubborn choice” (Vanity of Human Wishes, l. 11). 135. A metaphor from physics; cf. Rambler 207: “All attraction is increased by the approach of the attract­ ing body” (p. 13 above). 136. Cf. Rambler 178: “Providence has fixed the limits of human enjoyment by immoveable bound­ aries, and has set different gratifications at such a distance from each other, that no art or power can bring them together” (Yale, v.173).

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Chap. XXX. Imlac enters, and changes the conversation.

Here Imlac entered, and interrupted them. “Imlac,” said Rasselas, “I have been taking from the princess the dismal history of private life, and am almost dis­ couraged from further search.” “It seems to me,” said Imlac, “that while you are making the choice of life, you neglect to live. You wander about a single city, which, however large and diversified, can now afford few novelties, and forget that you are in a country, famous among the earliest monarchies for the power and wisdom of its inhabitants; a country where the sciences first dawned that illuminate the world, and beyond which the arts cannot be traced of civil society or domestick life.137 “The old Egyptians have left behind them monuments of industry and power before which all European magnificence is confessed to fade away. The ruins of their architecture are the schools of modern builders, and from the wonders which time has spared we may conjecture, though uncertainly, what it has destroyed.” “My curiosity,” said Rasselas, “does not very strongly lead me to survey piles of stone, or mounds of earth; my business is with man.138 I came hither not to mea­ sure fragments of temples, or trace choaked aqueducts, but to look upon the various scenes of the present world.” “The things that are now before us,” said the princess, “require attention, and deserve it.139 What have I to do with the heroes or the monuments of ancient times? with times which never can return, and heroes, whose form of life was different from all that the present condition of mankind requires or allows.” “To know any thing,” returned the poet, “we must know its effects; to see men we must see their works, that we may learn what reason has dictated, or passion has incited, and find what are the most powerful motives of action. To judge rightly of the present we must oppose it to the past; for all judgment is comparative,140 and of the future nothing can be known. The truth is, that no mind is much employed upon the present: recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.141

137. “We find in the records of antiquity, no nation celebrated more early for carrying all arts to perfection than the inhabitants of Egypt” (The Preceptor [3rd. ed., 1758], ii.393). 138. “The proper study of mankind is man,” Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, ii.2. Cf. Idler 97: “He that would travel for the entertainment of others, should remember that the great object of remark is human life” (Yale, ii.300). 139. Cf. Paradise Lost, Viii.192–94: “to know / That which before us lies in daily life, / Is the prime wis­ dom.” This passage is quoted in Dictionary under “to know” (sense 2) and “life” (sense 11). 140. Cf. Preface to Shakespeare: “nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been compared with other works of the same kind” (p. 425 below). 141. Cf. Rambler 203: “The time present is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate en­



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Our passions are joy and grief, love and hatred, hope and fear. Of joy and grief the past is the object, and the future of hope and fear; even love and hatred respect the past, for the cause must have been before the effect. “The present state of things is the consequence of the former, and it is natural to inquire what were the sources of the good that we enjoy, or of the evil that we suf­ fer. If we act only for ourselves, to neglect the study of history is not prudent: if we are entrusted with the care of others, it is not just. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may properly be charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it. “There is no part of history so generally useful as that which relates the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement of reason, the successive advances of science,142 the vicissitudes of learning and ignorance, which are the light and dark­ ness of thinking beings, the extinction and resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the intellectual world.143 If accounts of battles and invasions are peculiarly the business of princes, the useful or elegant arts are not to be neglected; those who have kingdoms to govern, have understandings to cultivate. “Example is always more efficacious than precept. A soldier is formed in war, and a painter must copy pictures. In this, contemplative life has the advantage: great actions are seldom seen, but the labours of art are always at hand for those who desire to know what art has been able to perform. “When the eye or the imagination is struck with any uncommon work the next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was performed. Here begins the true use of such contemplation; we enlarge our comprehension by new ideas, and perhaps recover some art lost to mankind, or learn what is less perfectly known in our own country. At least we compare our own with former times, and either re­ joice at our improvements, or, what is the first motion towards good, discover our defects.” “I am willing,” said the prince, “to see all that can deserve my search.” “And I,” said the princess, “shall rejoice to learn something of the manners of antiquity.” “The most pompous144 monument of Egyptian greatness, and one of the most bulky works of manual industry,” said Imlac, “are the pyramids; fabricks raised be­ fore the time of history, and of which the earliest narratives afford us only uncertain traditions. Of these the greatest is still standing, very little injured by time.”

joyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation” (Yale, v.291); also see Rambler 41 (Yale, iii.221). 142. “Knowledge” (Dictionary, sense 1). 143. In “An Account of the Harleian Library” (1742), SJ extols the importance of studying “the intellec­ tual revolutions of the world” (see Yale, xx.80–81). 144. “Splendid; magnificent; grand” (Dictionary).

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“Let us visit them to morrow,” said Nekayah. “I have often heard of the pyra­ mids, and shall not rest, till I have seen them within and without with my own eyes.” Chap. XXXI. They visit the pyramids.

The resolution being thus taken, they set out the next day. They laid tents upon their camels, being resolved to stay among the pyramids till their curiosity was fully satisfied. They travelled gently, turned aside to every thing remarkable, stopped from time to time and conversed with the inhabitants, and observed the various ap­ pearances of towns ruined and inhabited, of wild and cultivated nature. When they came to the Great Pyramid they were astonished at the extent of the base, and the height of the top. Imlac explained to them the principles upon which the pyramidal form was chosen for a fabrick intended to co-­extend its duration with that of the world: he showed that its gradual diminution gave it such stability, as de­ feated all the common attacks of the elements, and could scarcely be overthrown by earthquakes themselves, the least resistible of natural violence. A concussion that should shatter the pyramid would threaten the dissolution of the continent. They measured all its dimensions, and pitched their tents at its foot. Next day they prepared to enter its interiour apartments, and having hired the common guides climbed up to the first passage, when the favourite of the princess, looking into the cavity, stepped back and trembled. “Pekuah,” said the princess, “of what art thou afraid?” “Of the narrow entrance,” answered the lady, “and of the dread­ ful gloom. I dare not enter a place which must surely be inhabited by unquiet souls. The original possessors of these dreadful vaults will start up before us, and, perhaps, shut us in for ever.” She spoke, and threw her arms round the neck of her mistress. “If all your fear be of apparitions,” said the prince, “I will promise you safety: there is no danger from the dead; he that is once buried will be seen no more.” “That the dead are seen no more,” said Imlac, “I will not undertake to maintain against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages, and of all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which, perhaps, prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth: those, that never heard of one another, would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience can make credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers can very little weaken the general evidence, and some who deny it with their tongues confess it by their fears.145 “Yet I do not mean to add new terrours to those which have already seized 145. SJ took such testimony seriously and was himself undecided about the reality of ghosts (see Bos­ well, Life, iii.230 and iv.94).



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upon Pekuah. There can be no reason why spectres should haunt the pyramid more than other places, or why they should have power or will to hurt innocence and purity. Our entrance is no violation of their privileges; we can take nothing from them, how then can we offend them?” “My dear Pekuah,” said the princess, “I will always go before you, and Imlac shall follow you. Remember that you are the companion of the princess of Abis­ sinia.” “If the princess is pleased that her servant should die,” returned the lady, “let her command some death less dreadful than enclosure in this horrid cavern. You know I dare not disobey you: I must go if you command me; but, if I once enter, I never shall come back.” The princess saw that her fear was too strong for expostulation or reproof, and embracing her, told her that she should stay in the tent till their return. Pekuah was yet not satisfied, but entreated the princess not to persue so dreadful a purpose, as that of entering the recesses of the pyramid. “Though I cannot teach courage,” said Nekayah, “I must not learn cowardise; nor leave at last undone what I came hither only to do.” Chap. XXXII. They enter the pyramid.

Pekuah descended to the tents, and the rest entered the pyramid: they passed through the galleries, surveyed the vaults of marble, and examined the chest in which the body of the founder is supposed to have been reposited. They then sat down in one of the most spacious chambers to rest a while before they attempted to return. “We have now,” said Imlac, “gratified our minds with an exact view of the greatest work of man, except the wall of China.”146 “Of the wall it is very easy to assign the motives. It secured a wealthy and timo­ rous nation from the incursions of barbarians, whose unskilfulness in arts made it easier for them to supply their wants by rapine than by industry, and who from time to time poured in upon the habitations of peaceful commerce, as vultures descend upon domestick fowl. Their celerity and fierceness made the wall necessary, and their ignorance made it efficacious. “But for the pyramids no reason has ever been given adequate to the cost and labour of the work. The narrowness of the chambers proves that it could afford no 146. Speaking to Boswell, SJ “expressed a particular enthusiasm with respect to visiting the wall of China.” He disputed Boswell’s fears of irresponsibility in making the long journey, saying “ ‘there would be a lustre reflected’ ” upon Boswell’s children if their father visited that distant monument (Boswell, Life, iii.269). For further information on SJ’s knowledge of China, see his Life of Confucius (Yale, xix.220–29).

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retreat from enemies, and treasures might have been reposited at far less expence with equal security. It seems to have been erected only in compliance with that hun­ ger of imagination which preys incessantly upon life, and must be always appeased by some employment. Those who have already all that they can enjoy, must enlarge their desires. He that has built for use, till use is supplied, must begin to build for vanity, and extend his plan to the utmost power of human performance, that he may not be soon reduced to form another wish. “I consider this mighty structure as a monument of the insufficiency of human enjoyments.147 A king, whose power is unlimited, and whose treasures surmount all real and imaginary wants, is compelled to solace, by the erection of a pyramid, the satiety of dominion and tastelesness of pleasures, and to amuse the tediousness of declining life, by seeing thousands labouring without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid upon another. Whoever thou art, that, not content with a moderate condition, imaginest happiness in royal magnificence, and dreamest that command or riches can feed the appetite of novelty with perpetual gratifications, survey the pyramids, and confess thy folly!”148 Chap. XXXIII. The princess meets with an unexpected misfortune.

They rose up, and returned through the cavity at which they had entered, and the princess prepared for her favourite a long narrative of dark labyrinths, and costly rooms, and of the different impressions which the varieties of the way had made upon her. But, when they came to their train, they found every one silent and de­ jected: the men discovered shame and fear in their countenances, and the women were weeping in the tents. What had happened they did not try to conjecture, but immediately enquired. “You had scarcely entered into the pyramid,” said one of the attendants, “when a troop of Arabs rushed upon us: we were too few to resist them, and too slow to es­ cape. They were about to search the tents, set us on our camels, and drive us along before them, when the approach of some Turkish horsemen put them to flight; but they seized the lady Pekuah with her two maids, and carried them away: the Turks are now persuing them by our instigation, but I fear they will not be able to over­ take them.” The princess was overpowered with surprise and grief. Rasselas, in the first 147. Cf. Rambler 207: “Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment, that we are always impatient of the present” (p. 12 above). 148. Regarding the pyramids as monuments to vanity is as old as Pliny the Elder (Natural History, 36.xvi.75–76).



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heat of his resentment, ordered his servants to follow him, and prepared to persue the robbers with his sabre in his hand. “Sir,” said Imlac, “what can you hope from violence or valour? the Arabs are mounted on horses trained to battle and retreat; we have only beasts of the burthen. By leaving our present station we may lose the princess, but cannot hope to regain Pekuah.” In a short time the Turks returned, having not been able to reach the enemy. The princess burst out into new lamentations, and Rasselas could scarcely forbear to reproach them with cowardice; but Imlac was of opinion, that the escape of the Arabs was no addition to their misfortune, for, perhaps, they would have killed their captives rather than have resigned them. Chap. XXXIV. They return to Cairo without Pekuah.

There was nothing to be hoped from longer stay. They returned to Cairo re­ penting of their curiosity, censuring the negligence of the government, lamenting their own rashness which had neglected to procure a guard, imagining many expe­ dients by which the loss of Pekuah might have been prevented, and resolving to do something for her recovery, though none could find any thing proper to be done. Nekayah retired to her chamber, where her women attempted to comfort her, by telling her that all had their troubles, and that lady Pekuah had enjoyed much happiness in the world for a long time, and might reasonably expect a change of for­ tune. They hoped that some good would befal her wheresoever she was, and that their mistress would find another friend who might supply her place. The princess made them no answer, and they continued the form of condo­ lence, not much grieved in their hearts that the favourite was lost. Next day the prince presented to the Bassa a memorial of the wrong which he had suffered, and a petition for redress. The Bassa threatened to punish the robbers, but did not attempt to catch them, nor, indeed, could any account or description be given by which he might direct the persuit. It soon appeared that nothing would be done by authority. Governors, being accustomed to hear of more crimes than they can punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set themselves at ease by indiscriminate negligence, and presently forget the request when they lose sight of the petitioner. Imlac then endeavoured to gain some intelligence by private agents. He found many who pretended to an exact knowledge of all the haunts of the Arabs, and to regular correspondence with their chiefs, and who readily undertook the recovery of Pekuah. Of these, some were furnished with money for their journey, and came back no more; some were liberally paid for accounts which a few days discovered to be false. But the princess would not suffer any means, however improbable, to be left

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untried. While she was doing something she kept her hope alive. As one expedient failed, another was suggested; when one messenger returned unsuccessful, another was despatched to a different quarter. Two months had now passed, and of Pekuah nothing had been heard; the hopes which they had endeavoured to raise in each other grew more languid, and the princess, when she saw nothing more to be tried, sunk149 down inconsolable in hopeless dejection. A thousand times she reproached herself with the easy compli­ ance by which she permitted her favourite to stay behind her. “Had not my fond­ ness,” said she, “lessened my authority, Pekuah had not dared to talk of her terrours. She ought to have feared me more than spectres. A severe look would have overpow­ ered her; a peremptory command would have compelled obedience. Why did fool­ ish indulgence prevail upon me? Why did I not speak and refuse to hear?” “Great princess,” said Imlac, “do not reproach yourself for your virtue, or consider that as blameable by which evil has accidentally been caused. Your ten­ derness for the timidity of Pekuah was generous and kind. When we act according to our duty, we commit the event to him by whose laws our actions are governed, and who will suffer none to be finally punished for obedience. When, in prospect of some good, whether natural or moral, we break the rules prescribed us, we with­ draw from the direction of superiour wisdom, and take all consequences upon our­ selves. Man cannot so far know the connexion of causes and events, as that he may venture to do wrong in order to do right. When we persue our end by lawful means, we may always console our miscarriage by the hope of future recompense. When we consult only our own policy, and attempt to find a nearer way to good, by overleap­ ing the settled boundaries of right and wrong, we cannot be happy even by success, because we cannot escape the consciousness of our fault; but, if we miscarry, the disappointment is irremediably embittered. How comfortless is the sorrow of him, who feels at once the pangs of guilt, and the vexation of calamity which guilt has brought upon him? “Consider, princess, what would have been your condition, if the lady Pekuah had intreated to accompany you, and, being compelled to stay in the tents, had been carried away; or how would you have born the thought, if you had forced her into the pyramid, and she had died before you in agonies of terrour.” “Had either happened,” said Nekayah, “I could not have endured life till now: I should have been tortured to madness by the remembrance of such cruelty, or must have pined away in abhorrence of myself.” “This at least,” said Imlac, “is the present reward of virtuous conduct, that no unlucky consequence can oblige us to repent it.” 149. In his Grammar of the English Tongue, SJ notes this and other past tense forms that coincide with their past participles (Yale, xviii.327).



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Chap. XXXV. The princess languishes for want of Pekuah.

Nekayah, being thus reconciled to herself, found that no evil is insupport­ able but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong. She was, from that time, delivered from the violence of tempestuous sorrow, and sunk into silent pensiveness and gloomy tranquillity. She sat from morning to evening recollecting all that had been done or said by her Pekuah, treasured up with care every trifle on which Pekuah had set an accidental value, and which might recal to mind any little incident or careless conversation. The sentiments of her, whom she now expected to see no more, were treasured in her memory as rules of life, and she deliberated to no other end than to conjecture on any occasion what would have been the opinion and counsel of Pekuah. The women, by whom she was attended, knew nothing of her real condition,150 and therefore she could not talk to them but with caution and reserve. She began to remit her curiosity, having no great care to collect notions which she had no conve­ nience151 of uttering. Rasselas endeavoured first to comfort and afterwards to divert her; he hired musicians, to whom she seemed to listen, but did not hear them, and procured masters to instruct her in various arts, whose lectures, when they visited her again, were again to be repeated. She had lost her taste of pleasure and her am­ bition of excellence. And her mind, though forced into short excursions, always re­ curred to the image of her friend. Imlac was every morning earnestly enjoined to renew his enquiries, and was asked every night whether he had yet heard of Pekuah, till not being able to return the princess the answer that she desired, he was less and less willing to come into her presence. She observed his backwardness, and commanded him to attend her. “You are not,” said she, “to confound impatience with resentment, or to suppose that I charge you with negligence, because I repine at your unsuccessfulness. I do not much wonder at your absence; I know that the unhappy are never pleasing, and that all naturally avoid the contagion of misery. To hear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy; for who would cloud by adventitious grief the short gleams of gaiety which life allows us? or who, that is struggling under his own evils, will add to them the miseries of another? “The time is at hand, when none shall be disturbed any longer by the sighs of Nekayah: my search after happiness is now at an end. I am resolved to retire from the world with all its flatteries and deceits, and will hide myself in solitude, without any other care than to compose my thoughts, and regulate my hours by a constant suc­ 150. “Rank” (Dictionary, sense 6). 151. “Fitness of time or place” (Dictionary, sense 4).

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cession of innocent occupations, till, with a mind purified from all earthly desires, I shall enter into that state, to which all are hastening, and in which I hope again to enjoy the friendship of Pekuah.” “Do not entangle your mind,” said Imlac, “by irrevocable determinations,152 nor increase the burthen of life by a voluntary accumulation of misery: the weari­ ness of retirement153 will continue or increase when the loss of Pekuah is forgotten. That you have been deprived of one pleasure is no very good reason for rejection of the rest.” “Since Pekuah was taken from me,” said the princess, “I have no pleasure to reject or to retain. She that has no one to love or trust has little to hope. She wants the radical principle of happiness. We may, perhaps, allow that what satisfaction this world can afford, must arise from the conjunction of wealth, knowledge and goodness: wealth is nothing but as it is bestowed, and knowledge nothing but as it is communicated: they must therefore be imparted to others, and to whom could I now delight to impart them? Goodness affords the only comfort which can be en­ joyed without a partner, and goodness may be practised in retirement.” “How far solitude may admit goodness, or advance it, I shall not,” replied Imlac, “dispute at present. Remember the confession of the pious hermit. You will wish to return into the world, when the image of your companion has left your thoughts.” “That time,” said Nekayah, “will never come. The generous frankness, the modest obsequiousness,154 and the faithful secrecy of my dear Pekuah, will always be more missed, as I shall live longer to see vice and folly.” “The state of a mind oppressed with a sudden calamity,” said Imlac, “is like that of the fabulous inhabitants of the new created earth, who, when the first night came upon them, supposed that day never would return.155 When the clouds of sorrow gather over us, we see nothing beyond them, nor can imagine how they will be dispelled: yet a new day succeeded to the night, and sorrow is never long with­ out a dawn of ease. But they who restrain themselves from receiving comfort, do as the savages would have done, had they put out their eyes when it was dark. Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and some­ thing acquired. To lose much at once is inconvenient to either, but while the vital powers remain uninjured, nature will find the means of reparation. Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye, and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach in­ 152. SJ wrote to Hester Thrale Piozzi, “All unnecessary vows are folly” (SJ Letters, ii.31) and often re­ peated this belief, because “they are made without sufficient regard to the variations of life” (Yale, vii.267). 153. “Private way of life” (Dictionary, sense 2). 154. “Obedience; compliance” (Dictionary). 155. Cf. SJ’s Preface to his Dictionary, where lexicographers who pursue perfection are compared to “the first inhabitants of Arcadia” chasing the sun (p. 411 below).



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creasing in magnitude. Do not suffer life to stagnate; it will grow muddy for want of motion:156 commit yourself again to the current of the world; Pekuah will vanish by degrees; you will meet in your way some other favourite, or learn to diffuse yourself in general conversation.” “At least,” said the prince, “do not despair before all remedies have been tried: the enquiry after the unfortunate lady is still continued, and shall be carried on with yet greater diligence, on condition that you will promise to wait a year for the event, without any unalterable resolution.” Nekayah thought this a reasonable demand, and made the promise to her brother, who had been advised by Imlac to require it. Imlac had, indeed, no great hope of regaining Pekuah, but he supposed, that if he could secure the interval of a year, the princess would be then in no danger of a cloister. Chap. XXXVI. Pekuah is still remembered. The progress of sorrow.

Nekayah, seeing that nothing was omitted for the recovery of her favourite, and having, by her promise, set her intention of retirement at a distance, began imper­ ceptibly to return to common cares and common pleasures. She rejoiced without her own consent at the suspension of her sorrows, and sometimes caught herself with indignation in the act of turning away her mind from the remembrance of her, whom yet she resolved never to forget. She then appointed a certain hour of the day for meditation on the merits and fondness of Pekuah, and for some weeks retired constantly at the time fixed, and re­ turned with her eyes swollen and her countenance clouded. By degrees she grew less scrupulous, and suffered any important and pressing avocation to delay the tribute of daily tears. She then yielded to less occasions; sometimes forgot what she was indeed afraid to remember, and, at last, wholly released herself from the duty of periodical affliction. Her real love of Pekuah was yet not diminished. A thousand occurrences brought her back to memory, and a thousand wants, which nothing but the con­ fidence of friendship can supply, made her frequently regretted. She, therefore, solicited Imlac never to desist from enquiry, and to leave no art of intelligence un­ tried, that, at least, she might have the comfort of knowing that she did not suffer by negligence or sluggishness. “Yet what,” said she, “is to be expected from our persuit of happiness, when we find the state of life to be such, that happiness itself is the cause of misery? Why should we endeavour to attain that, of which the possession 156. Cf. Rambler 47, on alleviating sorrow (p. 30 above).

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cannot be secured? I shall henceforward fear to yield my heart to excellence, how­ ever bright, or to fondness, however tender, lest I should lose again what I have lost in Pekuah.” Chap. XXXVII. The Princess hears news of Pekuah.

In seven months, one of the messengers, who had been sent away upon the day when the promise was drawn from the princess, returned, after many unsuccessful rambles, from the borders of Nubia,157 with an account that Pekuah was in the hands of an Arab chief, who possessed a castle or fortress on the extremity of Egypt. The Arab, whose revenue was plunder, was willing to restore her, with her two atten­ dants, for two hundred ounces of gold. The price was no subject of debate. The princess was in extasies when she heard that her favourite was alive, and might so cheaply be ransomed. She could not think of delaying for a moment Pekuah’s happiness or her own, but entreated her brother to send back the messenger with the sum required. Imlac, being con­ sulted, was not very confident of the veracity of the relator, and was still more doubt­ ful of the Arab’s faith, who might, if he were too liberally trusted, detain at once the money and the captives. He thought it dangerous to put themselves in the power of the Arab, by going into his district, and could not expect that the Rover158 would so much expose himself as to come into the lower country, where he might be seized by the forces of the Bassa. It is difficult to negotiate where neither will trust. But Imlac, after some de­ liberation, directed the messenger to propose that Pekuah should be conducted by ten horsemen to the monastery of St. Anthony,159 which is situated in the deserts of Upper-­Egypt, where she should be met by the same number, and her ransome should be paid. That no time might be lost, as they expected that the proposal would not be refused, they immediately began their journey to the monastery; and, when they arrived, Imlac went forward with the former messenger to the Arab’s fortress. Ras­ selas was desirous to go with them, but neither his sister nor Imlac would consent. The Arab, according to the custom of his nation, observed the laws of hospitality with great exactness to those who put themselves into his power, and, in a few days, 157. “Nubia is bounded on the north by Upper [southernmost] Egypt . . . on the east by the Red Sea, on the south by Aethiopia [or Abyssinia]” (Bowen, Geography, ii.396). 158. “A robber; a pirate” (Dictionary, sense 3). 159. Traditionally called the first Christian monk, Anthony established his Coptic monastery in the fourth century.



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brought Pekuah with her maids, by easy journeys, to their place appointed, where receiving the stipulated price, he restored her with great respect to liberty and her friends, and undertook to conduct them back towards Cairo beyond all danger of robbery or violence. The princess and her favourite embraced each other with transport too violent to be expressed, and went out together to pour the tears of tenderness in secret, and exchange professions of kindness and gratitude. After a few hours they returned into the refectory160 of the convent, where, in the presence of the prior and his breth­ ren, the prince required of Pekuah the history of her adventures. Chap. XXXVIII. The adventures of the lady Pekuah.

“At what time, and in what manner, I was forced away,” said Pekuah, “your servants have told you. The suddenness of the event struck me with surprise, and I was at first rather stupified than agitated with any passion of either fear or sorrow. My confusion was encreased by the speed and tumult of our flight while we were fol­ lowed by the Turks, who, as it seemed, soon despaired to overtake us, or were afraid of those whom they made a shew of menacing. “When the Arabs saw themselves out of danger they slackened their course, and, as I was less harassed by external violence, I began to feel more uneasiness in my mind. After some time we stopped near a spring shaded with trees in a pleasant meadow, where we were set upon the ground, and offered such refreshments as our masters were partaking. I was suffered to sit with my maids apart from the rest, and none attempted to comfort or insult us. Here I first began to feel the full weight of my misery. The girls sat weeping in silence, and from time to time looked on me for succour. I knew not to what condition we were doomed, nor could conjecture where would be the place of our captivity, or whence to draw any hope of deliverance. I was in the hands of robbers and savages, and had no reason to suppose that their pity was more than their justice, or that they would forbear the gratification of any ardour of desire, or caprice of cruelty. I, however, kissed my maids, and endeavoured to pacify them by remarking, that we were yet treated with decency, and that, since we were now carried beyond persuit, there was no danger of violence to our lives. “When we were to be set again on horseback, my maids clung round me, and refused to be parted, but I commanded them not to irritate those who had us in their power. We travelled the remaining part of the day through an unfrequented and pathless country, and came by moonlight to the side of a hill, where the rest of the 160. Dining hall.

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troop was stationed. Their tents were pitched, and their fires kindled, and our chief was welcomed as a man much beloved by his dependants. “We were received into a large tent, where we found women who had attended their husbands in the expedition. They set before us the supper which they had pro­ vided, and I eat161 it rather to encourage my maids than to comply with any appetite of my own. When the meat162 was taken away they spread the carpets for repose. I was weary, and hoped to find in sleep that remission of distress which nature sel­ dom denies. Ordering myself therefore to be undrest, I observed that the women looked very earnestly upon me, not expecting, I suppose, to see me so submissively attended. When my upper vest was taken off, they were apparently struck with the splendour of my cloaths, and one of them timorously laid her hand upon the em­ broidery. She then went out, and, in a short time, came back with another woman, who seemed to be of higher rank, and greater authority. She did, at her entrance, the usual act of reverence, and, taking me by the hand, placed me in a smaller tent, spread with finer carpets, where I spent the night quietly with my maids. “In the morning, as I was sitting on the grass, the chief of the troop came towards me. I rose up to receive him, and he bowed with great respect. ‘Illustrious lady,’ said he, ‘my fortune is better than I had presumed to hope; I am told by my women, that I have a princess in my camp.’ ‘Sir,’ answered I, ‘your women have de­ ceived themselves and you; I am not a princess, but an unhappy stranger who in­ tended soon to have left this country, in which I am now to be imprisoned for ever.’ ‘Whoever, or whencesoever, you are,’ returned the Arab, ‘your dress, and that of your servants, show your rank to be high, and your wealth to be great. Why should you, who can so easily procure your ransome, think yourself in danger of perpetual captivity? The purpose of my incursions is to encrease my riches, or more properly to gather tribute. The sons of Ishmael are the natural and hereditary lords of this part of the continent,163 which is usurped by late invaders, and low-­born tyrants, from whom we are compelled to take by the sword what is denied to justice. The violence of war admits no distinction; the lance that is lifted at guilt and power will sometimes fall on innocence and gentleness.’ “ ‘How little,’ said I, ‘did I expect that yesterday it should have fallen upon me.’ “ ‘Misfortunes,’ answered the Arab, ‘should always be expected. If the eye of hostility could learn reverence or pity, excellence like yours had been exempt from injury. But the angels of affliction spread their toils alike for the virtuous and the wicked, for the mighty and the mean. Do not be disconsolate; I am not one of the 161. Past tense; see p. 196, n. 73, above. 162. “Food in general” (Dictionary, sense 2). 163. Ishmael, son of Abraham, is the traditional ancestor of the Arab peoples (Genesis 16:​11–15 and 21:9–21). Bowen mentions their belief in their entitlement to plunder (Geography, ii.126).



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lawless and cruel rovers of the desart; I know the rules of civil life; I will fix your ransome, give a pasport to your messenger, and perform my stipulation with nice punctuality.’164 “You will easily believe that I was pleased with his courtesy; and finding that his predominant passion was desire of money, I began now to think my danger less, for I knew that no sum would be thought too great for the release of Pekuah. I told him that he should have no reason to charge me with ingratitude, if I was used with kindness, and that any ransome, which could be expected for a maid of common rank, would be paid, but that he must not persist to rate me as a princess. He said, he would consider what he should demand, and then, smiling, bowed and retired. “Soon after the women came about me, each contending to be more officious165 than the other, and my maids themselves were served with reverence. We travelled onward by short journeys. On the fourth day the chief told me, that my ransome must be two hundred ounces of gold, which I not only promised him, but told him, that I would add fifty more, if I and my maids were honourably treated. “I never knew the power of gold before. From that time I was the leader of the troop. The march of every day was longer or shorter as I commanded, and the tents were pitched where I chose to rest. We now had camels and other conveniencies for travel, my own women were always at my side, and I amused myself with observing the manners of the vagrant166 nations, and with viewing remains of ancient edifices with which these deserted countries appear to have been, in some distant age, lav­ ishly embellished. “The chief of the band was a man far from illiterate: he was able to travel by the stars or the compass, and had marked in his erratick expeditions such places as are most worthy the notice of a passenger.167 He observed to me, that buildings are always best preserved in places little frequented, and difficult of access: for, when once a country declines from its primitive splendour, the more inhabitants are left, the quicker ruin will be made. Walls supply stones more easily than quarries, and palaces and temples will be demolished to make stables of granate, and cottages of porphyry.”

164. “Nicety; scrupulous exactness” (Dictionary). 165. “Kind; doing good offices” (Dictionary, sense 1). 166. “Wandering; unsettled; vagabond; unfixed in place” (Dictionary). 167. Erratick: “Wandering; uncertain; keeping no certain order; holding no established course” (Dictionary, sense 1); passenger: “A traveler; one who is upon the road; a wayfarer” (Dictionary, sense 1).

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Chap. XXXIX. The adventures of Pekuah continued.

“We wandered about in this manner for some weeks, whether, as our chief pre­ tended, for my gratification, or, as I rather suspected, for some convenience of his own. I endeavoured to appear contented where sullenness and resentment would have been of no use, and that endeavour conduced much to the calmness of my mind; but my heart was always with Nekayah, and the troubles of the night much overbalanced the amusements of the day. My women, who threw all their cares upon their mistress, set their minds at ease from the time when they saw me treated with respect, and gave themselves up to the incidental alleviations of our fatigue with­ out solicitude or sorrow. I was pleased with their pleasure, and animated with their confidence. My condition had lost much of its terrour, since I found that the Arab ranged the country merely to get riches. Avarice is an uniform and tractable vice: other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of mind; that which sooths the pride of one will offend the pride of another; but to the favour of the covetous there is a ready way, bring money and nothing is denied. “At last we came to the dwelling of our chief, a strong and spacious house built with stone in an island of the Nile, which lies, as I was told, under the trop­ ick.168 ‘Lady,’ said the Arab, ‘you shall rest after your journey a few weeks in this place, where you are to consider yourself as sovereign. My occupation is war: I have therefore chosen this obscure residence, from which I can issue unexpected, and to which I can retire unpersued. You may now repose in security: here are few plea­ sures, but here is no danger.’ He then led me into the inner apartments, and seating me on the richest couch, bowed to the ground. His women, who considered me as a rival, looked on me with malignity; but being soon informed that I was a great lady detained only for my ransome, they began to vie with each other in obsequiousness and reverence. “Being again comforted with new assurances of speedy liberty, I was for some days diverted from impatience by the novelty of the place. The turrets overlooked the country to a great distance, and afforded a view of many windings of the stream. In the day I wandered from one place to another as the course of the sun varied the splendour of the prospect, and saw many things which I had never seen before. The crocodiles and river-­horses169 are common in this unpeopled region, and I often looked upon them with terrour, though I knew that they could not hurt me. For 168. The Tropic of Cancer (approximately latitude 23 degrees north), where the sun is directly overhead on the summer solstice. 169. Hippopotamus, q.v. in Dictionary.



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some time I expected to see mermaids and tritons,170 which, as Imlac has told me, the European travellers have stationed in the Nile, but no such beings ever appeared, and the Arab, when I enquired after them, laughed at my credulity.171 “At night the Arab always attended me to a tower set apart for celestial ob­ servations, where he endeavoured to teach me the names and courses of the stars. I had no great inclination to this study, but an appearance of attention was neces­ sary to please my instructor, who valued himself for his skill, and, in a little while, I found some employment requisite to beguile the tediousness of time, which was to be passed always amidst the same objects. I was weary of looking in the morning on things from which I had turned away weary in the evening: I therefore was at last willing to observe the stars rather than do nothing, but could not always compose my thoughts, and was very often thinking on Nekayah when others imagined me contemplating the sky. Soon after the Arab went upon another expedition, and then my only pleasure was to talk with my maids about the accident by which we were carried away, and the happiness that we should all enjoy at the end of our captivity.” “There were women in your Arab’s fortress,” said the princess, “why did you not make them your companions, enjoy their conversation, and partake their diver­ sions? In a place where they found business or amusement, why should you alone sit corroded with idle melancholy? or why could not you bear for a few months that condition to which they were condemned for life?” “The diversions of the women,” answered Pekuah, “were only childish play, by which the mind accustomed to stronger operations could not be kept busy. I could do all which they delighted in doing by powers merely sensitive,172 while my intel­ lectual faculties were flown to Cairo. They ran from room to room as a bird hops from wire to wire in his cage. They danced for the sake of motion, as lambs frisk in a meadow. One sometimes pretended to be hurt that the rest might be alarmed, or hid herself that another might seek her. Part of their time passed in watching the progress of light bodies that floated on the river, and part in marking the various forms into which clouds broke in the sky. “Their business was only needlework, in which I and my maids sometimes helped them; but you know that the mind will easily straggle from the fingers, nor will you suspect that captivity and absence from Nekayah could receive solace from silken flowers. “Nor was much satisfaction to be hoped from their conversation: for of what could they be expected to talk? They had seen nothing; for they had lived from early 170. Mermen. 171. Dutch cartographer Jan Jansson placed them there in his atlas (1653), but the myth was exploded soon thereafter. 172. “Having sense or perception, but not reason” (Dictionary).

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youth in that narrow spot: of what they had not seen they could have no knowledge, for they could not read. They had no ideas but of the few things that were within their view, and had hardly names for any thing but their cloaths and their food. As I bore a superiour character, I was often called to terminate their quarrels, which I decided as equitably as I could. If it could have amused me to hear the complaints of each against the rest, I might have been often detained by long stories, but the motives of their animosity were so small that I could not listen without intercepting the tale.” “How,” said Rasselas, “can the Arab, whom you represented as a man of more than common accomplishments, take any pleasure in his seraglio, when it is filled only with women like these. Are they exquisitely beautiful?” “They do not,” said Pekuah, “want that unaffecting and ignoble beauty which may subsist without spriteliness or sublimity, without energy of thought or dignity of virtue. But to a man like the Arab such beauty was only a flower casually plucked and carelessly thrown away. Whatever pleasures he might find among them, they were not those of friendship or society. When they were playing about him he looked on them with inattentive superiority: when they vied for his regard he sometimes turned away disgusted. As they had no knowledge, their talk could take nothing from the tediousness of life: as they had no choice, their fondness, or appearance of fondness, excited in him neither pride nor gratitude; he was not exalted in his own esteem by the smiles of a woman who saw no other man, nor was much obliged by that regard, of which he could never know the sincerity, and which he might often perceive to be exerted not so much to delight him as to pain a rival. That which he gave, and they received, as love, was only a careless distribution of superfluous time, such love as man can bestow upon that which he despises, such as has neither hope nor fear, neither joy nor sorrow.” “You have reason lady to think yourself happy,” said Imlac, “that you have been thus easily dismissed. How could a mind, hungry for knowledge, be willing, in an intellectual famine, to lose such a banquet as Pekuah’s conversation?” “I am inclined to believe,” answered Pekuah, “that he was for some time in suspense; for notwithstanding his promise, whenever I proposed to dispatch a mes­ senger to Cairo, he found some excuse for delay. While I was detained in his house he made many incursions into the neighbouring countries, and, perhaps, he would have refused to discharge me, had his plunder been equal to his wishes. He returned always courteous, related his adventures, delighted to hear my observations, and en­ deavoured to advance my acquaintance with the stars. When I importuned him to send away my letters, he soothed me with professions of honour and sincerity; and, when I could be no longer decently denied, put his troop again in motion, and left me to govern in his absence. I was much afflicted by this studied procrastination, and was sometimes afraid that I should be forgotten; that you would leave Cairo, and I must end my days in an island of the Nile.



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“I grew at last hopeless and dejected, and cared so little to entertain him, that he for a while more frequently talked with my maids. That he should fall in love with them, or with me, might have been equally fatal, and I was not much pleased with the growing friendship. My anxiety was not long; for, as I recovered some degree of chear­ fulness, he returned to me, and I could not forbear to despise my former uneasiness. “He still delayed to send for my ransome, and would, perhaps, never have de­ termined, had not your agent found his way to him. The gold, which he would not fetch, he could not reject when it was offered. He hastened to prepare for our jour­ ney hither, like a man delivered from the pain of an intestine conflict. I took leave of my companions in the house, who dismissed me with cold indifference.” Nekayah, having heard her favourite’s relation, rose and embraced her, and Rasselas gave her an hundred ounces of gold, which she presented to the Arab for the fifty that were promised. Chap. XL. The history of a man of learning.

They returned to Cairo, and were so well pleased at finding themselves together, that none of them went much abroad. The prince began to love learning, and one day declared to Imlac, that he intended to devote himself to science, and pass the rest of his days in literary173 solitude. “Before you make your final choice,” answered Imlac, “you ought to examine its hazards, and converse with some of those who are grown old in the company of themselves. I have just left the observatory of one of the most learned astronomers in the world, who has spent forty years in unwearied attention to the motions and ap­ pearances of the celestial bodies, and has drawn out his soul in endless calculations. He admits a few friends once a month to hear his deductions and enjoy his discover­ ies. I was introduced as a man of knowledge worthy of his notice. Men of various ideas and fluent conversation are commonly welcome to those whose thoughts have been long fixed upon a single point, and who find the images of other things stealing away. I delighted him with my remarks, he smiled at the narrative of my travels, and was glad to forget the constellations, and descend for a moment into the lower world. “On the next day of vacation174 I renewed my visit, and was so fortunate as to please him again. He relaxed from that time the severity of his rule, and permitted me to enter at my own choice. I found him always busy, and always glad to be re­ lieved. As each knew much which the other was desirous of learning, we exchanged our notions with great delight. I perceived that I had every day more of his confi­ 173. Learned (not in Dictionary, but see s.v. literature). 174. “Leisure; freedom from trouble or perplexity” (Dictionary, sense 2).

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dence, and always found new cause of admiration in the profundity of his mind. His comprehension is vast, his memory capacious and retentive, his discourse is methodical, and his expression clear. “His integrity and benevolence are equal to his learning. His deepest re­ searches and most favourite studies are willingly interrupted for any opportunity of doing good by his counsel or his riches. To his closest retreat at his most busy mo­ ments, all are admitted that want his assistance: ‘For though I exclude idleness and pleasure, I will never,’ says he, ‘bar my doors against charity. To man is permitted the contemplation of the skies, but the practice of virtue is commanded.’ ”175 “Surely,” said the princess, “this man is happy.” “I visited him,” said Imlac, “with more and more frequency, and was every time more enamoured of his conversation: he was sublime176 without haughtiness, courteous without formality, and communicative without ostentation. I was at first, great princess, of your opinion, thought him the happiest of mankind, and often congratulated him on the blessing that he enjoyed. He seemed to hear nothing with indifference but the praises of his condition, to which he always returned a general answer, and diverted the conversation to some other topick. “Amidst this willingness to be pleased, and labour to please, I had quickly rea­ son to imagine that some painful sentiment pressed upon his mind. He often looked up earnestly towards the sun, and let his voice fall in the midst of his discourse. He would sometimes, when we were alone, gaze upon me in silence with the air of a man who longed to speak what he was yet resolved to suppress. He would often send for me with vehement injunctions of haste, though, when I came to him, he had nothing extraordinary to say. And sometimes, when I was leaving him, would call me back, pause a few moments and then dismiss me. Chap. XLI. The astronomer discovers177 the cause of his uneasiness.

“At last the time came when the secret burst his reserve. We were sitting together last night in the turret of his house, watching the emersion178 of a satellite 175. According to Cornelia Knight, Imlac’s description of the astronomer “summed up” SJ’s own char­ acter (Johnsonian Miscellanies, ii.175–76). With the astronomer’s assertion, cf. Rambler 180: “Raphael, in re­ turn to Adam’s enquiries into the courses of the stars and the revolutions of heaven, counsels him to withdraw his mind from idle speculations, and employ his faculties upon nearer and more interesting objects, the survey of his own life, the subjection of his passions. . . . This angelic counsel every man of letters should have before him” (Yale, V.183). See also SJ’s Life of Milton, p. 692 below. 176. “Lofty of mien; elevated in manner” (Dictionary, sense 5). 177. “To make known; not to disguise; to reveal” (Dictionary, sense 4). 178. “The time when a star, having been obscured by its too near approach to the sun, appears again” (Dictionary).



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of Jupiter. A sudden tempest clouded the sky, and disappointed our observation. We sat a while silent in the dark, and then he addressed himself to me in these words: ‘Imlac, I have long considered thy friendship as the greatest blessing of my life. In­ tegrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. I have found in thee all the qualities requisite for trust, be­ nevolence, experience, and fortitude. I have long discharged an office which I must soon quit at the call of nature, and shall rejoice in the hour of imbecility179 and pain to devolve it upon thee.’ “I thought myself honoured by this testimony, and protested that whatever could conduce to his happiness would add likewise to mine. “ ‘Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit. I have possessed for five years the regulation of weather, and the distribution of the seasons: the sun has listened to my dictates, and passed from tropick to tropick by my direction; the clouds, at my call, have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my com­ mand; I have restrained the rage of the dog-­star, and mitigated the fervours of the crab.180 The winds alone, of all the elemental powers, have hitherto refused my au­ thority, and multitudes have perished by equinoctial tempests which I found myself unable to prohibit or restrain. I have administered this great office with exact justice, and made to the different nations of the earth an impartial dividend of rain and sun­ shine. What must have been the misery of half the globe, if I had limited the clouds to particular regions, or confined the sun to either side of the equator?’ ” Chap. XLII. The opinion of the astronomer is explained and justified.

“I suppose he discovered in me, through the obscurity of the room, some tokens of amazement and doubt, for, after a short pause, he proceeded thus: “ ‘Not to be easily credited will neither surprise nor offend me; for I am, prob­ ably, the first of human beings to whom this trust has been imparted. Nor do I know whether to deem this distinction a reward or punishment; since I have possessed it I have been far less happy than before, and nothing but the consciousness of good intention could have enabled me to support the weariness of unremitted vigilance.’ “ ‘How long, Sir,’ said I, ‘has this great office been in your hands?’ “ ‘About ten years ago,’ said he, ‘my daily observations of the changes of the sky led me to consider, whether, if I had the power of the seasons, I could confer greater plenty upon the inhabitants of the earth. This contemplation fastened on my mind, 179. See p. 175, n. 21, above. 180. Dog-­star and crab: a star (Sirius) and an astrological sign (Cancer), both prominent in the heat of the year and both associated with madness.

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and I sat days and nights in imaginary dominion, pouring upon this country and that the showers of fertility, and seconding every fall of rain with a due proportion of sunshine. I had yet only the will to do good, and did not imagine that I should ever have the power. “ ‘One day as I was looking on the fields withering with heat, I felt in my mind a sudden wish that I could send rain on the southern mountains, and raise the Nile to an inundation. In the hurry of my imagination I commanded rain to fall, and, by comparing the time of my command, with that of the inundation, I found that the clouds had listned to my lips.’ “ ‘Might not some other cause,’ said I, ‘produce this concurrence? the Nile does not always rise on the same day.’ “ ‘Do not believe,’ said he with impatience, ‘that such objections could escape me: I reasoned long against my own conviction, and laboured against truth with the utmost obstinacy. I sometimes suspected myself of madness, and should not have dared to impart this secret but to a man like you, capable of distinguishing the won­ derful from the impossible, and the incredible from the false.’ “ ‘Why, Sir,’ said I, ‘do you call that incredible, which you know, or think you know, to be true?’ “ ‘Because,’ said he, ‘I cannot prove it by any external evidence; and I know too well the laws of demonstration to think that my conviction ought to influence another, who cannot, like me, be conscious of its force. I, therefore, shall not attempt to gain credit by disputation. It is sufficient that I feel this power, that I have long possessed, and every day exerted it. But the life of man is short, the infirmities of age increase upon me, and the time will soon come when the regulator of the year must mingle with the dust. The care of appointing a successor has long disturbed me; the night and the day have been spent in comparisons of all the characters which have come to my knowledge, and I have yet found none so worthy as thyself.’ ” Chap. XLIII. The astronomer leaves Imlac his directions.

“ ‘Hear therefore, what I shall impart, with attention, such as the welfare of a world requires. If the task of a king be considered as difficult, who has the care only of a few millions, to whom he cannot do much good or harm, what must be the anxiety of him, on whom depend the action of the elements, and the great gifts of light and heat!—Hear me therefore with attention. “ ‘I have diligently considered the position of the earth and sun, and formed innumerable schemes in which I changed their situation. I have sometimes turned aside the axis of the earth, and sometimes varied the ecliptick of the sun: but I have found it impossible to make a disposition by which the world may be advantaged;



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what one region gains, another loses by any imaginable alteration, even without con­ sidering the distant parts of the solar system with which we are unacquainted. Do not, therefore, in thy administration of the year, indulge thy pride by innovation; do not please thyself with thinking that thou canst make thyself renowned to all future ages, by disordering the seasons. The memory of mischief is no desirable fame. Much less will it become thee to let kindness or interest prevail. Never rob other countries of rain to pour it on thine own. For us the Nile is sufficient.’181 “I promised that when I possessed the power, I would use it with inflexible integrity, and he dismissed me, pressing my hand. ‘My heart,’ said he, ‘will be now at rest, and my benevolence will no more destroy my quiet: I have found a man of wisdom and virtue, to whom I can chearfully bequeath the inheritance of the sun.’ ” The prince heard this narration with very serious regard, but the princess smiled, and Pekuah convulsed herself with laughter. “Ladies,” said Imlac, “to mock the heaviest of human afflictions is neither charitable nor wise. Few can attain this man’s knowledge, and few practise his virtues; but all may suffer his calamity. Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason.” The princess was recollected,182 and the favourite was abashed. Rasselas, more deeply affected, enquired of Imlac, whether he thought such maladies of the mind frequent, and how they were contracted. Chap. XLIV. The dangerous prevalence of imagination.

“Disorders of intellect,” answered Imlac, “happen much more often than superficial observers will easily believe. Perhaps, if we speak with rigorous exact­ ness, no human mind is in its right state. There is no man whose imagination does not sometimes predominate over his reason, who can regulate his attention wholly by his will, and whose ideas will come and go at his command. No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannise, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability. All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity; but while this power is such as we can controll and repress, it is not visible to others, nor considered as any depravation of the mental faculties: it is not pronounced madness but when it comes ungovernable, and apparently in­ fluences speech or action.183 181. Sir Thomas Browne, in a passage that SJ quoted in his Dictionary (s.v. bountifully), challenges the old belief that the inundation of the Nile entirely supplies the place of rain in Egypt. 182. “To recover reason or resolution” (Dictionary, sense 2). 183. This view of madness was not uncommon in the eighteenth century. See, e.g., John Locke, An Essay

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“To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation. When we are alone we are not always busy; the labour of excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of enquiry will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety. He who has nothing external that can divert him, must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must con­ ceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He then expatiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible enjoy­ ments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow. “In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention, all other intellec­ tual gratifications are rejected, the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth.184 By degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotick. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish. “This, Sir, is one of the dangers of solitude, which the hermit has confessed not always to promote goodness, and the astronomer’s misery has proved to be not always propitious to wisdom.” “I will no more,” said the favourite, “imagine myself the queen of Abissinia. I have often spent the hours, which the princess gave to my own disposal, in adjust­ ing ceremonies and regulating the court; I have repressed the pride of the powerful, and granted the petitions of the poor; I have built new palaces in more happy situa­ tions, planted groves upon the tops of mountains, and have exulted in the benefi­ cence of royalty, till, when the princess entered, I had almost forgotten to bow down before her.” “And I,” said the princess, “will not allow myself any more to play the shep­ herdess in my waking dreams. I have often soothed my thoughts with the quiet and innocence of pastoral employments, till I have in my chamber heard the winds whistle, and the sheep bleat; sometimes freed the lamb entangled in the thicket, and sometimes with my crook encountered the wolf. I have a dress like that of the village

Concerning Human Understanding (2.33.4): “opposition to reason deserves [the name of madness], and is really madness; and there is scarce a man so free from it, but that if he should always, on all occasions, argue or do as in some cases he constantly does, would not be thought fitter for Bedlam than civil conversation.” 184. Cf. Preface to Shakespeare: “The mind, which has feasted on the luxurious wonders of fiction, has no taste for the insipidity of truth” (p. 441 below).



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maids, which I put on to help my imagination, and a pipe on which I play softly, and suppose myself followed by my flocks.” “I will confess,” said the prince, “an indulgence of fantastick delight more dan­ gerous than yours. I have frequently endeavoured to image the possibility of a per­ fect government, by which all wrong should be restrained, all vice reformed, and all the subjects preserved in tranquility and innocence. This thought produced in­ numerable schemes of reformation, and dictated many useful regulations and salu­ tary edicts. This has been the sport and sometimes the labour of my solitude; and I start, when I think with how little anguish I once supposed the death of my father and my brothers.” “Such,” says Imlac, “are the effects of visionary schemes: when we first form them we know them to be absurd, but familiarise them by degrees, and in time lose sight of their folly.” Chap. XLV. They discourse with an old man.

The evening was now far past, and they rose to return home. As they walked along the bank of the Nile, delighted with the beams of the moon quivering on the water, they saw at a small distance an old man, whom the prince had often heard in the assembly of the sages. “Yonder,” said he, “is one whose years have calmed his passions, but not clouded his reason: let us close the disquisitions of the night, by enquiring what are his sentiments of his own state, that we may know whether youth alone is to struggle with vexation, and whether any better hope remains for the latter part of life.” Here the sage approached and saluted them. They invited him to join their walk, and prattled a while as acquaintance that had unexpectedly met one another. The old man was chearful and talkative, and the way seemed short in his company. He was pleased to find himself not disregarded, accompanied them to their house, and, at the prince’s request, entered with them. They placed him in the seat of hon­ our, and set wine and conserves185 before him. “Sir,” said the princess, “an evening walk must give to a man of learning, like you, pleasures which ignorance and youth can hardly conceive. You know the quali­ ties186 and the causes of all that you behold, the laws by which the river flows, the 185. Under conserve in his Dictionary, SJ quotes a passage from Bacon’s Natural History (viii.705) noting that there are “in Turkey and the East certain confections, . . . which are like candied conserves . . . made of sugar and lemons.” 186. “Property; accidental adjunct” (Dictionary, sense 2).

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periods in which the planets perform their revolutions. Every thing must supply you with contemplation, and renew the consciousness of your own dignity.” “Lady,” answered he, “let the gay and the vigorous expect pleasure in their excursions, it is enough that age can obtain ease.187 To me the world has lost its novelty: I look round, and see what I remember to have seen in happier days. I rest against a tree, and consider, that in the same shade I once disputed upon the annual overflow of the Nile with a friend who is now silent in the grave. I cast my eyes up­ wards, fix them on the changing moon, and think with pain on the vicissitudes of life. I have ceased to take much delight in physical truth;188 for what have I to do with those things which I am soon to leave?” “You may at least recreate yourself,” said Imlac, “with the recollection of an honourable and useful life, and enjoy the praise which all agree to give you.” “Praise,” said the sage, with a sigh, “is to an old man an empty sound. I have neither mother to be delighted with the reputation of her son, nor wife to partake the honours of her husband.189 I have outlived my friends and my rivals. Nothing is now of much importance; for I cannot extend my interest beyond myself. Youth is delighted with applause, because it is considered as the earnest of some future good, and because the prospect of life is far extended: but to me, who am now de­ clining to decrepitude,190 there is little to be feared from the malevolence of men, and yet less to be hoped from their affection or esteem.191 Something they may yet take away, but they can give me nothing. Riches would now be useless, and high employ­ ment would be pain. My retrospect of life recalls to my view many opportunities of good neglected, much time squandered upon trifles, and more lost in idleness and vacancy. I leave many great designs unattempted, and many great attempts unfin­ ished. My mind is burthened with no heavy crime, and therefore I compose myself to tranquility; endeavour to abstract my thoughts from hopes and cares, which, though reason knows them to be vain, still try to keep their old possession of the heart; expect, with serene humility, that hour which nature cannot long delay; and hope to possess in a better state that happiness which here I could not find, and that virtue which here I have not attained.”192 187. “A neutral state between pleasure and pain” (Rambler 85; Yale, iv.83). 188. “Relating to nature or to natural philosophy; not moral” (Dictionary, sense 1). 189. Cf. SJ’s Preface to his Dictionary: “those whom I wished to please, have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds” (p. 417 below). 190. See p. 187, n. 58, above. 191. Cf. the last sentence of SJ’s Preface to his Dictionary in which the lexicographer dismisses his book “with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise” (p. 417 below). 192. Cf. the last couplet of The Vanity of Human Wishes: “celestial wisdom calms the mind / And makes the happiness she does not find” (p. 292 below).



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He rose and went away, leaving his audience not much elated with the hope of long life. The prince consoled himself with remarking, that it was not reasonable to be disappointed by this account; for age had never been considered as the season of felicity, and, if it was possible to be easy in decline and weakness, it was likely that the days of vigour and alacrity might be happy; that the noon of life might be bright, if the evening could be calm. The princess suspected that age was querulous and malignant, and delighted to repress the expectations of those who had newly entered the world. She had seen the possessors of estates look with envy on their heirs, and known many who enjoy pleasure no longer than they can confine it to themselves. Pekuah conjectured, that the man was older than he appeared, and was willing to impute his complaints to delirious dejection; or else supposed that he had been unfortunate, and was therefore discontented: “For nothing,” said she, “is more com­ mon than to call our own condition, the condition of life.” Imlac, who had no desire to see them depressed, smiled at the comforts which they could so readily procure to themselves, and remembered, that at the same age, he was equally confident of unmingled prosperity, and equally fertile of consola­ tory expedients. He forbore to force upon them unwelcome knowledge, which time itself would too soon impress. The princess and her lady retired; the madness of the astronomer hung upon their minds, and they desired Imlac to enter upon his office, and delay next morning the rising of the sun. Chap. XLVI. The princess and Pekuah visit the astronomer.

The princess and Pekuah having talked in private of Imlac’s astronomer, thought his character at once so amiable and so strange, that they could not be sat­ isfied without a nearer knowledge, and Imlac was requested to find the means of bringing them together. This was somewhat difficult; the philosopher had never received any visits from women, though he lived in a city that had in it many Europeans who fol­ lowed the manners of their own countries, and many from other parts of the world that lived there with European liberty. The ladies would not be refused, and several schemes were proposed for the accomplishment of their design. It was proposed to introduce them as strangers in distress, to whom the sage was always accessible; but, after some deliberation, it appeared, that by this artifice, no acquaintance could be formed, for their conversation would be short, and they could not decently impor­ tune him often. “This,” said Rasselas, “is true; but I have yet a stronger objection against the misrepresentation of your state. I have always considered it as treason against the great republick of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means

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of deceiving him, whether on great or little occasions. All imposture weakens con­ fidence and chills benevolence.193 When the sage finds that you are not what you seemed, he will feel the resentment natural to a man who, conscious of great abili­ ties, discovers that he has been tricked by understandings meaner than his own, and, perhaps, the distrust, which he can never afterwards wholly lay aside, may stop the voice of counsel, and close the hand of charity; and where will you find the power of restoring his benefactions to mankind, or his peace to himself ?” To this no reply was attempted, and Imlac began to hope that their curiosity would subside; but, next day, Pekuah told him, she had now found an honest pre­ tence for a visit to the astronomer, for she would solicite permission to continue under him the studies in which she had been initiated by the Arab, and the princess might go with her either as a fellow-­student, or because a woman could not decently come alone. “I am afraid,” said Imlac, “that he will be soon weary of your company: men advanced far in knowledge do not love to repeat the elements of their art, and I am not certain that even of the elements, as he will deliver them connected with inferences, and mingled with reflections, you are a very capable auditress.” “That,” said Pekuah, “must be my care: I ask of you only to take me thither. My knowledge is, perhaps, more than you imagine it, and by concurring always with his opinions I shall make him think it greater than it is.” The astronomer, in pursuance of this resolution, was told, that a foreign lady, travelling in search of knowledge, had heard of his reputation, and was desirous to become his scholar. The uncommonness of the proposal raised at once his surprise and curiosity, and when, after a short deliberation, he consented to admit her, he could not stay194 without impatience till the next day. The ladies dressed themselves magnificently, and were attended by Imlac to the astronomer, who was pleased to see himself approached with respect by persons of so splendid an appearance. In the exchange of the first civilities he was timorous and bashful; but when the talk became regular, he recollected195 his powers, and jus­ tified the character which Imlac had given. Enquiring of Pekuah what could have turned her inclination towards astronomy, he received from her a history of her ad­ venture at the pyramid, and of the time passed in the Arab’s island. She told her tale with ease and elegance, and her conversation took possession of his heart. The dis­ course was then turned to astronomy: Pekuah displayed what she knew: he looked upon her as a prodigy of genius, and intreated her not to desist from a study which she had so happily begun. They came again and again, and were every time more welcome than before. The sage endeavoured to amuse them, that they might prolong their visits, for he 193. SJ’s settled view (see, e.g., Adventurer 50, pp. 60–63 above). 194. “To wait; to attend; to forbear to act” (Dictionary, sense 3). 195. “To gather what is scattered; to gather again” (Dictionary, sense 3).



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found his thoughts grow brighter in their company; the clouds of solicitude van­ ished by degrees, as he forced himself to entertain them, and he grieved when he was left at their departure to his old employment of regulating the seasons. The princess and her favourite had now watched his lips for several months, and could not catch a single word from which they could judge whether he con­ tinued, or not, in the opinion of his preternatural commission. They often contrived to bring him to an open declaration, but he easily eluded all their attacks, and on which side soever they pressed him escaped from them to some other topick. As their familiarity increased they invited him often to the house of Imlac, where they distinguished him by extraordinary respect. He began gradually to de­ light in sublunary pleasures. He came early and departed late; laboured to recom­ mend himself by assiduity and compliance; excited their curiosity after new arts, that they might still want his assistance; and when they made any excursion of pleasure or enquiry, entreated to attend them. By long experience of his integrity and wisdom, the prince and his sister were convinced that he might be trusted without danger; and lest he should draw any false hopes from the civilities which he received, discovered to him their condition with the motives of their journey, and required his opinion on the choice of life. “Of the various conditions which the world spreads before you, which you shall prefer,” said the sage, “I am not able to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience; in the attain­ ment of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expence of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestick tenderness. If I have obtained any prerogatives above other students, they have been accompanied with fear, disquiet, and scrupulosity; but even of these prerogatives, whatever they were, I have, since my thoughts have been diversified by more intercourse with the world, begun to question the reality. When I have been for a few days lost in pleasing dissipation, I am always tempted to think that my en­ quiries have ended in errour, and that I have suffered much, and suffered it in vain.” Imlac was delighted to find that the sage’s understanding was breaking through its mists, and resolved to detain him from the planets till he should forget his task of ruling them, and reason should recover its original influence. From this time the astronomer was received into familiar friendship, and par­ took of all their projects and pleasures: his respect kept him attentive, and the ac­ tivity of Rasselas did not leave much time unengaged. Something was always to be done; the day was spent in making observations which furnished talk for the eve­ ning, and the evening was closed with a scheme for the morrow. The sage confessed to Imlac, that since he had mingled in the gay tumults of life, and divided his hours by a succession of amusements, he found the conviction

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of his authority over the skies fade gradually from his mind, and began to trust less to an opinion which he never could prove to others, and which he now found sub­ ject to variation from causes in which reason had no part. “If I am accidentally left alone for a few hours,” said he, “my inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are chained down by some irresistible violence, but they are soon dis­ entangled by the prince’s conversation, and instantaneously released at the entrance of Pekuah. I am like a man habitually afraid of spectres, who is set at ease by a lamp, and wonders at the dread which harrassed him in the dark, yet, if his lamp be ex­ tinguished, feels again the terrours which he knows that when it is light he shall feel no more. But I am sometimes afraid lest I indulge my quiet by criminal negligence, and voluntarily forget the great charge with which I am intrusted. If I favour myself in a known errour, or am determined by my own ease in a doubtful question of this importance, how dreadful is my crime!” “No disease of the imagination,” answered Imlac, “is so difficult of cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt: fancy and conscience then act inter­ changeably upon us, and so often shift their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the dictates of the other. If fancy presents images not moral or religious, the mind drives them away when they give it pain, but when melancholick notions take the form of duty, they lay hold on the faculties without opposition, be­ cause we are afraid to exclude or banish them. For this reason the superstitious are often melancholy, and the melancholy almost always superstitious. “But do not let the suggestions of timidity overpower your better reason: the danger of neglect can be but as the probability of the obligation, which when you consider it with freedom, you find very little, and that little growing every day less. Open your heart to the influence of the light which, from time to time, breaks in upon you: when scruples196 importune you, which you in your lucid moments know to be vain, do not stand to parley, but fly to business or to Pekuah, and keep this thought always prevalent, that you are only one atom of the mass of humanity, and have neither such virtue nor vice, as that you should be singled out for supernatural favours or afflictions.”197 Chap. XLVII. The prince enters and brings a new topick.

“All this,” said the astronomer, “I have often thought, but my reason has been so long subjugated by an uncontrolable and overwhelming idea, that it durst not 196. “Doubt; difficulty of determination; perplexity: generally about minute things” (Dictionary, sense 1). 197. G. B. Hill glosses this passage by citing the last sentence of one of SJ’s favorite books, Robert Bur­ ton’s Anatomy of Melancholy: “Be not solitary, be not idle.”



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confide in its own decisions. I now see how fatally I betrayed my quiet, by suffering chimeras to prey upon me in secret; but melancholy shrinks from communication, and I never found a man before, to whom I could impart my troubles, though I had been certain of relief. I rejoice to find my own sentiments confirmed by yours, who are not easily deceived, and can have no motive or purpose to deceive. I hope that time and variety will dissipate the gloom that has so long surrounded me, and the latter part of my days will be spent in peace.” “Your learning and virtue,” said Imlac, “may justly give you hopes.” Rasselas then entered with the princess and Pekuah, and enquired whether they had contrived any new diversion for the next day. “Such,” said Nekayah, “is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.198 The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something to morrow which I never saw before.” “Variety,” said Rasselas, “is so necessary to content,199 that even the Happy Valley disgusted me by the recurrence of its luxuries; yet I could not forbear to re­ proach myself with impatience, when I saw the monks of St. Anthony support with­ out complaint, a life, not of uniform delight, but uniform hardship.” “Those men,” answered Imlac, “are less wretched in their silent convent than the Abissinian princes in their prison of pleasure. Whatever is done by the monks is incited by an adequate and reasonable motive. Their labour supplies them with necessaries; it therefore cannot be omitted, and is certainly rewarded. Their devo­ tion prepares them for another state, and reminds them of its approach, while it fits them for it. Their time is regularly distributed; one duty succeeds another, so that they are not left open to the distraction of unguided choice, nor lost in the shades of listless inactivity. There is a certain task to be performed at an appropriated hour; and their toils are cheerful, because they consider them as acts of piety, by which they are always advancing towards endless felicity.” “Do you think,” said Nekayah, “that the monastick rule is a more holy and less imperfect state than any other? May not he equally hope for future happiness who converses200 openly with mankind, who succours the distressed by his charity, in­ structs the ignorant by his learning, and contributes by his industry to the general system of life; even though he should omit some of the mortifications which are practised in the cloister, and allow himself such harmless delights as his condition may place within his reach?” “This,” said Imlac, “is a question which has long divided the wise, and per­ 198. Cf. Rambler 207: “every man . . . consoles himself with the hope of change” (pp. 13 and 206n103 above). 199. Cf. Preface to Shakespeare: “all pleasure consists in variety” (p. 430 below). 200. “To cohabit with; to hold intercourse with; to be a companion to: followed by with” (Dictionary, sense 1).

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plexed the good. I am afraid to decide on either part. He that lives well in the world is better than he that lives well in a monastery. But, perhaps, every one is not able to stem the temptations of publick life; and, if he cannot conquer, he may properly retreat. Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil. Many are weary of their conflicts with adversity, and are willing to eject those passions which have long busied them in vain. And many are dismissed by age and diseases from the more laborious duties of society. In monasteries the weak and timorous may be happily sheltered, the weary may repose, and the penitent may meditate. Those retreats of prayer and contemplation have something so congenial to the mind of man that, perhaps, there is scarcely one that does not purpose to close his life in pious abstraction with a few associates serious as himself.” “Such,” said Pekuah, “has often been my wish, and I have heard the princess declare, that she should not willingly die in a croud.” “The liberty of using harmless pleasures,”201 proceeded Imlac, “will not be disputed; but it is still to be examined what pleasures are harmless. The evil of any pleasure that Nekayah can image is not in the act itself, but in its consequences. Plea­ sure, in itself harmless, may become mischievous, by endearing to us a state which we know to be transient and probatory,202 and withdrawing our thoughts from that, of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no length of time will bring us to the end. Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use, but that it disengages us from the allurements of sense. In the state of future perfection, to which we all aspire, there will be pleasure without danger, and secu­ rity without restraint.” The princess was silent, and Rasselas, turning to the astronomer, asked him, whether he could not delay her retreat, by shewing her something which she had not seen before. “Your curiosity,” said the sage, “has been so general, and your pursuit of knowledge so vigorous, that novelties are not now very easily to be found: but what you can no longer procure from the living may be given by the dead. Among the wonders of this country are the catacombs, or the ancient repositories, in which the bodies of the earliest generations were lodged, and where, by the virtue of the gums which embalmed them, they yet remain without corruption.” “I know not,” said Rasselas, “what pleasure the sight of the catacombs can af­ ford; but, since nothing else is offered, I am resolved to view them, and shall place this with many other things which I have done, because I would do something.” They hired a guard of horsemen, and the next day visited the catacombs. When 201. SJ once told Boswell, “harmless pleasure is the highest praise . . . to be able to furnish pleasure that is harmless, pleasure pure and unalloyed, is as great a power as man can possess” (Boswell, Life, iii.388). 202. “Serving for trial” (Dictionary).



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they were about to descend into the sepulchral caves, “Pekuah,” said the princess, “we are now again invading the habitations of the dead; I know that you will stay be­ hind; let me find you safe when I return.” “No, I will not be left,” answered Pekuah; “I will go down between you and the prince.” They then all descended, and roved with wonder through the labyrinth of sub­ terraneous passages, where the bodies were laid in rows on either side. Chap. XLVIII. Imlac discourses on the nature of the soul.203

“What reason,” said the prince, “can be given, why the Egyptians should thus expensively preserve those carcasses which some nations consume with fire, others lay to mingle with the earth, and all agree to remove from their sight, as soon as decent rites can be performed?” “The original of ancient customs,” said Imlac, “is commonly unknown; for the practice often continues when the cause has ceased; and concerning superstitious ceremonies it is vain to conjecture; for what reason did not dictate reason cannot explain. I have long believed that the practice of embalming arose only from tender­ ness to the remains of relations or friends, and to this opinion I am more inclined, because it seems impossible that this care should have been general: had all the dead been embalmed, their repositories must in time have been more spacious than the dwellings of the living. I suppose only the rich or honourable were secured from cor­ ruption, and the rest left to the course of nature. “But it is commonly supposed that the Egyptians believed the soul to live as long as the body continued undissolved, and therefore tried this method of eluding death.” “Could the wise Egyptians,” said Nekayah, “think so grosly of the soul? If the soul could once survive its separation, what could it afterwards receive or suffer from the body?” “The Egyptians would doubtless think erroneously,” said the astronomer, “in the darkness of heathenism, and the first dawn of philosophy. The nature of the soul is still disputed amidst all our opportunities of clearer knowledge: some yet say that it may be material, who, nevertheless, believe it to be immortal.” “Some,” answered Imlac, “have indeed said that the soul is material, but I can scarcely believe that any man has thought it, who knew how to think; for all the con­ 203. For a survey of the writers on whom SJ draws in this chapter, see Gwin Kolb, “The Intellectual Back­ ground of the Discourse on the Soul in Rasselas,” Philological Quarterly, liv (1975), 357–69, and Robert G. Walker, Eighteenth-­Century Arguments for Immortality and Johnson’s “Rasselas” (University of Victoria, 1977).

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clusions of reason enforce the immateriality of mind,204 and all the notices of sense and investigations of science concur to prove the unconsciousness of matter. “It was never supposed that cogitation is inherent in matter, or that every par­ ticle is a thinking being. Yet, if any part of matter be devoid of thought, what part can we suppose to think? Matter can differ from matter only in form, density, bulk, motion, and direction of motion: to which of these, however varied or combined, can consciousness be annexed? To be round or square, to be solid or fluid, to be great or little, to be moved slowly or swiftly one way or another, are modes of ma­ terial existence, all equally alien from the nature of cogitation. If matter be once without thought, it can only be made to think by some new modification, but all the modifications which it can admit are equally unconnected with cogitative powers.” “But the materialists,”205 said the astronomer, “urge that matter may have qualities with which we are unacquainted.” “He who will determine,” returned Imlac, “against that which he knows, be­ cause there may be something which he knows not; he that can set hypothetical possibility against acknowledged certainty, is not to be admitted among reasonable beings. All that we know of matter is, that matter is inert, senseless and lifeless; and if this conviction cannot be opposed but by referring us to something that we know not, we have all the evidence that human intellect can admit. If that which is known may be over-­ruled by that which is unknown, no being, not omniscient, can arrive at certainty.” “Yet let us not,” said the astronomer, “too arrogantly limit the Creator’s power.” “It is no limitation of omnipotence,” replied the poet, “to suppose that one thing is not consistent with another, that the same proposition cannot be at once true and false, that the same number cannot be even and odd, that cogitation cannot be conferred on that which is created incapable of cogitation.” “I know not,” said Nekayah, “any great use of this question. Does that imma­ teriality, which, in my opinion, you have sufficiently proved, necessarily include eternal duration?” “Of immateriality,” said Imlac, “our ideas are negative, and therefore obscure. Immateriality seems to imply a natural power of perpetual duration as a conse­ quence of exemption from all causes of decay: whatever perishes, is destroyed by the solution of its contexture, and separation of its parts; nor can we conceive how that which has no parts, and therefore admits no solution, can be naturally cor­ rupted or impaired.” 204. The second senses of mind and soul in the Dictionary are very nearly equivalent: “intellectual ca­ pacity” and “intellectual principle,” respectively. 205. “One who denies spiritual substances” (Dictionary).



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“I know not,” said Rasselas, “how to conceive any thing without extension: what is extended must have parts, and you allow, that whatever has parts may be destroyed.” “Consider your own conceptions,” replied Imlac, “and the difficulty will be less. You will find substance without extension. An ideal form is no less real than material bulk: yet an ideal form has no extension. It is no less certain, when you think on a pyramid, that your mind possesses the idea206 of a pyramid, than that the pyramid itself is standing. What space does the idea of a pyramid occupy more than the idea of a grain of corn? or how can either idea suffer laceration? As is the effect such is the cause; as thought is, such is the power that thinks; a power impassive207 and indiscerpible.”208 “But the Being,” said Nekayah, “whom I fear to name, the Being which made the soul, can destroy it.” “He, surely, can destroy it,” answered Imlac, “since, however unperishable, it receives from a superiour nature its power of duration. That it will not perish by any inherent cause of decay, or principle of corruption, may be shown by philosophy; but philosophy can tell no more. That it will not be annihilated by him that made it, we must humbly learn from higher authority.” The whole assembly stood a while silent and collected.209 “Let us return,” said Rasselas, “from this scene of mortality. How gloomy would be these mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he shall never die; that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on for ever. Those that lie here stretched before us, the wise and the powerful of antient times, warn us to remem­ ber the shortness of our present state; they were, perhaps, snatched away while they were busy, like us, in the choice of life.” “To me,” said the princess, “the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity.” They then hastened out of the caverns, and, under the protection of their guard, returned to Cairo.

206. “Mental image” (Dictionary). 207. “Exempt from the agency of external causes” (Dictionary). 208. Indiscerptible (not indiscerpible): “Not to be separated; incapable of being broken or destroyed by dissolution of parts” (Dictionary). 209. In SJ’s Dictionary, sense 5 of to collect (“To collect himself ”) is “To recover from surprise; to gain command over his thoughts; to assemble his sentiments.”

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Chap. XLIX. The conclusion, in which nothing is concluded.

It was now the time of the inundation of the Nile: a few days after their visit to the catacombs, the river began to rise. They were confined to their house. The whole region being under water gave them no invitation to any excursions, and, being well supplied with materials for talk, they diverted themselves with comparisons of the different forms of life which they had observed, and with various schemes of happiness which each of them had formed. Pekuah was never so much charmed with any place as the convent of St. Anthony, where the Arab restored her to the princess, and wished only to fill it with pious maidens, and to be made prioress of the order: She was weary of expectation and disgust,210 and would gladly be fixed in some unvariable state. The princess thought, that of all sublunary things, knowledge was the best: She desired first to learn all sciences, and then purposed to found a college of learned women, in which she would preside, that, by conversing with the old, and educating the young, she might divide her time between the acquisition and communication of wisdom, and raise up for the next age models of prudence, and patterns of piety. The prince desired a little kingdom, in which he might administer justice in his own person, and see all the parts of government with his own eyes; but he could never fix the limits of his dominion, and was always adding to the number of his subjects. Imlac and the astronomer were contented to be driven along the stream of life without directing their course to any particular port. Of these wishes that they had formed they well knew that none could be ob­ tained. They deliberated a while what was to be done, and resolved, when the inun­ dation should cease, to return to Abissinia.

FINIS.

210. See p. 176, n. 23, above.



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T H E F O U N TA I N S : A FA I RY TA L E Felix qui potuit boni Fontem visere lucidum. —Boethius.1

As Floretta2 was wandering in a meadow at the foot of Plinlimmon,3 she heard a little bird cry in such a note as she had never observed before, and looking round her, saw a lovely goldfinch entangled by a lime-­twig, and a hawk hovering over him, as at the point of seizing him in his talons. Floretta longed to rescue the little bird, but was afraid to encounter the hawk, who looked fiercely upon her without any apparent dread of her approach, and as she advanced seemed to increase in bulk, and clapped his wings in token of defi­ ance. Floretta stood deliberating a few moments, but seeing her mother4 at no great distance, took courage, and snatched the twig with the little bird upon it. When she had disengaged him she put him in her bosom, and the hawk flew away. Floretta shewing her bird to her mother, told her from what danger she had rescued him; her mother, after admiring his beauty, said, that he would be a very proper inhabitant of the little gilded cage, which had hung empty since the starling died for want of water, and that he should be placed at the chamber window, for it would be wonderfully pleasant to hear him in the morning. Floretta, with tears in her eyes, replied, that he had better have been devoured by the hawk than die for want of water, and that she would not save him from a less evil to put him in danger of a greater: She therefore took him into her hand, cleaned his feathers from the bird-­lime, looked upon him with great tenderness, and, having put his bill to her lips, dismissed him into the air. He flew in circles round her as she went home, and perching on a tree before the door, delighted them awhile with such sweetness of song, that her mother re­ proved her for not putting him in the cage. Floretta endeavoured to look grave, but silently approved her own act, and wished her mother more generosity. Her mother guessed her thoughts, and told her, that when she was older she would be wiser. 1. Consolation of Philosophy, Book iii, Meter 12, ll. 1–2: “Happy he, whose eyes have view’d / The trans­ parent Fount of Good” (SJ’s translation). 2. Floretta may be modeled on Johnson’s friend Hester Thrale Piozzi, then known as Mrs. Thrale (see pp. 167–68 above for a note on the composition of this piece). 3. Plinlimmon is a famous mountain in Piozzi’s native Wales and the source of the rivers Wye and Severn. 4. Piozzi’s mother, Hester Maria Salusbury, is the probable model for Floretta’s mother. SJ wrote an in­ scription for her epitaph (see Yale, xix.506–8).

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Floretta however did not repent, but hoped to hear her little bird the next morning singing at liberty. She waked early and listened, but no goldfinch could she hear. She rose, and walking again in the same meadow, went to view the bush where she had seen the lime-­twig the day before. When she entered the thicket, and was near the place for which she was look­ ing, from behind a blossoming hawthorn advanced a female form of very low stature, but of elegant proportion and majestick air, arrayed in all the colours of the meadow, and sparkling as she moved like a dew-­drop in the sun. Floretta was too much disordered to speak or fly, and stood motionless be­ tween fear and pleasure, when the little lady took her by the hand. “I am,” said she, “one of that order of beings which some call fairies, and some piskies: We have always been known to inhabit the crags and caverns of Plinlimmon. The maids and shepherds when they wander by moonlight have often heard our musick, and sometimes seen our dances. “I am the chief of the fairies of this region, and am known among them by the name of Lady Lilinet of the Blue Rock. As I lived always in my own mountain, I had very little knowledge of human manners, and thought better of mankind than other fairies found them to deserve; I therefore often opposed the mischievous practices of my sisters without always enquiring whether they were just. I extinguished the light that was kindled to lead a traveller into a marsh, and found afterwards that he was hasting to corrupt a virgin: I dissipated a mist which assumed the form of a town, and was raised to decoy a monopolizer of corn from his way to the next market: I re­ moved a thorn, artfully planted to prick the foot of a churl, that was going to hinder the poor from following his reapers; and defeated so many schemes of obstruction and punishment, that I was cited before the Queen as one who favoured wickedness and opposed the execution of fairy justice. “Having never been accustomed to suffer control, and thinking myself dis­ graced by the necessity of defence, I so much irritated the Queen by my sullenness and petulance, that in her anger she transformed me into a goldfinch. ‘In this form,’ says she, ‘I doom thee to remain till some human being shall shew thee kindness without any prospect of interest.’ “I flew out of her presence not much dejected; for I did not doubt but every reasonable being must love that which having never offended, could not be hated, and, having no power to hurt, could not be feared. “I therefore fluttered about the villages, and endeavoured to force myself into notice. “Having heard that nature was least corrupted among those who had no ac­ quaintance with elegance and splendor, I employed myself for five years in hopping before the doors of cottages, and often sat singing on the thatched roof; my motions were seldom seen nor my notes heard, no kindness was ever excited, and all the re­



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ward of my officiousness5 was to be aimed at with a stone when I stood within a throw. “The stones never hurt me, for I had still the power of a fairy. “I then betook myself to spacious and magnificent habitations, and sung in bowers by the walks or on the banks of fountains. “In these places where novelty was recommended by satiety, and curiosity ex­ cited by leisure, my form and my voice were soon distinguished, and I was known by the name of the pretty goldfinch; the inhabitants would walk out to listen to my musick, and at last it was their practice to court my visits by scattering meat6 in my common haunts. “This was repeated till I went about pecking in full security, and expected to regain my original form, when I observed two of my most liberal benefactors silently advancing with a net behind me. I flew off, and fluttering beside them pricked the leg of each, and left them halting and groaning with the cramp. “I then went to another house, where for two springs and summers I enter­ tained a splendid family with such melody as they had never heard in the woods be­ fore. The winter that followed the second summer was remarkably cold, and many little birds perished in the field. I laid myself in the way of one of the ladies as be­ numbed with cold and faint with hunger; she picked me up with great joy, telling her companions that she had found the goldfinch that sung so finely all summer in the myrtle hedge, that she would lay him where he should die, for she could not bear to kill him, and would then pick his fine feathers very carefully, and stick them in her muff. “Finding that her fondness and her gratitude could give way to so slight an interest, I chilled her fingers that she could not hold me, then flew at her face, and with my beak gave her nose four pecks that left four black spots indelible behind them, and broke a match by which she would have obtained the finest equipage in the county. “At length the Queen repented of her sentence, and being unable to revoke it, assisted me to try experiments upon man, to excite his tenderness, and attract his regard. “We made many attempts in which we were always disappointed. At last she placed me in your way held by a lime-­twig, and herself in the shape of a hawk made the shew of devouring me. You, my dear, have rescued me from the seeming danger without desiring to detain me in captivity, or seeking any other recompence than the pleasure of benefiting a feeling creature. 5. Kindness. 6. Meat: “Food in general” (Dictionary, sense 2).

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“The Queen is so much pleased with your kindness, that I am come, by her permission, to reward you with a greater favour than ever fairy bestowed before. “The former gifts of fairies, though bounties in design, have proved commonly mischiefs in the event. We have granted mortals to wish according to their own dis­ cretion, and their discretion being small, and their wishes irreversible, they have rashly petitioned for their own destruction. But you, my dearest Floretta, shall have, what none have ever before obtained from us, the power of indulging your wish, and the liberty of retracting it. Be bold and follow me.” Floretta was easily persuaded to accompany the fairy, who led her through a labyrinth of craggs and shrubs, to a cavern covered by a thicket on the side of the mountain. “This cavern,” said she, “is the court of Lilinet your friend; in this place you shall find a certain remedy for all real evils.” Lilinet then went before her through a long subterraneous passage, where she saw many beautiful fairies, who came to gaze at the stranger, but who, from reverence to their mistress, gave her no disturbance. She heard from remote corners of the gloomy cavern the roar of winds and the fall of waters, and more than once entreated to return; but Lilinet assuring her that she was safe, persuaded her to proceed till they came to an arch, into which the light found its way through a fissure of the rock. There Lilinet seated herself and her guest upon a bench of agate, and pointing to two fountains that bubbled before them, said, “Now attend, my dear Floretta, and enjoy the gratitude of a fairy. Observe the two fountains that spring up in the middle of the vault, one into a bason of alabaster, and the other into a bason of dark flint. The one is called the Spring of Joy, the other of Sorrow; they rise from distant veins in the rock, and burst out in two places, but after a short course unite their streams, and run ever after in one mingled current. “By drinking of these fountains, which, though shut up from all other human beings, shall be always accessible to you, it will be in your power to regulate your future life. “When you are drinking the water of joy from the alabaster fountain, you may form your wish, and it shall be granted. As you raise your wish higher, the water will be sweeter and sweeter to the taste; but beware that you are not tempted by its in­ creasing sweetness to repeat your draughts, for the ill effects of your wish can only be removed by drinking the spring of sorrow from the bason of flint, which will be bitter in the same proportion as the water of joy was sweet. Now, my Floretta, make the experiment, and give me the first proof of moderate desires. Take the golden cup that stands on the margin of the spring of joy, form your wish and drink.” Floretta wanted no time to deliberate on the subject of her wish; her first desire was the increase of her beauty. She had some disproportion of features. She took



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the cup and wished to be agreeable; the water was sweet, and she drank copiously; and in the fountain, which was clearer than crystal, she saw that her face was com­ pletely regular. She then filled the cup again, and wished for a rosy bloom upon her cheeks: the water was sweeter than before, and the colour of her cheeks was heightened. She next wished for a sparkling eye: The water grew yet more pleasant, and her glances were like the beams of the sun. She could not yet stop; she drank again, desired to be made a perfect beauty, and a perfect beauty she became. She had now whatever her heart could wish; and making an humble reverence to Lilinet, requested to be restored to her own habitation. They went back, and the fairies in the way wondered at the change of Floretta’s form. She came home de­ lighted to her mother, who, on seeing the improvement, was yet more delighted than herself. Her mother from that time pushed her forward into publick view: Floretta was at all the resorts of idleness and assemblies of pleasure; she was fatigued with balls, she was cloyed with treats, she was exhausted by the necessity of returning compli­ ments. This life delighted her awhile, but custom soon destroyed its pleasure. She found that the men who courted her to day resigned her on the morrow to other flat­ terers, and that the women attacked her reputation by whispers and calumnies, till without knowing how she had offended, she was shunned as infamous. She knew that her reputation was destroyed by the envy of her beauty, and re­ solved to degrade herself from the dangerous pre-­eminence. She went to the bush where she rescued the bird, and called for Lady Lilinet. Immediately Lilinet ap­ peared, and discovered by Floretta’s dejected look that she had drank too much from the alabaster fountain. “Follow me,” she cried, “my Floretta, and be wiser for the future.” They went to the fountains, and Floretta began to taste the waters of sorrow, which were so bitter that she withdrew more than once the cup from her mouth: At last she resolutely drank away the perfection of beauty, the sparkling eye and rosy bloom, and left herself only agreeable. She lived for some time with great content; but content is seldom lasting. She had a desire in a short time again to taste the waters of joy: she called for the con­ duct of Lilinet, and was led to the alabaster fountain, where she drank, and wished for a faithful lover. After her return she was soon addressed by a young man, whom she thought worthy of her affection. He courted, and flattered, and promised; till at last she yielded up her heart. He then applied to her parents; and, finding her fortune less than he expected, contrived a quarrel and deserted her. Exasperated by her disappointment, she went in quest of Lilinet, and expostu­

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lated with her for the deceit which she had practised. Lilinet asked her with a smile, for what she had been wishing; and being told, made her this reply. “You are not, my dear, to wonder or complain: You may wish for yourself, but your wishes can have no effect upon another. You may become lovely by the efficacy of the fountain, but that you shall be loved is by no means a certain consequence; for you cannot confer upon another either discernment or fidelity: That happiness which you must derive from others, it is not in my power to regulate or bestow.” Floretta was for some time so dejected by this limitation of the fountain’s power, that she thought it unworthy of another visit; but being on some occasion thwarted by her mother’s authority, she went to Lilinet, and drank at the alabaster fountain for a spirit to do her own way. Lilinet saw that she drank immoderately, and admonished her of her danger; but spirit and her own way gave such sweetness to the water, that she could not pre­ vail upon herself to forbear, till Lilinet in pure compassion snatched the cup out of her hand. When she came home every thought was contempt, and every action was rebel­ lion: She had drunk into herself a spirit to resist, but could not give her mother a disposition to yield; the old lady asserted her right to govern; and, though she was often foiled by the impetuosity of her daughter, she supplied by pertinacy what she wanted in violence; so that the house was in continual tumult by the pranks of the daughter and opposition of the mother. In time, Floretta was convinced that spirit had only made her a capricious termagant,7 and that her own ways ended in errour, perplexity and disgrace; she per­ ceived that the vehemence of mind, which to a man may sometimes procure awe and obedience, produce to a woman nothing but detestation; she therefore went back, and by a large draught from the flinty fountain, though the water was very bitter, replaced herself under her mother’s care, and quitted her spirit, and her own way. Floretta’s fortune was moderate, and her desires were not larger, till her mother took her to spend a summer at one of the places which wealth and idleness frequent, under pretence of drinking the waters. She was now no longer a perfect beauty, and therefore conversation in her presence took its course as in other company, opinions were freely told, and observations made without reserve. Here Floretta first learned the importance of money. When she saw a woman of mean air and empty talk draw the attention of the place, she always discovered upon enquiry that she had so many thousands to her fortune. She soon perceived that where these golden goddesses appeared, neither birth, nor elegance, nor civility had any power of attraction, that every art of entertainment was devoted to them, and that the great and the wise courted their regard. 7. “A scold; a brawling, turbulent woman” (Dictionary).



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The desire after wealth was raised yet higher by her mother, who was always telling her how much neglect she suffered for want of fortune, and what distinctions if she had but a fortune her good qualities would obtain. Her narrative of the day was always, that Floretta walked in the morning, but was not spoken to because she had a small fortune, and that Floretta danced at the ball better than any of them, but nobody minded her for want of a fortune. This want, in which all other wants appeared to be included, Floretta was re­ solved to endure no longer, and came home flattering her imagination in secret with the riches which she was now about to obtain. On the day after her return she walked out alone to meet Lady Lilinet, and went with her to the fountain: Riches did not taste so sweet as either beauty or spirit, and therefore she was not immoderate in her draught. When they returned from the cavern, Lilinet gave her wand to a fairy that at­ tended her, with an order to conduct Floretta to the Black Rock. The way was not long, and they soon came to the mouth of a mine in which there was a hidden treasure, guarded by an earthy fairy deformed and shaggy, who opposed the entrance of Floretta till he recognized the wand of the Lady of the Mountain. Here Floretta saw vast heaps of gold and silver and gems, gathered and reposited in former ages, and entrusted to the guard of the fairies of the earth. The little fairy delivered the orders of her mistress, and the surly sentinel promised to obey them. Floretta, wearied with her walk, and pleased with her success, went home to rest, and when she waked in the morning, first opened her eyes upon a cabinet of jewels, and looking into her drawers and boxes, found them filled with gold. Floretta was now as fine as the finest. She was the first to adopt any expensive fashion, to subscribe to any pompous8 entertainment, to encourage any foreign art­ ist, or engage in any frolick of which the cost was to make the pleasure. She was on a sudden the favourite of every place. Report made her wealth thrice greater than it really was, and wherever she came, all was attention, reverence and obedience. The ladies who had formerly slighted her, or by whom she had been formerly caressed, gratified her pride by open flattery and private murmurs. She sometimes over-­heard them railing at upstarts, and wondering whence some people came, or how their expences were supplied. This incited her to heighten the splen­ dour of her dress, to increase the number of her retinue, and to make such proposi­ tions of costly schemes, that her rivals were forced to desist from contest. But she now began to find that the tricks which can be played with money will seldom bear to be repeated, that admiration is a short-­lived passion, and that the pleasure of expence is gone when wonder and envy are no more excited. She found 8. Pompous: “Splendid; magnificent; grand” (Dictionary).

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that respect was an empty form, and that all those who crouded round her were drawn to her by vanity or interest. It was however pleasant to be able on any terms to elevate and to mortify, to raise hopes and fears; and she would still have continued to be rich, had not the ambition of her mother contrived to marry her to a lord, whom she despised as ignorant, and abhorred as profligate. Her mother persisted in her importunity; and Floretta having now lost the spirit of resistance, had no other refuge than to divest herself of her fairy fortune. She implored the assistance of Lilinet, who praised her resolution. She drank chearfully from the flinty fountain, and found the waters not extremely bitter. When she returned she went to bed, and in the morning perceived that all her riches had been conveyed away she knew not how, except a few ornamental jewels, which Lili­ net had ordered to be carried back as a reward for her dignity of mind. She was now almost weary of visiting the fountain, and solaced herself with such amusements as every day happened to produce: At last there arose in her imagi­ nation a strong desire to become a wit. The pleasures with which this new character appeared to teem were so nu­ merous and so great, that she was impatient to enjoy them; and rising before the sun, hastened to the place where she knew that her fairy patroness was always to be found. Lilinet was willing to conduct her, but could now scarcely restrain her from leading the way but by telling her, that if she went first the fairies of the cavern would refuse her passage. They came in time to the fountain, and Floretta took the golden cup into her hand; she filled it and drank, and again she filled it, for wit was sweeter than riches, spirit, or beauty. As she returned she felt new successions of imagery rise in her mind, and whatever her memory offered to her imagination, assumed a new form, and con­ nected itself with things to which it seemed before to have no relation.9 All the ap­ pearances about her were changed, but the novelties exhibited were commonly de­ fects. She now saw that almost every thing was wrong, without often seeing how it could be better; and frequently imputed to the imperfection of art these failures which were caused by the limitation of nature. Wherever she went, she breathed nothing but censure and reformation. If she visited her friends, she quarrelled with the situation of their houses, the disposition of their gardens, the direction of their walks, and the termination of their views. It was vain to shew her fine furniture, for she was always ready to tell how it might be finer, or to conduct her through spacious apartments, for her thoughts were full of 9. Cf. Rambler 194: “Wit . . . is the unexpected copulation of ideas, the discovery of some occult relation between images in appearance remote from each other” (Yale, v.251).



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nobler fabricks, of airy10 palaces and hesperian gardens. She admired nothing and praised but little. Her conversation was generally thought uncivil. If she received flatteries, she seldom repaid them; for she set no value upon vulgar praise. She could not hear a long story without hurrying the speaker on to the conclusion; and obstructed the mirth of her companions, for she rarely took notice of a good jest, and never laughed except when she was delighted. This behaviour made her unwelcome wherever she went; nor did her specula­ tion upon human manners much contribute to forward her reception. She now saw the disproportions between language and sentiment, between passion and exclama­ tion; she discovered the defects of every action, and the uncertainty of every con­ clusion; she knew the malignity of friendship, the avarice of liberality, the anxiety of content, and the cowardice of temerity. To see all this was pleasant, but the greatest of all pleasures was to shew it. To laugh was something, but it was much more to make others laugh. As every defor­ mity of character made a strong impression upon her, she could not always forbear to transmit it to others; as she hated false appearances she thought it her duty to detect them, till, between wantonness and virtue, scarce any that she knew escaped without some wounds by the shafts of ridicule; not that her merriment was always the consequence of total contempt, for she often honoured virtue where she laughed at affectation. For these practices, and who can wonder, the cry was raised against her from every quarter, and to hunt her down was generally determined. Every eye was watch­ ing for a fault, and every tongue was busy to supply its share of defamation. With the most unpolluted purity of mind, she was censured as too free of favours, because she was not afraid to talk with men: With generous sensibility of every human excel­ lence, she was thought cold or envious, because she would not scatter praise with undistinguishing profusion: With tenderness that agonized at real misery, she was charged with delight in the pain of others, when she would not condole with those whom she knew to counterfeit affliction. She derided false appearances of kind­ ness and of pity, and was therefore avoided as an enemy to society. As she seldom commended or censured but with some limitations and exceptions, the world con­ demned her as indifferent to the good and bad; and because she was often doubt­ ful where others were confident, she was charged with laxity of principles, while her days were distracted and her rest broken by niceties of honour and scruples of morality. Report had now made her so formidable that all flattered and all shunned her. If a lover gave a ball to his mistress and her friends, it was stipulated that Floretta 10. “Wanting reality” (Dictionary, sense 6).

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should not be invited. If she entered a publick room the ladies courtsied, and shrunk away, for there was no such thing as speaking, but Floretta would find something to criticise. If a girl was more spritely than her aunt, she was threatened that in a little time she would be like Floretta. Visits were very diligently paid when Floretta was known not to be at home; and no mother trusted her daughter to herself without a caution, if she should meet Floretta to leave the company as soon as she could. With all this Floretta made sport at first, but in time grew weary of general hostility. She would have been content with a few friends, but no friendship was durable; it was the fashion to desert her, and with the fashion what fidelity will con­ tend? She could have easily amused herself in solitude, but that she thought it mean to quit the field to treachery and folly. Persecution at length tired her constancy, and she implored Lilinet to rid her of her wit: Lilinet complied and walked up the mountain, but was often forced to stop and wait for her follower. When they came to the flinty fountain, Floretta filled a small cup and slowly brought it to her lips, but the water was insupportably bitter. She just tasted it, and dashed it to the ground, diluted the bitterness at the fountain of alabaster, and resolved to keep her wit with all its consequences. Being now a wit for life, she surveyed the various conditions of mankind with such superiority of sentiment, that she found few distinctions to be envied or de­ sired, and therefore did not very soon make another visit to the fountain. At length being alarmed by sickness, she resolved to drink length of life from the golden cup. She returned elated and secure, for though the longevity acquired was indetermi­ nate, she considered death as far distant, and therefore suffered it not to intrude upon her pleasures. But length of life included not perpetual health. She felt herself continually decaying, and saw the world fading about her. The delights of her early days would delight no longer, and however widely she extended her view, no new pleasure could be found; her friends, her enemies, her admirers, her rivals dropped one by one into the grave, and with those who succeeded them she had neither community of joys nor strife of competition. By this time she began to doubt whether old age were not dangerous to virtue; whether pain would not produce peevishness, and peevishness impair benevolence. She thought that the spectacle of life might be too long continued, and the vices which were often seen might raise less abhorrence; that resolution might be sapped by time, and let that virtue sink, which in its firmest state it had not without diffi­ culty supported; and that it was vain to delay the hour which must come at last, and might come at a time of less preparation and greater imbecillity.11 These thoughts led her to Lilinet, whom she accompanied to the flinty foun­ 11. “Weakness; feebleness of mind or body” (Dictionary).



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tain; where, after a short combat with herself, she drank the bitter water. They walked back to the favourite bush pensive and silent; “And now,” said she, “accept my thanks for the last benefit that Floretta can receive.” Lady Lilinet dropped a tear, impressed upon her lips the final kiss, and resigned her, as she resigned herself, to the course of Nature.

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Poetry

� Johnson first made a name for himself as the author of London (1738), a verse satire written as an imitation, or adaptation, of the Roman poet Juvenal’s third satire. He solidified his importance as a poet with an imitation of Juvenal’s grander and more philosophical tenth satire, The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749). Many of his other poems are more direct trans­ lations of classical texts, and he also wrote many Latin poems. In his career as a poet, as in every other facet of his literary life, Johnson was both a scholar and a writer making a living by an appeal to the public. In his most successful poems he combines the two activities, but he also wrote many poems mainly for himself and his friends. In fact, the range of his poetic output is striking. He wrote lyrics for admired friends; a verse drama (Irene); elegies (notably for Robert Levet); and a dramatic prologue for the reopening of the Drury Lane Theatre. Unless one counts his juvenile translation of Addison’s Battle of the Pygmies and the Cranes, he did not attempt epic poetry, but the variety of genres that he did try suggests that Johnson had high ambitions as a poet. The qualifications that Imlac in Rasselas speci­ fies for success as a poet show how seriously Johnson took that ambition (see pp. 185–87 above). Although he did not reach his highest poetic goals, Johnson’s poetry has intensity, compression, visually impressive imagery, philosophical meat, and delightfully deliberate diction. Like his Rambler, Johnson’s poetry tests the minds of his readers and rewards them with earned pleasures. In addition to London and The Vanity of Human Wishes (1738 and 1749, respectively) we include here five other poems chosen to provide some idea of John­ son’s performances as a poet both earlier and later in life.

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LO N D O N : A P O E M I N I M I TAT I O N O F T H E T H I R D S AT I R E O F J U V E NA L London is an imitation or loose translation or adaptation of the third satire of the Roman poet Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis, 60–130 CE). In the original poem, Juvenal’s friend Um­ bricius leaves Rome for the country in search of old Roman values. Johnson’s satire is part of the opposition to Sir Robert Walpole’s (1676–1745) government. Like the “Patriots” in oppo­ sition to Walpole, Johnson laments Britain’s apparent timidity before France and Spain, government corruption, George II’s visits to his native Germany, and London’s moral and physical dangers. The poet’s friend Thales decides to leave for the country, with which the political opposition was associated. Johnson had been in London for just over a year when this poem appeared anonymously on 12 May 1738, and he still felt like a relative outsider. Alexander Pope praised the poem, however, and said its author would soon be deterré (dis­ covered). He was, and for many years Johnson was known primarily as the author of London.

Quis ineptae Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat se? —Juvenal.1 Tho’ grief and fondness in my breast rebel, When injur’d Thales2 bids the town farewell, Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend, I praise the hermit, but regret the friend, Resolved at length, from vice and London far, 5 To breathe in distant fields a purer air, And, fix’d on Cambria’s3 solitary shore, Give to St. David4 one true Briton more.    For who would leave, unbrib’d, Hibernia’s5 land, Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?610 There none are swept by sudden fate away, 1. Juvenal, Satires, i.31–32: “Who is so tolerant of the injustices of Rome, who is so hardened, that they can contain themselves?” (trans. Susanna Morton Braund, 2004). Footnotes in the first edition printed corre­ sponding passages in Juvenal III. 2. Thales of Miletus (624–546 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and mathematician. SJ inserts him instead of Juvenal’s Umbricius, a much lesser figure. 3. Wales. 4. St. David (500–589?) was Bishop and Patron Saint of Wales. 5. Ireland. 6. A busy street in the City of London.

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But all whom hunger spares, with age decay: Here malice, rapine, accident, conspire, And now a rabble rages, now a fire; Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay, 15 And here the fell attorney prowls for prey; Here falling houses thunder on your head, And here a female atheist talks you dead.    While Thales waits the wherry7 that contains Of dissipated wealth the small remains, 20 On Thames’s banks, in silent thought we stood, Where Greenwich smiles upon the silver flood: Struck with the seat that gave Eliza birth, We kneel, and kiss the consecrated earth; In pleasing dreams the blissful age renew,825 And call Britannia’s glories back to view; Behold her cross triumphant on the main, The guard of commerce, and the dread of Spain, Ere masquerades debauch’d, excise9 oppress’d, Or English honour grew a standing jest. 30    A transient calm the happy scenes bestow, And for a moment lull the sense of woe. At length awaking, with contemptuous frown, Indignant Thales eyes the neighb’ring town.    Since worth, he cries, in these degen’rate days, 35 Wants ev’n the cheap reward of empty praise; In those curs’d walls, devote10 to vice and gain, Since unrewarded science11 toils in vain; Since hope but sooths12 to double my distress, And ev’ry moment leaves my little less; 40 While yet my steddy steps no staff sustains, And life still vig’rous revels in my veins; Grant me, kind heaven, to find some happier place, 7. A small rowing boat used to transport passengers or cargo. 8. Queen Elizabeth I’s reign (1558–1603) was often described as an English golden age, especially by Opposition politicians. A footnote in 1738 recalled that the queen was born at Greenwich. 9. “A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid” (Dictionary). 10. Devoted; addicted. 11. Learning. 12. Encourages or humors (me).

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Where honesty and sense are no disgrace; Some pleasing bank where verdant osiers play, 45 Some peaceful vale with nature’s paintings gay; Where once the harrass’d Briton found repose, And safe in poverty defy’d his foes; Some secret cell, ye pow’rs, indulgent give. Let — live here, for — has learn’d to live.1350 Here let those reign, whom pensions14 can incite To vote a patriot black, a courtier white;15 Explain their country’s dear-­bought rights away, And plead for pirates in the face of day;16 With slavish tenets taint our poison’d youth, 55 And lend a lye the confidence of truth.    Let such raise palaces, and manors buy, Collect a tax, or farm a lottery,17 With warbling eunuchs18 fill a licens’d stage,19 And lull to servitude a thoughtless age. 60    Heroes, proceed! what bounds your pride shall hold? What check restrain your thirst of pow’r and gold? Behold rebellious virtue quite o’erthrown, Behold our fame, our wealth, our lives your own.    To such, a groaning nation’s spoils are giv’n, 65 When publick crimes inflame the wrath of heav’n: But what, my friend, what hope remains for me, Who start at theft, and blush at perjury? Who scarce forbear, tho’ Britain’s Court he sing, To pluck a titled poet’s borrow’d wing;2070 A statesman’s logick unconvinc’d can hear, And dare to slumber o’er the Gazetteer;21 13. The lines are left blank to suggest the names of city-­dwellers too dangerous to mention. 14. “An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country” (Dictionary). 15. Those in opposition to the court and its prime minister, Robert Walpole, called themselves patriots. 16. [Note in 1787] The invasions of the Spaniards [against English ships trading with Spain’s American colonies] were defended in the houses of Parliament. 17. To farm: “To take the fees, proceeds, or profits of [a lottery] for a fixed sum” (OED, s.v. to farm, 2). 18. Italian castrati (male sopranos) in fashionable Italian opera. 19. [Note in 1787] The licensing act [requiring written government permission to present a play] was then lately made [21 June 1737]. 20. A “borrow’d wing” is a plagiarized passage of poetry. 21. [Note in 1787] The paper which at that time contained apologies for the Court.

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Despise a fool in half his pension dress’d, And strive in vain to laugh at H—y’s22 jest.    Others with softer smiles, and subtler art, Can sap the principles, or taint the heart; With more address a lover’s note convey, Or bribe a virgin’s innocence away. Well may they rise, while I, whose rustick tongue Ne’er knew to puzzle right, or varnish wrong, Spurn’d as a begger, dreaded as a spy, Live unregarded, unlamented die.    For what but social guilt the friend endears? Who shares Orgilio’s23 crimes, his fortune shares. But thou, should tempting villainy present All Marlb’rough24 hoarded, or all Villiers25 spent, Turn from the glitt’ring bribe thy scornful eye, Nor sell for gold, what gold could never buy, The peaceful slumber, self-­approving day, Unsullied fame, and conscience ever gay.    The cheated nation’s happy fav’rites, see! Mark whom the great caress, who frown on me! London! the needy villain’s gen’ral home, The common shore26 of Paris and of Rome; With eager thirst, by folly or by fate, Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state. Forgive my transports on a theme like this, I cannot bear a French metropolis.27    Illustrious Edward!28 from the realms of day, The land of heroes and of saints survey; Nor hope the British lineaments to trace, The rustick grandeur, or the surly grace,

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22. Perhaps John “Orator” Henley (1692–1756), employed by the government to write the twice-­weekly Hyp Doctor (1730–41), mocking Walpole’s opposition. 23. Orgilio suggests French orgueil and Italian orgoglio, pride. 24. John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722), the greatest general of his time, built the ostentatious palace of Blenheim and was often accused of greed. 25. George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687), squandered a large fortune and died in a tenant’s modest home in Kirkby Moorside, Yorkshire. 26. “A drain; properly sewer” (Dictionary). 27. London had at this time many French Huguenot refugees. 28. Edward III (1312–1377), victor over the French at Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356).

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But lost in thoughtless ease, and empty show, Behold the warrior dwindled to a beau; Sense, freedom, piety, refin’d away, 105 Of France the mimick, and of Spain the prey.    All that at home no more can beg or steal, Or like a gibbet29 better than a wheel;30 Hiss’d from the stage, or hooted from the court, Their air, their dress, their politicks import; 110 Obsequious, artful, voluble and gay, On Britain’s fond credulity they prey. No gainful trade their industry can ’scape, They sing, they dance, clean shoes, or cure a clap;31 All sciences a fasting Monsieur knows, 115 And bid him go to hell, to hell he goes.    Ah! what avails it, that, from slav’ry far, I drew the breath of life in English air; Was early taught a Briton’s right to prize, And lisp the tale of Henry’s victories;32120 If the gull’d conqueror receives the chain,33 And flattery subdues when arms are vain?    Studious to please, and ready to submit, The supple Gaul was born a parasite: Still to his int’rest true, where’er he goes, 125 Wit, brav’ry, worth, his lavish tongue bestows; In ev’ry face a thousand graces shine, From ev’ry tongue flows harmony divine. These arts in vain our rugged natives try, ⎫ Strain out with fault’ring diffidence a lye,⎬130 And get a kick for aukward flattery. ⎭    Besides, with justice, this discerning age Admires their wond’rous talents for the stage: Well may they venture on the mimick’s art, Who play from morn to night a borrow’d part; 135 Practis’d their master’s notions to embrace,

29. The gallows, used to execute British felons. 30. The instrument on which French felons were tortured, executed, or both. 31. Gonorrhea, sometimes called a French disease. 32. Henry V (1386–1422), victor over the French at Agincourt (1415). 33. An emblem or medal of honor or office.

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Repeat his maxims, and reflect his face; With ev’ry wild absurdity comply, And view each object with another’s eye; To shake with laughter ere the jest they hear, To pour at will the counterfeited tear, And as their patron hints the cold or heat, To shake in dog-­days,34 in December sweat.    How, when competitors like these contend, Can surly virtue hope to fix a friend? Slaves that with serious impudence beguile, And lye without a blush, without a smile; Exalt each trifle, ev’ry vice adore, Your taste in snuff, your judgment in a whore; Can Balbo’s35 eloquence applaud, and swear He gropes his breeches with a monarch’s air.    For arts like these preferr’d, admir’d, caress’d, They first invade your table, then your breast; Explore your secrets with insidious art, Watch the weak hour, and ransack all the heart; Then soon your ill-­plac’d confidence repay, Commence your lords, and govern or betray.    By numbers here from shame or censure free, All crimes are safe, but hated poverty. This, only this, the rigid law pursues, This, only this, provokes the snarling muse.36 The sober trader at a tatter’d cloak, Wakes from his dream, and labours for a joke; With brisker air the silken courtiers gaze, And turn the varied taunt a thousand ways. Of all the griefs that harrass the distress’d, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the gen’rous heart, Than when a blockhead’s insult points the dart.    Has heaven reserv’d, in pity to the poor, No pathless waste, or undiscover’d shore; No secret island in the boundless main?

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No peaceful desart yet unclaim’d by Spain?37 Quick let us rise, the happy seats explore, And bear oppression’s insolence no more. This mournful truth is ev’ry where confess’d, Slow rises worth, by poverty depress’d: But here more slow, where all are slaves to gold, Where looks are merchandise, and smiles are sold; Where won by bribes, by flatteries implor’d, The groom retails the favours of his lord.    But hark! th’ affrighted crowd’s tumultuous cries Roll thro’ the streets, and thunder to the skies; Rais’d from some pleasing dream of wealth and pow’r, Some pompous palace, or some blissful bow’r, Aghast you start, and scarce with aking sight Sustain th’ approaching fire’s tremendous light; Swift from pursuing horrors take your way, And leave your little all to flames a prey; Then thro’ the world a wretched vagrant roam, For where can starving merit find a home? In vain your mournful narrative disclose, While all neglect, and most insult your woes.    Should heaven’s just bolts Orgilio’s wealth confound,38 And spread his flaming palace on the ground, Swift o’er the land the dismal rumour flies, And publick mournings pacify the skies; The laureat tribe in servile verse relate, How virtue wars with persecuting fate; With well-­feign’d gratitude the pension’d band Refund the plunder of the begger’d land. See! while he builds, the gaudy vassals come, And crowd with sudden wealth the rising dome;39 The price of boroughs and of souls restore, And raise his treasures higher than before. Now bless’d with all the baubles of the great, The polish’d marble, and the shining plate,

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37. [Note in 1787] The Spaniards at this time were said to make claim to some of our American provinces. 38. [Note in 1787] This was by [Charles] Hitch a Bookseller justly remarked to be no picture of modern manners, though it might be true at Rome. 39. Building or home (Latin, domus).

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Orgilio sees the golden pile aspire, And hopes from angry heav’n another fire.    Could’st thou resign the park and play content, For the fair banks of Severn or of Trent;40 There might’st thou find some elegant retreat, Some hireling senator’s deserted seat; And stretch thy prospects o’er the smiling land, For less than rent the dungeons of the Strand; There prune thy walks, support thy drooping flow’rs, Direct thy rivulets, and twine thy bow’rs; And, while thy grounds a cheap repast afford, Despise the dainties of a venal lord: There ev’ry bush with nature’s musick rings, There ev’ry breeze bears health upon its wings; On all thy hours security shall smile, And bless thine evening walk and morning toil.    Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, And sign your will before you sup from home. Some fiery fop, with new commission vain, Who sleeps on brambles41 till he kills his man; Some frolick drunkard, reeling from a feast, Provokes a broil, and stabs you for a jest. Yet ev’n these heroes, mischievously gay, Lords of the street, and terrors of the way; Flush’d as they are with folly, youth and wine, Their prudent insults to the poor confine; Afar they mark the flambeau’s42 bright approach, And shun the shining train, and golden coach.    In vain, these dangers past, your doors you close, And hope the balmy blessings of repose: Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, The midnight murd’rer bursts the faithless bar; Invades the sacred hour of silent rest, And leaves, unseen, a dagger in your breast.

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40. Severn: A large river in Wales and western England. Trent: A river forming the traditional boundary between northern and southern England. 41. “To sleep on brambles”: to be itching or eager to do something (Samuel Johnson: The Complete English Poems, ed. J. D. Fleeman, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971). 42. A torch, such as those held by footmen.

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   Scarce can our fields, such crowds at Tyburn43 die, With hemp the gallows and the fleet supply. Propose your schemes, ye Senatorian band, Whose Ways and Means44 support the sinking land; Lest ropes be wanting in the tempting spring, To rig another convoy45 for the k—g.    A single jail, in Alfred’s golden reign,46 Could half the nation’s criminals contain; Fair justice then, without constraint ador’d, Held high the steady scale, but drop’d the sword; No spies were paid, no special juries known,47 Blest age! but ah! how diff ’rent from our own!    Much could I add,—but see the boat at hand, The tide retiring, calls me from the land: Farewell!—When youth, and health, and fortune spent, Thou fly’st for refuge to the wilds of Kent;48 And tir’d like me with follies and with crimes, In angry numbers49 warn’st succeeding times; Then shall thy friend, nor thou refuse his aid, Still foe to vice, forsake his Cambrian shade; In virtue’s cause once more exert his rage, Thy satire point, and animate thy page.

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43. Tyburn: The place of public execution in London. 44. [Note in 1787] A cant term in the House of Commons for methods of raising money. 45. George II (1683–1760; reigned 1727–60) made frequent, controversial trips to Hanover, his ancestral home, perhaps to see his mistress. 46. Alfred the Great (848 or 849 to 899), King of Wessex (871–899), defeated the invading Vikings and supported religion and learning. 47. A “special jury” was one selected from a group of freeholders identified by the Master of the Crown Office who would likely serve the interests of the government, rather than the people, in making his selection. 48. The rural county south and east of London. 49. Angry numbers: Verse satire like that in London.

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TO M I S S ____ O N H E R P L AY I N G U P O N T H E H A R P S I C O R D I N A RO O M H U N G W I T H S O M E F LOW E R - P ­ I E C E S O F H E R OW N PA I N T I N G The poem was originally addressed to Alicia Maria Carpenter (1729–1794), probably on behalf of Johnson’s friend Henry Hervey Aston (1701–1748). When Stella1 strikes the tuneful string In scenes of imitated spring, Where beauty lavishes her pow’rs On beds of never-­fading flow’rs, And pleasure propagates around Each charm of modulated sound, Ah! think not, in the dang’rous hour, The nymph2 fictitious, as the flow’r, But shun, rash youth, the gay alcove, Nor tempt the snares of wily love.    When charms thus press on ev’ry sense, What thought of flight, or of defence? Deceitful Hope, and vain Desire, For ever flutter o’er her lyre, Delighting, as the youth draws nigh, To point the glances of her eye, And forming, with unerring art, New chains to hold the captive heart.    But on these regions of delight, Might Truth intrude with daring flight, Could Stella, sprightly, fair and young, One moment hear the moral song, Instruction with her flow’rs might spring, And wisdom warble from her string.    Mark, when from thousand mingled dyes Thou see’st one pleasing form arise, How active light, and thoughtful shade, In greater scenes each other aid;

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1. Stella (meaning star) was a conventional name for women in love poetry. 2. “A lady in poetry” (Dictionary, sense 2).

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Mark, when the diff ’rent notes agree In friendly contrariety, How passion’s well-­accorded strife Gives all the harmony of life, Thy pictures shall thy conduct frame, Consistent still, though not the same; Thy musick teach the nobler art To tune the regulated heart.

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A N E P I TA P H O N C L AU DY P H I L L I P S , A MUSICIAN Johnson wrote this poem extempore in 1740 after hearing David Garrick (1717–1779) re­ cite an inferior poem on Phillips. Charles Claudius Phillips was a Welsh violinist who died in poverty in 1732. Phillips! whose touch harmonious could remove The pangs of guilty pow’r, and hapless love, Rest here, distrest by poverty no more, Find here that calm thou gav’st so oft before; Sleep undisturb’d within this peaceful shrine, Till angels wake thee with a note like thine.

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P RO LO G U E S P O K E N B Y M R . G A R R I C K AT T H E O P E N I N G O F T H E T H E AT R E I N D RU RY- L ­ A N E , 1747 Drury Lane Theatre was refurbished and reopened on 15 September 1747 under the new management of the great actor (and SJ’s former student) David Garrick. The play presented was Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. The poem is a “progress piece” that shows the his­ tory of English drama and suggests its possible future. Boswell called it “unrivalled” in its kind (Life of SJ, i.181). The opening eight lines anticipate the language and imagery SJ will later use in his Preface to Shakespeare (see p. 425 below).

When Learning’s triumph o’er her barb’rous foes First rear’d the stage, immortal Shakespear rose; Each change of many-­colour’d life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin’d new: Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil’d after him in vain: His pow’rful strokes presiding truth impress’d, And unresisted passion storm’d the breast.    Then Johnson 1 came, instructed from the school, To please in method, and invent by rule; His studious patience, and laborious art, By regular approach essay’d the heart; Cold approbation gave the ling’ring bays,2 For those who durst not censure, scarce cou’d praise. A mortal born he met the general doom, But left, like Egypt’s kings, a lasting tomb.    The wits of Charles found easier ways to fame,3 Nor wish’d for Johnson’s art, or Shakespear’s flame; Themselves they studied, as they felt, they writ, Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit. Vice always found a sympathetick friend; They pleas’d their age, and did not aim to mend. Yet bards like these aspir’d to lasting praise,

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1. Ben Jonson (1572–1637), Shakespeare’s admirer and competitor, attended Westminster School and re­ ceived training in classical languages and literature. 2. Bay laurel, given for excellence in poetry. 3. The courtiers during Charles II’s reign (1660–1685) were known for their bawdy poetry and plays.

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And proudly hop’d to pimp in future days. Their cause was gen’ral, their supports were strong, Their slaves were willing, and their reign was long; Till shame regain’d the post that sense betray’d, And Virtue call’d oblivion to her aid.    Then crush’d by rules, and weaken’d as refin’d,4 For years the pow’r of tragedy declin’d; From bard, to bard, the frigid caution crept, Till declamation roar’d, while passion slept. Yet still did Virtue deign the stage to tread, Philosophy remain’d, though Nature fled. But forc’d at length her antient reign to quit, She saw great Faustus lay the ghost of wit:5 Exulting Folly hail’d the joyful day, And pantomime, and song, confirm’d her sway.    But who the coming changes can presage, And mark the future periods of the stage?— Perhaps if skill could distant times explore, New Behns, new Durfeys, yet remain in store.6 Perhaps, where Lear has rav’d, and Hamlet dy’d, On flying cars new sorcerers may ride. Perhaps, for who can guess th’ effects of chance? Here Hunt may box, or Mahomet may dance.7    Hard is his lot, that here by fortune plac’d, Must watch the wild vicissitudes of taste; With ev’ry meteor of caprice must play, And chase the new-­blown bubbles of the day. Ah! let not censure term our fate our choice, The stage but echoes back the publick voice. The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give, For we that live to please, must please to live.    Then prompt no more the follies you decry, As tyrants doom their tools of guilt to die; ’Tis yours this night to bid the reign commence

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4. SJ attacks dramatic rules, such as the three unities, in his Preface to Shakespeare (see pp. 435–39 below). 5. SJ alludes to the rage for harlequinades, or clownish pantomimes, in the 1720s; among the most cele­ brated of these was Dr. Faustus Necromancer (1723). 6. Aphra Behn (1640–1689) and Thomas D’Urfey (1653–1723) were playwrights then in low repute. 7. Edward Hunt was a boxer and Mahomet a Turkish tightrope walker.

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Of rescu’d Nature, and reviving Sense; To chase the charms of sound, the pomp of show, For useful mirth, and salutary woe; Bid scenic virtue form the rising age,8 And Truth diffuse her radiance from the stage.

8. Scenic: “Dramatic; theatrical” (Dictionary).

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T H E VA N I T Y O F H U M A N W I S H E S :

T H E T E N T H S AT I R E O F J U V E NA L I M I TAT E D The Vanity of Human Wishes is Johnson’s most accomplished and celebrated poem. He wrote it in the autumn of 1748, completing it by 25 November. It appeared on 9 January 1749 with Johnson’s name on the title page—a distinction lacking in almost all his earlier publications. Like London (see above, p. 266), the Vanity is an excellent example of the eighteenth-­century “imitation,” an original and complex adaptation of a classical poem. Juvenal’s tenth satire is his most elevated and philosophical, and Johnson’s version rises answerably, soaring above the more topical third satire, which he had imitated in London. T. S. Eliot said of London and The Vanity of Human Wishes (which he called the finer of the two poems) that they are “among the greatest verse Satires of the English or any other language.”1

Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind, from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crouded life; Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate, 5 O’erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate, Where wav’ring man, betray’d by vent’rous pride, To tread the dreary paths without a guide, As treach’rous phantoms in the mist delude, Shuns fancied ills, or chases airy good; 10 How rarely reason guides the stubborn choice, Rules the bold hand, or prompts the suppliant voice; How nations sink, by darling schemes oppress’d, When vengeance listens to the fool’s request. Fate wings with ev’ry wish th’ afflictive dart,215 Each gift of nature, and each grace of art, With fatal heat impetuous courage glows, With fatal sweetness elocution flows, Impeachment stops the speaker’s pow’rful breath, And restless fire precipitates on death.320    But scarce observ’d, the knowing and the bold 1. See his Introduction to the Haslewood Press edition of the two poems (1930). 2. Fate uses wishes as wings to speed the darts. 3. Fire causes death to come on quickly.

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Fall in the gen’ral massacre of gold; Wide-­wasting pest! that rages unconfin’d, And crouds with crimes the records of mankind; For gold his sword the hireling ruffian draws, For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws; Wealth heap’d on wealth, nor truth nor safety buys, The dangers gather as the treasures rise.    Let hist’ry tell where rival kings command, And dubious title shakes the madded land, When statutes glean the refuse of the sword, How much more safe the vassal than the lord; Low skulks the hind beneath the rage of pow’r, And leaves the wealthy traytor in the Tow’r, Untouch’d his cottage, and his slumbers sound, Tho’ confiscation’s vulturs hover round.4    The needy traveller, secure and gay, Walks the wild heath, and sings his toil away. Does envy seize thee? crush th’ upbraiding joy, Increase his riches and his peace destroy; Now fears in dire vicissitude invade, The rustling brake alarms, and quiv’ring shade, Nor light nor darkness bring his pain relief, One shews the plunder, and one hides the thief.    Yet still one gen’ral cry the skies assails, And gain and grandeur load the tainted gales;5 Few know the toiling statesman’s fear or care, Th’ insidious rival and the gaping heir.6    Once more, Democritus,7 arise on earth, With chearful wisdom and instructive mirth, See motly life in modern trappings dress’d, And feed with varied fools th’ eternal jest: Thou who couldst laugh where want enchain’d caprice, Toil crush’d conceit, and man was of a piece;

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4. As the original reading of “bonny traitor” in line 34 makes clearer, SJ alludes in this verse paragraph to wars of succession in Britain, including the Jacobite invasions of 1715 and 1745 on behalf of the deposed Stuart monarchs. 5. “Tainted gales”: breezes loaded with scent. 6. “Gaping heir”: one eagerly awaiting the death of his benefactor. 7. Democritus (460–370 BCE) was known as “the laughing philosopher” and “the mocker” for his con­ tempt of human folly.

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Where wealth unlov’d without a mourner dy’d, And scarce a sycophant was fed by pride; Where ne’er was known the form of mock debate, Or seen a new-­made mayor’s unwieldy state; Where change of fav’rites made no change of laws, And senates heard before they judg’d a cause; How wouldst thou shake at Britain’s modish tribe, Dart the quick taunt, and edge the piercing gibe? Attentive truth and nature to descry, And pierce each scene with philosophic eye. To thee were solemn toys or empty shew, The robes of pleasure and the veils of woe: All aid the farce, and all thy mirth maintain, Whose joys are causeless, or whose griefs are vain.    Such was the scorn that fill’d the sage’s mind, Renew’d at ev’ry glance on humankind; How just that scorn ere yet thy voice declare, Search every state, and canvass ev’ry pray’r.    Unnumber’d suppliants croud Preferment’s gate, Athirst for wealth, and burning to be great; Delusive Fortune hears th’ incessant call, They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall. On ev’ry stage the foes of peace attend, Hate dogs their flight, and insult mocks their end. Love ends with hope, the sinking statesman’s door Pours in the morning worshiper no more; For growing names the weekly scribbler lies,8 To growing wealth the dedicator flies, From every room descends the painted face, That hung the bright Palladium9 of the place, And smoak’d in kitchens, or in auctions sold, To better features yields the frame of gold; For now no more we trace in ev’ry line Heroic worth, benevolence divine: The form distorted justifies the fall, And detestation rids th’ indignant wall.

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8. “Weekly scribbler”: journalist. 9. The wooden statue of Pallas Athena thought to preserve Troy from conquest; here adapted to the por­ trait of the deposed statesman.

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   But will not Britain hear the last appeal, Sign her foes’ doom, or guard her fav’rites’ zeal? Through Freedom’s sons no more remonstrance rings,10 Degrading nobles and controuling kings; Our supple tribes repress their patriot throats,1195 And ask no questions but the price of votes; With weekly libels and septennial ale,12 Their wish is full to riot and to rail.    In full blown dignity, see Wolsey13 stand, Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand: 100 To him the church, the realm, their pow’rs consign, Thro’ him the rays of regal bounty shine, Turn’d by his nod the stream of honour flows,14 His smile alone security bestows: Still to new heights his restless wishes tow’r, 105 Claim leads to claim, and pow’r advances pow’r; Till conquest unresisted ceas’d to please, And rights submitted, left him none to seize. At length his sov’reign frowns—the train of state Mark the keen glance, and watch the sign to hate. 110 Where-­e’er he turns he meets a stranger’s eye, His suppliants scorn him, and his followers fly; At once is lost the pride of aweful state, The golden canopy, the glitt’ring plate, 115 The regal palace, the luxurious board, The liv’ried army, and the menial lord. With age, with cares, with maladies oppress’d, He seeks the refuge of monastic rest. Grief aids disease, remember’d folly stings, And his last sighs reproach the faith of kings. 120    Speak thou, whose thoughts at humble peace repine, Shall Wolsey’s wealth, with Wolsey’s end be thine? Or liv’st thou now, with safer pride content, 10. Remonstrance: A petition or statement of grievances to a monarch. 11. Patriot was the name adopted by those in opposition to Robert Walpole. 12. “Weekly libels” are, ambiguously, both periodical political publications and slanders. Elections were required septennially (every seven years), and voters were often courted with alcohol. 13. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (1472–1530), Lord Chancellor in the court of Henry VIII from 1515 to 1529. Overreaching and palace infighting led to the loss of all his offices and his eventual execution. 14. Honour: An official award; rank; or privilege.

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The wisest justice on the banks of Trent?15 For why did Wolsey near the steeps of fate, 125 On weak foundations raise th’ enormous weight? Why but to sink beneath misfortune’s blow, With louder ruin to the gulphs below?    What gave great Villiers to th’ assassin’s knife,16 And fixed disease on Harley’s closing life?17130 What murder’d Wentworth, and what exil’d Hyde,18 By kings protected, and to kings ally’d? What but their wish indulg’d in courts to shine, And pow’r too great to keep, or to resign?    When first the college rolls receive his name, 135 The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame; Through all his veins the fever of renown Burns from the strong contagion of the gown; O’er Bodley’s dome his future labours spread,19 And Bacon’s mansion trembles o’er his head.20140 Are these thy views? proceed, illustrious youth, And virtue guard thee to the throne of Truth! Yet should thy soul indulge the gen’rous heat, Till captive Science yields her last retreat;21 Should Reason guide thee with her brightest ray, 145 And pour on misty Doubt resistless day; Should no false Kindness lure to loose delight, Nor Praise relax, nor Difficulty fright; Should tempting Novelty thy cell refrain, And Sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain; 150 Should Beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart, 15. The Trent was long considered the northern boundary of southern England. 16. George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham (1592–1628), was assassinated by an army officer passed over for promotion. 17. Robert Harley (1661–1724), first Earl of Oxford, prime minister 1710–14. 18. Thomas Wentworth (1593–1641), first Earl of Strafford, a close friend of Charles I, was arrested and executed by Parliament. Edward Hyde (1609–1674), first Earl of Clarendon, Lord Chancellor, was allied to King Charles through marriage. He was impeached by the House of Commons for violating habeas corpus laws and fled to France in 1667. 19. The main building (Latin, domus) of Oxford’s Bodleian Library (not the domed Radcliffe Camera, which did not become part of the library until 1860). 20. [Note in 1755] There is a tradition, that the study [“mansion”] of friar Roger Bacon [c. 1214–1292], built on an arch over the [Folly] bridge, will fall, when a man greater than Bacon shall pass under it. 21. Science: Knowledge in general.

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Nor claim the triumph of a letter’d heart; Should no disease thy torpid veins invade, Nor Melancholy’s phantoms haunt thy shade; Yet hope not life from grief or danger free, 155 Nor think the doom of man revers’d for thee: Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause awhile from letters, to be wise; There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail, Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.22160 See nations slowly wise, and meanly just, To buried merit raise the tardy bust.23 If dreams yet flatter, once again attend, Hear Lydiat’s life, and Galileo’s end.24    Nor deem, when learning her last prize bestows, 165 The glitt’ring eminence exempt from foes; See when the vulgar ’scape, despis’d or aw’d, Rebellion’s vengeful talons seize on Laud.25 From meaner minds, tho’ smaller fines content, The plunder’d palace or sequester’d rent; 170 Mark’d out by dangerous parts he meets the shock, And fatal Learning leads him to the block: Around his tomb let Art and Genius weep, But hear his death, ye blockheads, hear and sleep.    The festal blazes, the triumphal show,26175 The ravish’d standard, and the captive foe, The senate’s thanks, the gazette’s pompous tale, With force resistless o’er the brave prevail. Such bribes the rapid Greek o’er Asia whirl’d,27 For such the steady Romans shook the world; 180 For such in distant lands the Britons shine,

22. SJ originally wrote “the garret” but changed it to “the patron” in 1755 to register his disappointment that Chesterfield had not supported his efforts on the Dictionary (see p. 376 below). 23. The bust of Milton in Westminster Abbey was raised in 1737, sixty-­three years after his death. 24. Thomas Lydiat (1572–1646), distinguished mathematician, biblical scholar, and fellow of New Col­ lege, Oxford, was imprisoned for debt and later forgotten. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was a preeminent mathe­ matician and astronomer whom the Pope punished for his support of the Copernican theory of the universe. 25. William Laud (1573–1645), a very influential Archbishop of Canterbury under Charles I, was tried, imprisoned, and beheaded by order of Parliament during the Civil War. 26. Festal: “Befitting a feast; hence, gay, joyous” (OED, sense 2a). 27. Alexander III (the Great) of Macedon (356–323 BCE).

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And stain with blood the Danube or the Rhine; This pow’r has praise, that virtue scarce can warm, Till fame supplies the universal charm. Yet Reason frowns on War’s unequal game, Where wasted nations raise a single name, And mortgag’d states their grandsires wreaths regret,28 From age to age in everlasting debt; Wreaths which at last the dear-­bought right convey To rust on medals, or on stones decay.    On what foundation stands the warrior’s pride, How just his hopes let Swedish Charles decide;29 A frame of adamant, a soul of fire, No dangers fright him, and no labours tire; O’er love, o’er fear, extends his wide domain, Unconquer’d lord of pleasure and of pain; No joys to him pacific scepters yield, War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field; Behold surrounding kings their pow’r combine, And one capitulate, and one resign; Peace courts his hand, but spreads her charms in vain; “Think nothing gain’d, he cries, till nought remain, On Moscow’s walls till Gothic standards fly,30 And all be mine beneath the polar sky.” The march begins in military state, And nations on his eye suspended wait; Stern Famine guards the solitary coast, And Winter barricades the realms of Frost; He comes, not want and cold his course delay;— Hide, blushing Glory, hide Pultowa’s day: The vanquish’d hero leaves his broken bands, And shews his miseries in distant lands; Condemn’d a needy supplicant to wait, While ladies interpose, and slaves debate. But did not Chance at length her error mend?

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28. Wreaths: Marks of distinction in bronze, sometimes incorporated in heraldic devices. 29. The austere Charles XII (1682–1718), King of Sweden, the Napoleon of his day, invaded Russia in 1707. He was defeated at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 and killed by an unknown hand at the Battle of Fredriks­ hald in 1718. 30. Gothic: Swedish or, more generally, Teutonic.

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Did no subverted empire mark his end? Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound? Or hostile millions press him to the ground? His fall was destin’d to a barren strand, A petty fortress, and a dubious hand; 220 He left the name, at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.    All times their scenes of pompous woes afford, From Persia’s tyrant to Bavaria’s lord.31 In gay hostility, and barb’rous pride, 225 With half mankind embattled at his side, Great Xerxes comes to seize the certain prey, And starves exhausted regions in his way; Attendant Flatt’ry counts his myriads o’er, Till counted myriads sooth his pride no more; 230 Fresh praise is try’d till madness fires his mind, The waves he lashes, and enchains the wind; New pow’rs are claim’d, new pow’rs are still bestow’d, Till rude resistance lops the spreading god; 235 The daring Greeks deride the martial show, And heap their vallies with the gaudy foe; Th’ insulted sea with humbler thoughts he gains, A single skiff to speed his flight remains; Th’ incumber’d oar scarce leaves the dreaded coast Through purple billows and a floating host.32240    The bold Bavarian, in a luckless hour, Tries the dread summits of Cesarean pow’r, With unexpected legions bursts away, And sees defenceless realms receive his sway; 245 Short sway! fair Austria spreads her mournful charms, The queen, the beauty, sets the world in arms;33 From hill to hill the beacon’s rousing blaze Spreads wide the hope of plunder and of praise;

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31. “Persia’s tyrant” is Xerxes (519–465 BCE); Charles Albert of Bavaria (1697–1745) was elected Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VII, in 1742. 32. Host: Army. 33. Maria Theresa (1717–1780) became ruler of the Habsburg lands upon the death of her father, Charles VI. Bavaria, Prussia, and others disputed her succession and attacked her dominions. Prussia took Silesia, now in southwestern Poland, but with the help of Great Britain and others, Maria Theresa repelled the other attacks.

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The fierce Croatian, and the wild Hussar,34 And all the sons of ravage croud the war; 250 The baffled prince in honour’s flatt’ring bloom Of hasty greatness finds the fatal doom, His foes derision, and his subjects blame, And steals to death from anguish and from shame.    Enlarge my life with multitude of days, 255 In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays; Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know, That life protracted is protracted woe. Time hovers o’er, impatient to destroy, 260 And shuts up all the passages of joy: In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour, The fruit autumnal, and the vernal flow’r, With listless eyes the dotard views the store, He views, and wonders that they please no more; Now pall the tasteless meats, and joyless wines, 265 And Luxury with sighs her slave resigns. Approach, ye minstrels, try the soothing strain, Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain:35 No sounds alas would touch th’ impervious ear, Though dancing mountains witness’d Orpheus near;36270 Nor lute nor lyre his feeble pow’rs attend, Nor sweeter musick of a virtuous friend, But everlasting dictates croud his tongue, Perversely grave, or positively wrong. The still returning tale, and ling’ring jest, 275 Perplex the fawning niece and pamper’d guest, While growing hopes scarce awe the gath’ring sneer, And scarce a legacy can bribe to hear; The watchful guests still hint the last offence, 280 The daughter’s petulance, the son’s expence, Improve his heady rage with treach’rous skill, And mould his passions till they make his will.    Unnumber’d maladies his joints invade, Lay siege to life and press the dire blockade; 34. Hussar: Hungarian cavalryman. 35. Soothing medicines. 36. Orpheus: the mythical poet-­musician whose songs could move rocks and trees.

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But unextinguish’d Avarice still remains, And dreaded losses aggravate his pains; He turns, with anxious heart and cripled hands, His bonds of debt, and mortgages of lands; Or views his coffers with suspicious eyes, Unlocks his gold, and counts it till he dies.    But grant, the virtues of a temp’rate prime Bless with an age exempt from scorn or crime; An age that melts with unperceiv’d decay, And glides in modest innocence away; Whose peaceful day Benevolence endears, Whose night congratulating Conscience cheers; The gen’ral fav’rite as the gen’ral friend: Such age there is, and who shall wish its end?    Yet ev’n on this her load Misfortune flings, To press the weary minutes flagging wings: New sorrow rises as the day returns, A sister sickens, or a daughter mourns. Now kindred Merit fills the sable bier, Now lacerated Friendship claims a tear. Year chases year, decay pursues decay, Still drops some joy from with’ring life away; New forms arise, and diff ’rent views engage, Superfluous lags the vet’ran on the stage, Till pitying Nature signs the last release, And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.    But few there are whom hours like these await, Who set unclouded in the gulphs of fate. From Lydia’s monarch should the search descend, By Solon caution’d to regard his end,37 In life’s last scene what prodigies surprise, Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise? From Marlb’rough’s eyes the streams of dotage flow,38 And Swift expires a driv’ler and a show.39

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37. The wealthy Croesus (595–547 BCE), King of Lydia in Asia Minor, whom the philosopher Solon (638–558 BCE) counseled not to judge himself happy until death. 38. John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722), the greatest general in the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713), suffered a series of disabling strokes in his later years. 39. Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) suffered from Ménière’s disease, strokes, and senile dementia during his final years. His servants may have displayed him for a fee.

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   The teeming mother, anxious for her race, Begs for each birth the fortune of a face: Yet Vane could tell what ills from beauty spring;40 And Sedley curs’d the form that pleas’d a king.41 Ye nymphs of rosy lips and radiant eyes, Whom Pleasure keeps too busy to be wise, Whom Joys with soft varieties invite, By day the frolick, and the dance by night, Who frown with vanity, who smile with art, And ask the latest fashion of the heart, What care, what rules your heedless charms shall save, Each nymph your rival, and each youth your slave? Against your fame with fondness hate combines, The rival batters, and the lover mines. With distant voice neglected Virtue calls, Less heard and less, the faint remonstrance falls; Tir’d with contempt, she quits the slipp’ry reign, And Pride and Prudence take her seat in vain. In croud at once, where none the pass defend, The harmless Freedom, and the private Friend. The guardians yield, by force superior ply’d; By Int’rest, Prudence; and by Flatt’ry, Pride. Now beauty falls betray’d, despis’d, distress’d, And hissing Infamy proclaims the rest.    Where then shall Hope and Fear their objects find? Must dull Suspence corrupt the stagnant mind? Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate? Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise, No cries attempt the mercies of the skies? Enquirer, cease, petitions yet remain, Which heav’n may hear, nor deem religion vain. Still raise for good the supplicating voice, But leave to heav’n the measure and the choice, Safe in his pow’r, whose eyes discern afar

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40. Anne Vane (1705–1736), mistress of Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707–1751), died a few weeks after losing an infant. 41. Catherine Sedley (1657–1717), mistress of James II and suspected Jacobite under William III, had sev­ eral children with the king and her two husbands.

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The secret ambush of a specious pray’r. Implore his aid, in his decisions rest, Secure whate’er he gives, he gives the best. Yet when the sense of sacred presence fires, And strong devotion to the skies aspires, Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind, Obedient passions, and a will resign’d; For love, which scarce collective man can fill; For patience sov’reign o’er transmuted ill; For faith, that panting for a happier seat, Counts death kind Nature’s signal of retreat: These goods for man the laws of heav’n ordain, These goods he grants, who grants the pow’r to gain; With these celestial wisdom calms the mind And makes the happiness she does not find.

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A S H O RT S O N G O F C O N G R AT U L AT I O N Johnson sent this poem to his friend Hester Lynch Thrale on 8 August 1780. It addresses her nephew, Sir John Lade, who had just reached twenty-­one and inherited his estate, which he did in fact squander. The poem was not printed until 1794.

Long-­expected one and twenty    Ling’ring year at last is flown, Pomp and pleasure, pride and plenty    Great Sir John, are all your own. Loosen’d from the minor’s tether,    Free to mortgage or to sell, Wild as wind, and light as feather    Bid the slaves of thrift farewell. Call the Bettys, Kates, and Jennys    Ev’ry name that laughs at care, Lavish of your grandsire’s guineas,    Show the spirit of an heir. All that prey on vice and folly    Joy to see their quarry fly, Here the gamester light and jolly    There the lender grave and sly. Wealth, Sir John, was made to wander,    Let it wander as it will; See the jocky, see the pander,    Bid them come, and take their fill.

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When the bonny blade carouses,    Pockets full, and spirits high, What are acres? What are houses?    Only dirt, or wet or dry.

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If the guardian or the mother    Tell the woes of wilful waste, Scorn their counsel and their pother,    You can hang or drown at last.

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O N T H E D E AT H O F D R . RO B E RT L E V E T Robert Levet (1705–1782) had long lived in Johnson’s household as a friend and medical guide before his sudden death on 17 January 1782. He was not a licensed physician, al­ though he had attended series of lectures on the topic in Paris and London. He was rather a “physician in ordinary” and ministered mainly to the poor.

Condemn’d to hope’s delusive mine,    As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts, or slow decline,    Our social comforts drop away. Well tried through many a varying year,    See Levet to the grave descend; Officious, innocent, sincere,1    Of ev’ry friendless name the friend. Yet still he fills affection’s eye,    Obscurely wise, and coarsely kind; Nor, letter’d arrogance, deny    Thy praise to merit unrefin’d. When fainting nature call’d for aid,    And hov’ring death prepar’d the blow, His vig’rous remedy display’d    The power of art without the show. In misery’s darkest caverns known,    His useful care was ever nigh, Where hopeless anguish pour’d his groan,    And lonely want retir’d to die.

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No summons mock’d by chill delay,    No petty gain disdain’d by pride, The modest wants of ev’ry day    The toil of ev’ry day supplied. 1. Officious: “Kind; doing good offices” (Dictionary).

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His virtues walk’d their narrow round,    Nor made a pause, nor left a void; And sure th’ Eternal Master found    The single talent well employ’d.2 The busy day, the peaceful night,    Unfelt, uncounted, glided by; His frame was firm, his powers were bright,    Tho’ now his eightieth year was nigh. Then with no throbbing fiery pain,    No cold gradations of decay, Death broke at once the vital chain,    And free’d his soul the nearest way.

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2. A reference to the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:​14–30, where the single talent (a small amount of money) is not well employed and the servant holding it is severely punished..

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Writings on Law and Society

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Johnson’s attitudes toward law and society often stem from his religion. Jesus and his apostles, he says in Sermon 27, inculcated “lenity, meekness and beneficence” (Yale, xiv.290). These acts of kindness should extend to the miserable not because they are of a specific religious sect, but because they are human beings who “have one common nature and one common father” in God (Yale, xiv.296). As is also true for Johnson, spiritual and moral convictions dictate the secular approach: “As charity . . . is the most excellent of all moral virtues, because it conduces most to the happiness of mankind; so that kind of charity is most laudable, of which the benefits are most extensive” (Yale, xiv.298). Johnson’s con­ cept of charity—caritas or love—as good for society is clear in his concern for the poor and the outcast, including prostitutes, slaves, and prisoners. In the selections presented below Johnson spoke up for the downtrodden, and he often practiced what he preached. He emptied his pockets of coins when he encountered the homeless, and he once carried a sick prostitute to his home, nursed her back to health, and helped her to a better life. He saw to the education of the freed slave Frank Barber and made him his residual legatee, despite the indignation of several friends. He wrote on behalf of charitable causes, such as those for the French prisoners in the Seven Years’ War and the Hereford Infirmary. He took up the cause of the disgraced priest and counterfeiter William Dodd in hopes of commuting his death sentence. In short, he tried to live a moral life.

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R A M B L E R , No. 114 Saturday, 20 April 1751    ———————————Audi, Nulla unquam de morte hominis cunctatio longa est. —Juvenal, vi.220–21    ————————When man’s life is in debate, The judge can ne’er too long deliberate. —Dryden

Power and superiority are so flattering and delightful, that, fraught with temp­ tation and exposed to danger as they are, scarcely any virtue is so cautious, or any prudence so timorous, as to decline them. Even those that have most reverence for the laws of right, are pleased with shewing that not fear, but choice, regulates their behaviour; and would be thought to comply, rather than obey. We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass; and, as the Roman satirist remarks, he that has no design to take the life of another, is yet glad to have it in his hands.1 From the same principle, tending yet more to degeneracy and corruption, pro­ ceeds the desire of investing lawful authority with terror, and governing by force rather than persuasion. Pride is unwilling to believe the necessity of assigning any other reason than her own will; and would rather maintain the most equitable claims by violence and penalties, than descend from the dignity of command to dispute and expostulation. It may, I think, be suspected, that this political arrogance has sometimes found its way into legislative assemblies, and mingled with deliberations upon property and life. A slight perusal of the laws by which the measures of vindictive and coer­ cive justice are established, will discover so many disproportions between crimes and punishments, such capricious distinctions of guilt, and such confusion of re­ missness and severity, as can scarcely be believed to have been produced by publick wisdom, sincerely and calmly studious of publick happiness. The learned, the judicious, the pious Boerhaave relates, that he never saw a criminal dragged to execution without asking himself, “Who knows whether this man is not less culpable than me?”2 On the days when the prisons of this city are 1. Juvenal, Satires, x.96–97. 2. SJ quoted this saying in his deeply respectful “Life of Dr. Hermann Boerhaave” (1739); see Yale, xix.53–54.

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emptied into the grave, let every spectator of the dreadful procession put the same question to his own heart. Few among those that croud in thousands to the legal massacre, and look with carelessness, perhaps with triumph, on the utmost exacer­ bations of human misery, would then be able to return without horror and dejec­ tion. For, who can congratulate himself upon a life passed without some act more mischievous to the peace or prosperity of others, than the theft of a piece of money?3 It has been always the practice, when any particular species of robbery be­ comes prevalent and common, to endeavour its suppression by capital denuncia­ tions. Thus, one generation of malefactors is commonly cut off, and their succes­ sors are frighted into new expedients; the art of thievery is augmented with greater variety of fraud, and subtilized to higher degrees of dexterity, and more occult meth­ ods of conveyance. The law then renews the persuit in the heat of anger, and over­ takes the offender again with death. By this practice, capital inflictions are multi­ plied, and crimes very different in their degrees of enormity are equally subjected to the severest punishment that man has the power of exercising upon man.4 The lawgiver is undoubtedly allowed to estimate the malignity of an offence, not merely by the loss or pain which single acts may produce, but by the general alarm and anxiety arising from the fear of mischief, and insecurity of possession: he therefore exercises the right which societies are supposed to have over the lives of those that compose them, not simply to punish a transgression, but to main­ tain order, and preserve quiet; he enforces those laws with severity that are most in danger of violation, as the commander of a garrison doubles the guard on that side which is threatned by the enemy. This method has been long tried, but tried with so little success, that rapine and violence are hourly encreasing; yet few seem willing to despair of its efficacy, and of those who employ their speculations upon the present corruption of the people, some propose the introduction of more horrid, lingering and terrifick punishments; some are inclined to accelerate the executions; some to discourage pardons; and all seem to think that lenity has given confidence to wickedness, and that we can only be rescued from the talons of robbery by inflexible rigour, and sanguinary justice. Yet since the right of setting an uncertain and arbitrary value upon life has been disputed, and since experience of past times gives us little reason to hope that any reformation will be effected by a periodical havock5 of our fellow-­beings, perhaps it will not be useless to consider what consequences might arise from relaxations of the law, and a more rational and equitable adaptation of penalties to offences. 3. The theft of goods worth one shilling, one twentieth of a pound ($10–15 in today’s money) was a capi­ tal offense at this time. 4. By late in the eighteenth century there were two hundred capital offenses. 5. “Merciless destruction” (Dictionary).



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Death is, as one of the ancients observes, τὸ τῶν φοβερῶν φοβερώτατον, “of dreadful things the most dreadful‚”6 an evil, beyond which nothing can be threat­ ened by sublunary power, or feared from human enmity or vengeance. This terror should, therefore, be reserved as the last resort of authority, as the strongest and most operative of prohibitory sanctions, and placed before the treasure of life, to guard from invasion what cannot be restored. To equal robbery with murder is to reduce murder to robbery, to confound in common minds the gradations of iniq­ uity, and incite the commission of a greater crime to prevent the detection of a less. If only murder were punished with death, very few robbers would stain their hands in blood; but when, by the last act of cruelty no new danger is incurred, and greater security may be obtained, upon what principle shall we bid them forbear? It may be urged, that the sentence is often mitigated to simple robbery; but surely this is to confess, that our laws are unreasonable in our own opinion; and, in­ deed, it may be observed, that all but murderers have, at their last hour, the common sensations of mankind pleading in their favour. From this conviction of the inequality of the punishment to the offence pro­ ceeds the frequent solicitation of pardons. They who would rejoice at the correc­ tion of a thief, are yet shocked at the thought of destroying him. His crime shrinks to nothing, compared with his misery; and severity defeats itself by exciting pity. The gibbet,7 indeed, certainly disables those who die upon it from infesting the community; but their death seems not to contribute more to the reformation of their associates than any other method of separation. A thief seldom passes much of his time in recollection or anticipation, but from robbery hastens to riot, and from riot to robbery; nor, when the grave closes upon his companion, has any other care than to find another. The frequency of capital punishments therefore rarely hinders the commission of a crime, but naturally and commonly prevents its detection, and is, if we proceed only upon prudential principles, chiefly for that reason to be avoided. Whatever may be urged by casuists or politicians, the greater part of mankind, as they can never think that to pick the pocket and to pierce the heart is equally criminal, will scarcely believe that two malefactors so different in guilt can be justly doomed to the same punishment; nor is the necessity of submitting the conscience to human laws so plainly evinced, so clearly stated, or so generally allowed, but that the pious, the ten­ der, and the just, will always scruple to concur with the community in an act which their private judgment cannot approve. He who knows not how often rigorous laws produce total impunity, and how many crimes are concealed and forgotten for fear of hurrying the offender to that 6. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, iii.vi.2. Johnson conflates two sentences. 7. Gallows.

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state in which there is no repentance, has conversed very little with mankind. And whatever epithets of reproach or contempt this compassion may incur from those who confound cruelty with firmness, I know not whether any wise man would wish it less powerful, or less extensive. If those whom the wisdom of our laws has condemned to die, had been de­ tected in their rudiments of robbery, they might by proper discipline and useful labour, have been disentangled from their habits, they might have escaped all the temptations to subsequent crimes, and passed their days in reparation and peni­ tence; and detected they might all have been, had the prosecutors been certain, that their lives would have been spared. I believe, every thief will confess, that he has been more than once seized and dismissed; and that he has sometimes ventured upon capital crimes, because he knew, that those whom he injured would rather connive at his escape, than cloud their minds with the horrors of his death. All laws against wickedness are ineffectual, unless some will inform, and some will prosecute; but till we mitigate the penalties for mere violations of property, in­ formation will always be hated, and prosecution dreaded. The heart of a good man cannot but recoil at the thought of punishing a slight injury with death; especially when he remembers, that the thief might have procured safety by another crime, from which he was restrained only by his remaining virtue. The obligations to assist the exercise of publick justice are indeed strong; but they will certainly be overpowered by tenderness for life. What is punished with severity contrary to our ideas of adequate retribution, will be seldom discovered; and multitudes will be suffered to advance from crime to crime, till they deserve death, because if they had been sooner prosecuted, they would have suffered death before they deserved it. This scheme of invigorating the laws by relaxation, and extirpating wickedness by lenity, is so remote from common practice, that I might reasonably fear to expose it to the publick, could it be supported only by my own observations: I shall, there­ fore, by ascribing it to its author, Sir Thomas More,8 endeavour to procure it that attention, which I wish always paid to prudence, to justice, and to mercy.

8. Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), Utopia (1516), Book I, pars. 23, 40; Book 2, Ch.7, par. 10.



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R A M B L E R , No. 170 Saturday, 2 November 1751 Confiteor; si quid prodest delicta fateri. —Ovid, Amores, 11.4.3. I grant the charge; forgive the fault confess’d.

to the rambler. sir, I am one of those beings, from whom many, that melt at the sight of all other misery, think it meritorious to withhold relief; one whom the rigour of virtuous in­ dignation dooms to suffer without complaint, and perish without regard; and whom I myself have formerly insulted in the pride of reputation and security of innocence. I am of a good family, but my father was burthened with more children than he could decently support. A wealthy relation, as he travelled from London to his country seat, condescending to make him a visit, was touched with compassion of his narrow fortune, and resolved to ease him of part of his charge, by taking the care of a child upon himself. Distress on one side and ambition on the other, were too powerful for parental fondness, and the little family passed in review before him, that he might make his choice. I was then ten years old, and without knowing for what purpose, I was called to my great cousin, endeavoured to recommend myself by my best courtesy, sung him my prettiest song, told the last story that I had read, and so much endeared myself by my innocence, that he declared his resolution to adopt me, and to educate me with his own daughters. My parents felt the common struggles at the thought of parting, and “some natural tears they dropp’d, but wip’d them soon.”1 They considered, not without that false estimation of the value of wealth which poverty long continued always pro­ duces, that I was raised to higher rank than they could give me, and to hopes of more ample fortune than they could bequeath. My mother sold some of her ornaments to dress me in such a manner as might secure me from contempt at my first arrival; and when she dismissed me, pressed me to her bosom with an embrace that I still feel, gave me some precepts of piety which, however neglected, I have not forgotten, and uttered prayers for my final happiness, of which I have not yet ceased to hope, that they will at last be granted. My sisters envied my new finery, and seemed not much to regret our separa­ 1. Milton says this of Adam and Eve as they are driven out of Eden in Paradise Lost (xii.645).

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tion; my father conducted me to the stagecoach with a kind of chearful tenderness; and in a very short time, I was transported to splendid apartments, and a luxurious table, and grew familiar to show, noise and gaiety. In three years my mother died, having implored a blessing on her family with her last breath. I had little opportunity to indulge a sorrow, which there was none to partake with me, and therefore soon ceased to reflect much upon my loss. My father turned all his care upon his other children, whom some fortunate adventures and unexpected legacies enabled him, when he died four years after my mother, to leave in a condition above their expectations. I should have shared the encrease of his fortune, and had once a portion as­ signed me in his will; but my cousin assuring him that all care for me was needless, since he had resolved to place me happily in the world, directed him to divide my part amongst my sisters. Thus I was thrown upon dependance without resource. Being now at an age in which young women are initiated in company, I was no longer to be supported in my former character but at considerable expence; so that partly lest I should waste money, and partly lest my appearance might draw too many compliments and assiduities,2 I was insensibly degraded from my equality, and enjoyed few privileges above the head servant, but that of receiving no wages. I felt every indignity, but knew that resentment would precipitate my fall. I therefore endeavoured to continue my importance by little services and active offi­ ciousness, and for a time preserved myself from neglect, by withdrawing all pre­ tences to competition, and studying to please rather than to shine.3 But my interest, notwithstanding this expedient, hourly declined, and my cousin’s favourite maid began to exchange repartees with me, and consult me about the alterations of a cast gown. I was now completely depressed, and though I had seen mankind enough to know the necessity of outward chearfulness, I often withdrew to my chamber to vent my grief, or turn my condition in my mind, and examine by what means I might escape from perpetual mortification. At last, my schemes and sorrows were inter­ rupted by a sudden change of my relation’s behaviour, who one day took an occa­ sion when we were left together in a room, to bid me suffer myself no longer to be insulted, but assume the place which he always intended me to hold in the family. He assured me, that his wife’s preference of her own daughters should never hurt me; and, accompanying his professions with a purse of gold, ordered me to bespeak a rich suit at the mercer’s,4 and to apply privately to him for money when I wanted 2. “Persistent endeavour to please; obsequious attention” (OED, sense 2). 3. “To be eminent or conspicuous” (Dictionary, sense 6). 4. Mercer: one who deals in fabrics.



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it, and insinuate that my other friends supplied me, which he would take care to confirm. By this stratagem, which I did not then understand, he filled me with ten­ derness and gratitude, compelled me to repose on him as my only support, and produced a necessity of private conversation. He often appointed interviews at the house of an acquaintance, and sometimes called on me with a coach, and carried me abroad. My sense of his favour, and the desire of retaining it, disposed me to un­ limited complaisance, and though I saw his kindness grow every day more fond, I did not suffer any suspicion to enter my thoughts. At last the wretch took advantage of the familiarity which he enjoyed as my relation, and the submission which he ex­ acted as my benefactor, to complete the ruin of an orphan whom his own promises had made indigent, whom his indulgence had melted, and his authority subdued. I know not why it should afford subject of exultation, to overpower on any terms the resolution, or surprise the caution of a girl; but of all the boasters that deck themselves in the spoils of innocence and beauty, they surely have the least preten­ sions to triumph, who submit to owe their success to some casual5 influence. They neither employ the graces of fancy, nor the force of understanding, in their attempts; they cannot please their vanity with the art of their approaches, the delicacy of their adulations, the elegance of their address, or the efficacy of their eloquence; nor ap­ plaud themselves as possessed of any qualities, by which affection is attracted. They surmount no obstacles, they defeat no rivals, but attack only those who cannot resist, and are often content to possess the body without any solicitude to gain the heart. Many of these despicable wretches does my present acquaintance with infamy and wickedness enable me to number among the heroes of debauchery. Reptiles whom their own servants would have despised, had they not been their servants, and with whom beggary would have disdained intercourse, had she not been allured by hopes of relief. Many of the beings which are now rioting in taverns, or shiver­ ing in the streets, have been corrupted not by arts of gallantry which stole gradually upon the affections and laid prudence asleep, but by the fear of losing benefits which were never intended, or of incurring resentment which they could not escape; some have been frighted by masters, and some awed by guardians into ruin. Our crime had its usual consequence, and he soon perceived that I could not long continue in his family. I was distracted at the thought of the reproach which I now believed inevitable. He comforted me with hopes of eluding all discovery, and often upbraided me with the anxiety, which perhaps none but himself saw in my countenance; but at last mingled his assurances of protection and maintenance with menaces of total desertion, if in the moments of perturbation I should suffer his secret to escape, or endeavour to throw on him any part of my infamy. 5. Accidental.

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Thus passed the dismal hours till my retreat could no longer be delayed. It was pretended that my relations had sent for me to a distant county, and I entered upon a state which shall be described in my next letter. I am, Sir, &c. Misella.6

6. A Latinate name meaning wretched or unfortunate woman.



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R A M B L E R , No. 171 Tuesday, 5 November 1751 Taedet coeli convexa tueri. —Aeneid, iv.451. Dark is the sun, and loathsome is the day.

to the rambler. sir, Misella now sits down to continue her narrative. I am convinced that nothing would more powerfully preserve youth from irregularity, or guard inexperience from seduction, than a just description of the condition into which the wanton plunges herself, and therefore hope that my letter may be a sufficient antidote to my example. After the distraction, hesitation and delays which the timidity of guilt natu­ rally produces, I was removed to lodgings in a distant part of the town, under one of the characters commonly assumed upon such occasions. Here being, by my cir­ cumstances, condemned to solitude, I passed most of my hours in bitterness and anguish. The conversation of the people with whom I was placed, was not at all capable of engaging my attention or dispossessing the reigning ideas. The books which I carried to my retreat were such as heightened my abhorrence of myself; for I was not so far abandoned as to sink voluntarily into corruption, or endeavour to conceal from my own mind the enormity of my crime. My relation remitted none of his fondness, but visited me so often that I was sometimes afraid lest his assiduity should expose him to suspicion. Whenever he came he found me weeping, and was therefore less delightfully entertained than he expected. After frequent expostulations upon the unreasonableness of my sor­ row, and innumerable protestations of everlasting regard, he at last found that I was more affected with the loss of my innocence, than the danger of my fame, and that he might not be disturbed by my remorse, began to lull my conscience with the opi­ ates of irreligion. His arguments were such as my course of life has since exposed me often to the necessity of hearing, vulgar, empty and fallacious; yet they at first con­ founded me by their novelty, filled me with doubt and perplexity, and interrupted that peace which I began to feel from the sincerity of my repentance, without sub­ stituting any other support. I listened a while to his impious gabble, but its influ­ ence was soon overpowered by natural reason and early education, and the convic­ tions which this new attempt gave me of his baseness completed my abhorrence. I have heard of barbarians, who, when tempests drive ships upon their coast, decoy

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them to the rocks that they may plunder their lading, and have always thought that wretches thus merciless in their depredations, ought to be destroyed by a general insurrection of all social beings; yet how light is this guilt to the crime of him, who in the agitations of remorse cuts away the anchor of piety, and when he has drawn aside credulity from the paths of virtue, hides the light of heaven which would direct her to return. I had hitherto considered him as a man equally betrayed with myself by the concurrence of appetite and opportunity; but I now saw with horror that he was contriving to perpetuate his gratification, and was desirous to fit me to his pur­ pose by complete and radical corruption. To escape, however, was not yet in my power. I could support the expences of my condition, only by the continuance of his favour. He provided all that was necessary, and in a few weeks, congratulated me upon my escape from the danger which we had both expected with so much anxiety. I then began to remind him of his promise to restore me with my fame uninjured to the world. He promised me in general terms, that nothing should be wanting which his power could add to my happiness, but forbore to release me from my confinement. I knew how much my reception in the world depended upon my speedy return, and was therefore out­ ragiously impatient of his delays, which I now perceived to be only artifices of lewd­ ness. He told me, at last, with an appearance of sorrow, that all hopes of restoration to my former state were for ever precluded; that chance had discovered my secret, and malice divulged it; and that nothing now remained, but to seek a retreat more private, where curiosity or hatred could never find us. The rage, anguish, and resentment, which I felt at this account, are not to be expressed. I was in so much dread of reproach and infamy, which he represented as pursuing me with full cry, that I yielded myself implicitly to his disposal, and was re­ moved with a thousand studied precautions through by-­ways and dark passages, to another house, where I harassed him with perpetual solicitations for a small annuity, that might enable me to live in the country with obscurity and innocence. This demand he at first evaded with ardent professions, but in time appeared offended at my importunity and distrust; and having one day endeavoured to sooth me with uncommon expressions of tenderness, when he found my discontent im­ moveable, left me with some inarticulate murmurs of anger. I was pleased that he was at last roused to sensibility, and expecting that at his next visit, he would com­ ply with my request, lived with great tranquility upon the money in my hands, and was so much pleased with this pause of persecution, that I did not reflect how much his absence had exceeded the usual intervals, till I was alarmed with the danger of wanting subsistence. I then suddenly contracted my expences, but was unwilling to supplicate for assistance. Necessity, however, soon overcame my modesty or my pride, and I applied to him by a letter, but had no answer. I writ in terms more press­ ing, but without effect. I then sent an agent to enquire after him, who informed me,



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that he had quitted his house, and was gone with his family to reside for some time upon his estate in Ireland. However shocked at this abrupt departure, I was yet unwilling to believe that he could wholly abandon me, and therefore by the sale of my cloaths I supported myself, expecting that every post would bring me relief. Thus I passed seven months between hope and dejection, in a gradual approach to poverty and distress, ema­ ciated with discontent and bewildered with uncertainty. At last, my landlady, after many hints of the necessity of a new lover, took the opportunity of my absence to search my boxes, and missing some of my apparel, seized the remainder for rent, and led me to the door. To remonstrate against legal cruelty, was vain; to supplicate obdurate brutality, was hopeless. I went away I knew not whither, and wandered about without any settled purpose, unacquainted with the usual expedients of misery, unqualified for laborious offices, afraid to meet an eye that had seen me before, and hopeless of re­ lief from those who were strangers to my former condition. Night came on in the midst of my distraction, and I still continued to wander till the menaces of the watch obliged me to shelter myself in a covered passage. Next day, I procured a lodging in the backward garret of a mean house, and employed my landlady to enquire for a service. My applications were generally re­ jected for want of a character.1 At length, I was received at a draper’s; but when it was known to my mistress that I had only one gown, and that of silk, she was of opinion, that I looked like a thief, and without warning, hurried me away. I then tried to support myself by my needle, and by my landlady’s recommendation, ob­ tained a little work from a shop, and for three weeks lived without repining; but when my punctuality had gained me so much reputation, that I was trusted to make up a head2 of some value, one of my fellow-­lodgers stole the lace, and I was obliged to fly from a prosecution. Thus driven again into the streets, I lived upon the least that could support me, and at night accommodated myself under pent-­houses3 as well as I could. At length I became absolutely pennyless; and having strolled all day without sustenance, was at the close of evening accosted by an elderly man, with an invitation to a tavern. I refused him with hesitation; he seized me by the hand, and drew me into a neigh­ bouring house, where when he saw my face pale with hunger, and my eyes swelling with tears, he spurned me from him, and bad me cant4 and whine in some other place; he for his part would take care of his pockets. 1. A reference from a former employer. 2. An elaborate headdress made of lace. 3. “A shed hanging out aslope from the main wall” (Dictionary). 4. Beg.

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I still continued to stand in the way, having scarcely strength to walk farther, when another soon addressed me in the same manner. When he saw the same tokens of calamity, he considered that I might be obtained at a cheap rate, and therefore quickly made overtures, which I had no longer firmness to reject. By this man I was maintained four months in penurious wickedness, and then abandoned to my former condition, from which I was delivered by another keeper. In this abject state I have now passed four years, the drudge of extortion and the sport of drunkenness; sometimes the property of one man, and sometimes the common prey of accidental lewdness; at one time tricked up for sale by the mistress of a brothel, at another begging in the streets to be relieved from hunger by wicked­ ness; without any hope in the day but of finding some whom folly or excess may ex­ pose to my allurements, and without any reflections at night, but such as guilt and terror impress upon me. If those who pass their days in plenty and security, could visit for an hour the dismal receptacles to which the prostitute retires from her nocturnal excursions, and see the wretches that lie crowded together, mad with intemperance, ghastly with famine, nauseous with filth, and noisome5 with disease; it would not be easy for any degree of abhorrence to harden them against compassion, or to repress the desire which they must immediately feel to rescue such numbers of human beings from a state so dreadful. It is said that in France they annually evacuate their streets, and ship their pros­ titutes and vagabonds to their colonies. If the women that infest this city had the same opportunity of escaping from their miseries, I believe very little force would be necessary; for who among them can dread any change? Many of us indeed are wholly unqualified for any but the most servile employments, and those perhaps would require the care of a magistrate to hinder them from following the same prac­ tices in another country; but others are only precluded by infamy from reforma­ tion, and would gladly be delivered on any terms from the necessity of guilt and the tyranny of chance. No place but a populous city can afford opportunities for open prostitution, and where the eye of justice can attend to individuals, those who can­ not be made good may be restrained from mischief. For my part I should exult at the privilege of banishment, and think myself happy in any region that should restore me once again to honesty and peace. I am, Sir, &c. Misella.

5. Noxious.



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F RO M B O S W E L L’ S L I F E O F J O H N S O N , A L E G A L B R I E F AG A I N S T S L AV E RY 1 It must be agreed that in most ages many countries have had part of their inhabitants in a state of slavery; yet it may be doubted whether slavery can ever be supposed the natural condition of man. It is impossible not to conceive that men in their original state were equal; and very difficult to imagine how one would be subjected to an­ other but by violent compulsion. An individual may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children. What is true of a criminal seems true likewise of a captive. A man may accept life from a conquering enemy on condition of perpetual servitude; but it is very doubtful whether he can entail that servitude on his descendants; for no man can stipulate without commis­ sion2 for another. The condition which he himself accepts, his son or grandson per­ haps would have rejected. If we should admit, what perhaps may with more reason be denied, that there are certain relations between man and man which may make slavery necessary and just, yet it can never be proved that he who is now suing for his freedom ever stood in any of those relations. He is certainly subject by no law, but that of violence, to his present master; who pretends no claim to his obedience, but that he bought him from a merchant of slaves, whose right to sell him never was examined. It is said that, according to the constitutions of Jamaica, he was legally enslaved; these constitutions are merely positive;3 and apparently injurious to the rights of mankind, because whoever is exposed to sale is condemned to slavery with­ out appeal; by whatever fraud or violence he might have been originally brought into the merchant’s power. In our own time Princes have been sold, by wretches to whose care they were entrusted, that they might have an European education; but when once they were brought to a market in the plantations, little would avail either their dignity or their wrongs. The laws of Jamaica afford a Negro no redress. His colour is considered as a sufficient testimony against him. It is to be lamented that moral right should ever give way to political convenience. But if temptations of interest 1. On 23 September 1777, SJ dictated this brief to Boswell in defense of Joseph Knight, a slave seeking freedom in Scotland. On 15 January 1778 the Court of Session in Edinburgh determined, “the dominion as­ sumed over this Negro, under the law of Jamaica, being unjust, could not be supported in this country to any extent.” The British Parliament abolished the slave trade in 1807, but it was allowed in British colonies until 1833. The text is from an addition made by Boswell to the second edition of his Life of Johnson, 3 vols. (1793), i.*[xiv]–­*xvi. Boswell noted his “most solemn protest” against SJ’s reasoning. 2. “A trust; a warrant by which any trust is held, or authority exercised” (Dictionary, sense 2). 3. “A law or body of laws artificially instituted or imposed by an authority . . . as contrasted with natural law rooted in the requirements of justice and right reason” (OED, sense 1).

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are sometimes too strong for human virtue, let us at least retain a virtue where there is no temptation to quit it. In the present case there is apparent right on one side, and no convenience on the other. Inhabitants of this island can neither gain riches nor power by taking away the liberty of any part of the human species. The sum of the argument is this: No man is by nature the property of another: The defendant is, therefore, by nature free: The rights of nature must be some way forfeited before they can be justly taken away: That the defendant has by any act forfeited the rights of nature we require to be proved; and if no proof of such a forfeiture can be given, we doubt not but the justice of the court will declare him free.



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Political Writings

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Johnson’s political writings evolved as contemporary politics evolved. In his early days in London he joined the opposition to Sir Robert Walpole. He vents his anger at an apparently corrupt government in works such as London (1738) and the Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage (1739). Between 1740 and 1742, however, Edward Cave engaged John­ son to write Parliamentary Debates for the Gentleman’s Magazine. Parliamentary reporting then was illegal, and to avoid prosecution, Johnson set his debates in the “Senate of Magna Lilliputia” and made anagrams for the names of all the participants. He also published the debates long after they happened. Since reporters were not allowed in Parliament, John­ son had only the notes of spies or the leaks of Members of Parliament to go on. Although he favored the Tories against the Court, which favored the Whigs, Johnson created long, brilliantly argued, sometimes pathetic, sometimes amusing speeches on both sides. This no doubt increased Johnson’s respect for the legislature as a basis for stability, national defini­ tion, and national strength. As he would say in 1779, “the wisdom of the nation is very rea­ sonably supposed to reside in the parliament.” In The Patriot (1774), he regards the ability to choose representatives as “one of the most valuable rights of Englishmen.” They are privi­ leged to elect Members of Parliament, “the supreme council of the kingdom.” The system of constitutional government “is founded on the parliament, then is in the privy council, then in the King,” he said in 1778 (Boswell, Life, iii.283). Before expressing such deep conviction about the importance of stability and the con­ stitutional monarchy, deepened even further by the Gordon Riots of 1780, Johnson had a second period of dismay with the government. This was in 1756 at the outset of the Seven Years’ War, when he was the editor and principal contributor to the Literary Magazine, through the very early 1760s, when he was writing some political pamphlets and the Idler. We present four pieces from this middle period and one essay, The Patriot, from the period of his political maturity. ( Johnson’s earlier political views are represented in this volume by his imitation of Juvenal’s third satire, London (p. 266 above). Johnson was granted a pen­ sion by King George III in 1762, and he was ridiculed in the press for accepting it from a court that he had most of his life opposed. His late political writings, including The Patriot, were solicited by the Court and may be expected for that reason to support its views. It is also true, however, that Johnson’s political thinking evolved and grew closer in some re­

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spects to those of the nation’s leaders. Nevertheless, Johnson had principles—such as an abhorrence of war, a detestation of slavery, and a distrust of the motives for colonization— that were rooted in his humanistic learning and deeper than the political contests of the day. He doesn’t hesitate to express these more deeply held views no matter on which side of the political aisle his works fall. Johnson’s major political writings are collected in Volume X of the Yale Edition, edited by Donald J. Greene. The five pieces below are all from that volume.

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F RO M A N I N T RO D U C T I O N TO T H E P O L I T I C A L S TAT E O F G R E AT B R I TA I N ( 17 5 6 ) As it is intended to exhibit in the following pamphlet1 an accurate account of every political debate, it appears necessary to lay before the reader a succinct ac­ count of British affairs, from the time in which our present relations to the conti­ nent began, and the competitions which keep us at variance with our neighbours arose. Without this previous knowledge, either recollected or acquired, it is not easy to understand the various opinions which every change in our affairs produces, or the questions which divide the nation into parties, and cause divisions in the parlia­ ment, and wars among the pamphleteers. The present system of English politics may properly be said to have taken rise in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.2 At this time the protestant religion was established, which naturally allied us to the reformed states, and made all the popish powers our enemies. We began in the same reign to extend our trade, by which we made it neces­ sary to ourselves to watch the commercial progress of our neighbours; and, if not to incommode and obstruct their traffick, to hinder them from impairing ours. We then likewise settled colonies in America, which was become the great scene of European ambition; for, seeing with what treasures the Spaniards were annually inriched from Mexico and Peru, every nation imagined, that an American conquest or plantation would certainly fill the mother country with gold and silver. This produced a large extent of very distant dominions, of which we, at this time, neither knew nor foresaw the advantage or incumbrance: We seem to have snatched them into our hands, upon no very just principles of policy, only because every state, according to a prejudice of long continuance, concludes itself more powerful as its territories become larger. The discoveries of new regions, which were then every day made, the profit of remote traffick, and the necessity of long voyages, produced, in a few years, a great multiplication of shipping. The sea was considered as the wealthy element; and, by degrees, a new kind of sovereignty arose, called naval dominion. As the chief trade of the world, so the chief maritime power was at first in the hands of the Portuguese and Spaniards, who, by a compact,3 to which the consent 1. SJ means the Literary Magazine, of which this is the opening article in No. 1 (15 April–­15 May 1756). 2. Elizabeth I (1533–1603) became queen in 1558. Her father, Henry VIII (1491–1547), separated the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church in 1534. 3. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) drew a line in the Atlantic Ocean, west of which fell to Spain and east of which to Portugal.

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of other princes was not asked, had divided the newly discovered countries between them; but the crown of Portugal having fallen to the king of Spain,4 or being seized by him, he was master of the ships of the two nations, with which he kept all the coasts of Europe in alarm, till the Armada, which he had raised at a vast expence for the conquest of England, was destroyed, which put a stop, and almost an end, to the naval power of the Spaniards.5 At this time the Dutch, who were oppressed by the Spaniards, and feared yet greater evils than they felt, resolved no longer to endure the insolence of their mas­ ters: they therefore revolted, and after a struggle, in which they were assisted by the money and forces of Elizabeth, erected an independent and powerful common­ wealth.6 When the inhabitants of the Low-­Countries had formed their system of gov­ ernment, and some remission of the war gave them leisure to form schemes of future prosperity, they easily perceived that, as their territories were narrow and their num­ bers small, they could preserve themselves only by that power which is the conse­ quence of wealth; and that, by a people whose country produced only the neces­ saries of life, wealth was not to be acquired, but from foreign dominions, and by the transportation of the products of one country into another. From this necessity, thus justly estimated, arose a plan of commerce, which was for many years prosecuted with industry and success, perhaps never seen in the world before, and by which the poor tenants of mudwalled villages and impassable bogs, erected themselves into high and mighty states,7 who put the greatest mon­ archs at defiance, whose alliance was courted by the proudest, and whose power was dreaded by the fiercest nation. By the establishment of this state there arose to England a new ally and a new rival. At this time, which seems to be the period destined for the change of the face of Europe, France began first to rise into power, and, from defending her own prov­ inces with difficulty and fluctuating success, to threaten her neighbours with in­ croachments and devastations. Henry the Fourth having, after a long struggle, ob­ tained the crown,8 found it easy to govern nobles exhausted and wearied with a long civil war, and having composed the disputes between the protestants and papists, so as to obtain, at least, a truce for both parties, was at leisure to accumulate treasure, and raise forces which he purposed to have employed in a design of settling for ever

4. Philip II (1527–1598) claimed the Portuguese throne in 1580. 5. The English defeated the Armada in 1588. 6. The Union of Utrecht (1579) formed the Dutch republic. 7. “States-­General” was the official name of the governing body of the Dutch republic. 8. Henry IV (1553–1610), “Good King Henry,” ascended the throne in 1589.

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the balance of Europe. Of this great scheme he lived not to see the vanity, or to feel the disappointment; for he was murdered in the midst of his mighty preparations.9 The French however were in this reign taught to know their own power; and the great designs of a king, whose wisdom they had so long experienced, even though they were not brought to actual experiment, disposed them to consider themselves as masters of the destiny of their neighbours; and, from that time, he that shall nicely examine their schemes and conduct will, I believe, find that they began to take an air of superiority, to which they had never pretended before; and that they have been always employed, more or less openly upon schemes of dominion, though with fre­ quent interruptions from domestic troubles, and with those intermissions which human counsels must always suffer, as men intrusted with great affairs are dissipated in youth, and languid in age, are embarrassed by competitors, or, without any exter­ nal reason, change their minds. France was now no longer in dread of insults and invasions from England. She was not only able to maintain her own territories, but prepared, on all occasions, to invade others, and we had now a neighbour whose interest it was to be an enemy, and who has disturbed us, from that time to this, with open hostility or secret machi­ nations. Such was the state of England and its neighbours, when Elizabeth left the crown to James of Scotland.10 It has not, I think, been frequently observed by histo­ rians at how critical a time the union of the two kingdoms happened. Had England and Scotland continued separate kingdoms, when France was established in the full possession of her natural power, the Scots, in continuance of the league, which it would now have been more than ever their interest to observe, would, upon every instigation of the French court, have raised an army with French money, and har­ rassed us with an invasion, in which they would have thought themselves success­ ful, whatever numbers they might have left behind them. To a people warlike and indigent, an incursion into a rich country is never hurtful. The pay of France, and the plunder of the northern counties, would always have tempted them to hazard their lives, and we should have been under a necessity of keeping a line of garrisons along our border. This trouble, however, we escaped by the accession of King James; but it is un­ certain, whether his natural disposition did not injure us more than this accidental condition happened to benefit us. He was a man of great theoretical knowledge, but of no practical wisdom; he was very well able to discern the true interest of himself, his kingdom, and his posterity, but sacrificed it, upon all occasions, to his present 9. Born a Protestant and in favor of toleration, he was murdered by a fanatical Catholic. 10. James VI of Scotland (1566–1625) became James I of England in 1603.



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pleasure or his present ease; so conscious of his own knowledge and abilities, that he would not suffer a minister to govern, and so lax of attention, and timorous of opposition, that he was not able to govern for himself. With this character James quietly saw the Dutch invade our commerce; the French grew every day stronger and stronger, and the protestant interest, of which he boasted himself the head, was oppressed on every side, while he writ, and hunted, and dispatched ambassadors, who, when their master’s weakness was once known, were treated in foreign courts with very little ceremony. James, however, took care to be flattered at home, and was neither angry nor ashamed at the appearance that he made in other countries. Thus England grew weaker, or what is in political estimation the same thing, saw her neighbours grow stronger, without receiving proportionable additions to her own power. Not that the mischief was so great as it is generally conceived or represented; for, I believe, it may be made to appear, that the wealth of the nation was, in this reign, very much increased, though that of the crown was lessened. Our reputation for war was impaired, but commerce seems to have been carried on with great industry and vigour, and nothing was wanting, but that we should have de­ fended ourselves from the incroachments of our neighbours. The inclination to plant colonies in America still continued, and this being the only project in which men of adventure and enterprise could exert their qualities in a pacific reign, multitudes, who were discontented with their condition in their native country, and such multitudes there will always be, sought relief, or at least change in the western regions, where they settled in the northern part of the continent, at a distance from the Spaniards at that time almost the only nation that had any power or will to obstruct us. Such was the condition of this country when the unhappy Charles inherited the crown.11 He had seen the errors of his father, without being able to prevent them, and, when he began his reign, endeavoured to raise the nation to its former dignity. The French papists had begun a new war upon the Protestants: Charles sent a fleet to invade Rhee and relieve Rochelle,12 which gave occasion to the civil war, of which the events and conclusion are too well known.13 ................................................................. During all this time, [the French] were extending and strengthening their settlements in America, contriving new modes of traffick, and framing new alliances with the Indian nations. They began now to find these northern regions, barren and 11. Charles I (1600–1649) became king in 1625; he was executed by order of Parliament in 1649. 12. The royal favorite George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (1592–1628), failed to relieve the Île de Ré off La Rochelle in 1627. 13. We omit a large section (Yale, x.134–46) in which SJ continues the history down to the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), which put a temporary end to the wars between England and France.

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desolate as they are, sufficiently valuable to desire at least a nominal possession, that might furnish a pretence for the exclusion of others; they therefore extended their claim to tracts of land, which they could never hope to occupy, took care to give their dominions an unlimited magnitude, have given in their maps the name of Louisi­ ana to a country, of which part is claimed by the Spaniards, and part by the English, without any regard to ancient boundaries or prior discovery. When the return of Columbus from his great voyage had filled all Europe with wonder and curiosity, Henry the Seventh sent Sebastian Cabot14 to try what could be found for the benefit of England: he declined the track of Columbus, and, steer­ ing to the westward, fell upon the island, which, from that time, was called by the English, Newfoundland. Our princes seem to have considered themselves as intitled by their right of prior seizure to the northern parts of America, as the Spaniards were allowed by universal consent their claim to the southern region for the same reason, and we accordingly made our principal settlements within the limits of our own discoveries, and, by degrees, planted the eastern coast from Newfoundland to Georgia. As we had, according to the European principles which allow nothing to the natives of these regions, our choice of situation in this extensive country, we naturally fixed our habitations along the coast, for the sake of traffick and correspondence,15 and all the conveniencies of navigable rivers. And when one port or river was occu­ pied, the next colony, instead of fixing themselves in the inland parts behind the former, went on southward, till they pleased themselves with another maritime situation. For this reason our colonies have more length than depth; their extent from east to west, or from the sea to the interior country, bears no proportion to their reach along the coast from north to south. It was, however, understood, by a kind of tacit compact among the commercial powers, that possession of the coast included a right to the inland; and, therefore, the charters granted to the several colonies limit their districts only from north to south, leaving their possessions from east to west unlimited and discretional, sup­ posing that, as the colony increases, they may take lands as they shall want them, the possession of the coasts excluding other navigators, and the unhappy Indians having no right of nature or of nations. This right of the first European possessor was not disputed till it became the interest of the French to question it. Canada or New-­France, on which they made their first settlement, is situated eastward16 of our colonies, between which they 14. Actually, John Cabot (c. 1451–1498), Sebastian’s father, was in charge of the expedition, which took place in 1497. Sebastian Cabot was born c. 1481. 15. “Commercial intercourse; business relations” (OED, sense 5.c). 16. A mistake for “westward.”



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pass up the great river of St. Laurence, with Newfoundland on the north, and Nova Scotia on the south. Their establishment in this country was neither envied nor hin­ dered; and they lived here, in no great numbers a long time, neither molesting their European neighbours, nor molested by them. But when they grew stronger and more numerous, they began to extend their territories; and, as it is natural for men to seek their own convenience, the desire of more fertile and agreeable habitations tempted them southward. There is land enough to the north and west of their settlements, which they may occupy with as good right as can be shewn by the other European usurpers, and which neither the English nor Spaniards will contest; but of this cold region they have enough already, and their resolution was to get a better country. This was not to be had but by set­ tling to the west of our plantations, on ground which has been hitherto supposed to belong to us. Hither, therefore, they resolved to remove, and to fix, at their own discretion, the western border of our colonies, which was heretofore considered as unlimited. Thus by forming a line of forts, in some measure parallel to the coast, they inclose us between their garrisons and the sea, and not only hinder our extension westward, but, whenever they have a sufficient navy in the sea, can harrass us on each side, as they can invade us, at pleasure, from one or other of their forts. This design was not perhaps discovered as soon as it was formed, and was certainly not opposed so soon as it was discovered; we foolishly hoped, that their incroachments would stop, that they would be prevailed on by treaty and remon­ strance, to give up what they had taken, or to put limits to themselves. We suffered them to establish one settlement after another, to pass boundary after boundary, and add fort to fort, till at last they grew strong enough to avow their designs, and defy us to obstruct them. By these provocations long continued, we are at length forced into a war, in which we have had hitherto very ill fortune. Our troops under Braddock were dishonourably defeated;17 our fleets have yet done nothing more than take a few merchant-­ships,18 and have distressed some private families,19 but have very little weakened the power of France. The detention of their seamen makes it indeed less easy for them to fit out their navy; but this deficiency will be easily supplied by the alacrity of the nation, which is always eager for war. It is unpleasing to represent our affairs to our own disadvantage; yet it is neces­ 17. On 9 July 1755, Edward Braddock (1695–1755) was defeated and later died in a failed attempt to drive the French from Fort Duquesne, strategically located at the junction of the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela rivers, site of the present-­day city of Pittsburgh. 18. Three hundred by the end of 1755, together with eight thousand French seamen, according to Tobias Smollett (History of England, 1757–58, iii.iv.6). 19. SJ refers to the expulsion in 1755 of six thousand Acadian French from Nova Scotia.

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sary to shew the evils which we desire to be removed; and, therefore, some account may very properly be given of the measures which have given them their present superiority. They are said to be supplied from France with better governors than our colo­ nies have the fate to obtain from England. A French governor is seldom chosen for any other reason than his qualifications for his trust. To be a bankrupt at home, or to be so infamously vicious that he cannot be decently protected in his own country, seldom recommends any man to the government of a French colony. Their officers are commonly skilful either in war or commerce, and are taught to have no expec­ tation of honour or preferment, but from the justice and vigour of their administra­ tion. Their great security is the friendship of the natives, and to this advantage they have certainly an indubitable right; because it is the consequence of their virtue. It is ridiculous to imagine, that the friendship of nations, whether civil or barbarous, can be gained and kept but by kind treatment; and surely they who intrude, un­ called, upon the country of a distant people, ought to consider the natives as worthy of common kindness, and content themselves to rob without insulting them. The French, as has been already observed, admit the Indians, by intermarriage, to an equality with themselves, and those nations, with which they have no such near intercourse, they gain over to their interest by honesty in their dealings. Our factors and traders having no other purpose in view than immediate profit, use all the arts of an European counting-­house, to defraud the simple hunter of his furs. These are some of the causes of our present weakness; our planters are always quarreling with their governor, whom they consider as less to be trusted than the French; and our traders hourly alienate the Indians by their tricks and oppressions, and we continue every day to shew by new proofs, that no people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.



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O B S E RVAT I O N S O N T H E P R E S E N T S TAT E O F A F FA I R S . ( 1 75 6 ) 1 The time is now come in which every Englishman expects to be informed of the national affairs, and in which he has a right to have that expectation gratified. For whatever may be urged by ministers, or those whom vanity or interest make the followers of ministers, concerning the necessity of confidence in our governors, and the presumption of prying with profane eyes into the recesses of policy, it is evident, that this reverence can be claimed only by counsels yet unexecuted, and projects suspended in deliberation. But when a design has ended in miscarriage or success, when every eye and every ear is witness to general discontent, or general satisfaction, it is then a proper time to disintangle confusion and illustrate2 obscurity, to shew by what causes every event was produced, and in what effects it is likely to termi­ nate: to lay down with distinct particularity what rumour always huddles in general exclamations, or perplexes by undigested narratives; to shew whence happiness or calamity is derived, and whence it may be expected, and honestly to lay before the people what inquiry can gather of the past, and conjecture can estimate of the future. The general subject of the present war is sufficiently known. It is allowed on both sides, that hostilities began in America, and that the French and English quar­ relled about the boundaries of their settlements, about grounds and rivers to which, I am afraid, neither can shew any other right than that of power, and which neither can occupy but by usurpation, and the dispossession of the natural lords and origi­ nal inhabitants. Such is the contest that no honest man can heartily wish success to either party. It may indeed be alleged, that the Indians have granted large tracts of land both to one and to the other; but these grants can add little to the validity of our titles, till it be experienced3 how they were obtained: for if they were extorted by violence, or induced by fraud; by threats, which the miseries of other nations had shewn not to be vain, or by promises of which no performance was ever intended, what are they but new modes of usurpation, but new instances of cruelty and treachery? And indeed what but false hope, or resistless terror can prevail upon a weaker nation to invite a stronger into their country, to give their lands to strangers whom no affinity of manners, or similitude of opinion can be said to recommend, to per­ mit them to build towns from which the natives are excluded, to raise fortresses by 1. This essay appeared as the first article in the Literary Magazine, No. 4 (15 July–­15 August 1756). 2. Shed light upon. 3. Ascertained (OED, sense i1.b).

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which they are intimidated, to settle themselves with such strength, that they cannot afterwards be expelled, but are for ever to remain the masters of the original inhabi­ tants, the dictators of their conduct, and the arbiters of their fate? When we see men acting thus against the precepts of reason, and the instincts of nature, we cannot hesitate to determine, that by some means or other they were debarred from choice; that they were lured or frighted into compliance; that they either granted only what they found impossible to keep, or expected advantages upon the faith of their new inmates, which there was no purpose to confer upon them. It cannot be said, that the Indians originally invited us to their coasts; we went uncalled and unexpected to nations who had no imagination that the earth contained any inhabitants so distant and so different from themselves. We aston­ ished them with our ships, with our arms, and with our general superiority. They yielded to us as to beings of another and higher race, sent among them from some unknown regions, with power which naked Indians could not resist, and which they were therefore, by every act of humility, to propitiate, that they, who could so easily destroy, might be induced to spare. To this influence, and to this only, are to be attributed all the cessions4 and sub­ missions of the Indian princes, if indeed any such cessions were ever made, of which we have no witness but those who claim from them, and there is no great malignity in suspecting, that those who have robbed have also lied. Some colonies indeed have been established more peaceably than others. The utmost extremity of wrong has not always been practised; but those that have settled in the new world on the fairest terms, have no other merit than that of a scrivener5 who ruins in silence over a plunderer that seizes by force; all have taken what had other owners, and all have had recourse to arms, rather than quit the prey on which they had fastened. The American dispute between the French and us is therefore only the quar­ rel of two robbers for the spoils of a passenger, but as robbers have terms of con­ federacy, which they are obliged to observe as members of the gang, so the English and French may have relative rights, and do injustice to each other, while both are injuring the Indians. And such, indeed, is the present contest: they have parted the northern continent of America between them, and are now disputing about their boundaries, and each is endeavouring the destruction of the other by the help of the Indians, whose interest it is that both should be destroyed. Both nations clamour with great vehemence about infraction of limits, viola­ tion of treaties, open usurpation, insidious artifices, and breach of faith. The English rail at the perfidious French, and the French at the encroaching English; they quote 4. “Resignation; the act of yielding up or quitting to another” (Dictionary). 5. Money-­lender.



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treaties on each side, charge each other with aspiring to universal monarchy, and complain on either part of the insecurity of possession near such turbulent neigh­ bours. Through this mist of controversy it can raise no wonder, that the truth is not easily discovered. When a quarrel has been long carried on between individuals, it is often very hard to tell by whom it was begun. Every fact is darkened by distance, by interest, and by multitudes. Information is not easily procured from far; those whom the truth will not favour, will not step voluntarily forth to tell it, and where there are many agents, it is easy for every single action to be concealed. All these causes concur to the obscurity of the question, by whom were hos­ tilities in America commenced? Perhaps there never can be remembered a time in which hostilities had ceased. Two powerful colonies enflamed with immemo­ rial rivalry, and placed out of the superintendence of the mother nations, were not likely to be long at rest. Some opposition was always going forward, some mischief was every day done or meditated, and the borderers were always better pleased with what they could snatch from their neighbours, than what they had of their own. In this disposition to reciprocal invasion a cause of dispute never could be wanting. The forests and desarts6 of America are without land-­marks, and there­ fore cannot be particularly specified in stipulations;7 the appellations of those wide extended regions have in every mouth a different meaning, and are understood on either side as inclination happens to contract or extend them. Who has yet pre­ tended to define how much of America8 is included in Brazil, Mexico, or Peru? It is almost as easy to divide the Atlantic Ocean by a line, as clearly to ascertain the limits of those uncultivated, uninhabitable, unmeasured regions. It is likewise to be considered, that contracts concerning boundaries are often left vague and indefinite without necessity, by the desire of each party, to interpret the ambiguity to its own advantage when a fit opportunity shall be found. In form­ ing stipulations, the commissaries are often ignorant, and often negligent; they are sometimes weary with debate, and contract a tedious discussion into general terms, or refer it to a former treaty, which was never understood. The weaker part is always afraid of requiring explanations, and the stronger always has an interest in leaving the question undecided: thus it will happen without great caution on either side, that after long treaties solemnly ratified, the rights that had been disputed are still equally open to controversy. In America it may easily be supposed, that there are tracts of land yet claimed 6. “A wilderness . . . uninhabited place” (Dictionary, s.v. desert). 7. “A contract, agreement, treaty” (OED, sense 2a). 8. Now called “the Americas.”

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by neither party, and therefore mentioned in no treaties, which yet one or the other may be afterwards inclined to occupy; but to these vacant and unsettled countries each nation may pretend, as each conceives itself intitled to all that is not expressly granted to the other. Here then is a perpetual ground of contest, every enlargement of the posses­ sions of either will be considered as something taken from the other, and each will endeavour to regain what had never been claimed, but that the other occupied it. Thus obscure in its original is the American contest. It is difficult to find the first invader, or to tell where invasion properly begins; but I suppose it is not to be doubted, that after the last war, when the French had made peace9 with such ap­ parent superiority, they naturally began to treat us with less respect in distant parts of the world, and to consider us as a people from whom they had nothing to fear, and who could no longer presume to contravene their designs, or to check their progress. The power of doing wrong with impunity seldom waits long for the will, and it is reasonable to believe, that in America the French would avow their purpose of aggrandising themselves with at least as little reserve as in Europe. We may therefore readily believe, that they were unquiet neighbours, and had no great regard to right which they believed us no longer able to enforce. That in forming a line of forts behind our colonies, if in no other part of their attempt, they had acted against the general intention, if not against the literal terms of treaties, can scarcely be denied; for it never can be supposed, that we intended to be inclosed between the sea and the French garrisons, or preclude ourselves from extending our plantations backwards to any length that our convenience should re­ quire. With dominion is conferred every thing that can secure dominion. He that has the coast, has likewise the sea to a certain distance; he that possesses a fortress, has the right of prohibiting another fortress to be built within the command of its can­ non. When therefore we planted the coast of North-­America we supposed the pos­ session of the inland region granted to an indefinite extent, and every nation that settled in that part of the world, seems, by the permission of every other nation, to have made the same supposition in its own favour. Here then, perhaps, it will be safest to fix the justice of our cause; here we are apparently and indisputably injured, and this injury may, according to the practice of nations, be justly resented. Whether we have not in return made some incroach­ ments upon them, must be left doubtful, till our practices on the Ohio shall be stated 9. SJ refers to the Treaty of Aix-­la-­Chapelle (1748), which ended the War of the Austrian Succession, begun in 1740.



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and vindicated.10 There are no two nations confining11 on each other, between whom a war may not always be kindled with plausible pretences on either part, as there is always passing between them a reciprocation of injuries and fluctuation of incroach­ ments. From the conclusion of the last peace perpetual complaints of the supplan­ tations and invasions of the French have been sent to Europe from our colonies, and transmitted to our ministers at Paris, where good words were sometimes given us, and the practices of the American commanders were sometimes disowned, but no redress was ever obtained, nor is it probable that any prohibition was sent to America. We were still amused with such doubtful promises as those who are afraid of war are ready to interpret in their own favour, and the French pushed forward their line of fortresses, and seemed to resolve that before our complaints were finally dismissed, all remedy should be hopeless. We likewise endeavour’d at the same time to form a barrier against the Canadi­ ans by sending a colony to New-­Scotland,12 a cold uncomfortable tract of ground, of which we had long the nominal possession before we really began to occupy it. To this those were invited whom the cessation of war deprived of employment, and made burdensome to their country, and settlers were allured thither by many fal­ lacious descriptions of fertile vallies and clear skies. What effect these pictures of American happiness had upon my countrymen I was never informed, but I suppose very few sought provision in those frozen regions, whom guilt or poverty did not drive from their native country. About the boundaries of this new colony there were some disputes, but as there was nothing yet worth a contest, the power of the French was not much exerted on that side: some disturbance was however given and some skirmishes ensued. But perhaps being peopled chiefly with soldiers, who would rather live by plunder than by agriculture, and who consider war as their best trade, New-­Scotland would be more obstinately defended than some settlements of far greater value, and the French are too well informed of their own interest, to provoke hostility for no advantage, or to select that country for invasion, where they must hazard much, and can win little. They therefore pressed on southward behind our ancient and wealthy settlements, and built fort after fort at such distances that they might conveniently relieve one another, invade our colonies with sudden incursions, and retire to places of safety before our people could unite to oppose them. This design of the French has been long formed, and long known, both in America and Europe, and might at first have been easily repressed had force been used instead of expostulation. When the English attempted a settlement upon the 10. The French and English disputed ownership of the upper Ohio River valley. 11. Bordering. 12. Nova Scotia.

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Island of St. Lucia,13 the French, whether justly or not, considering it as neutral and forbidden to be occupied by either nation, immediately landed upon it, and destroyed the houses, wasted the plantations, and drove or carried away the inhabi­ tants. This was done in the time of peace, when mutual professions of friendship were daily exchanged by the two courts, and was not considered as any violation of treaties, nor was any more than a very soft remonstrance made on our part. The French therefore taught us how to act, but an Hanoverian quarrel with the house of Austria for some time induced us to court, at any expence, the alliance of a nation whose very situation makes them our enemies. We suffered them to destroy our settlements, and to advance their own, which we had an equal right to attack. The time however came at last, when we ventured to quarrel with Spain, and then France no longer suffered the appearance of peace to subsist between us, but armed in defence of her ally. The events of the war are well known, we pleased ourselves with a victory at Dettingen,14 where we left our wounded men to the care of our enemies, but our army was broken at Fontenoy and Val;15 and though after the disgrace which we suffered in the Mediterranean we had some naval success, and an accidental dearth made peace necessary for the French, yet they prescribed the conditions, obliged us to give hostages, and acted as conquerors, though as conquerors of moderation. In this war the Americans distinguished themselves in a manner unknown and unexpected. The New English raised an army, and under the command of Pep­ perel took Cape-­Breton,16 with the assistance of the fleet. This is the most impor­ tant fortress in America. We pleased ourselves so much with the acquisition, that we could not think of restoring it, and among the arguments used to inflame the people against Charles Stuart,17 it was very clamorously urged, that if he gained the king­ dom, he would give Cape-­Breton back to the French. The French however had a more easy expedient to regain Cape-­Breton than by exalting Charles Stuart to the English throne, they took in their turn Fort St. George,18 and had our East-­India company wholly in their power, whom they re­ 13. St. Lucia and some other West Indian islands were designated as neutral in the Treaty of Aix-­la-­ Chapelle. 14. In 1743, George II successfully led troops in battle against the French near what is now Karlstein am Main in Bavaria, Germany. 15. The battles of Fontenoy (1745) and Val (also known as Lauffeld) (1747) were severe defeats for the allies in the War of the Austrian Succession. 16. In June 1745 a British fleet and four thousand colonial militia under Colonel William Pepperell of Massachusetts captured Louisbourg, at the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada. 17. Charles Edward, known as the Young Pretender (1720–1788), grandson of the deposed King James II (1633–1701), unsuccessfully invaded Britain in 1745 to regain the Stuart crown. 18. French and Indian forces attacked Fort St. George (Thomaston, Maine) on 19 July 1745, initiating King George’s War.



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stored at the peace to their former possessions, that they may continue to export our silver. Cape-­Breton therefore was restored, and the French were re-­established in America, with equal power and greater spirit, having lost nothing by the war which they had before gained. To the general reputation of their arms, and that habitual superiority which they derive from it, they owe their power in America, rather than to any real strength, or circumstances of advantage. Their numbers are yet not great; their trade, though daily improved, is not very extensive; their country is barren, their fortresses, though numerous, are weak, and rather shelters from wild beasts, or savage nations, than places built for defence against bombs or cannons. Cape-­Breton has been found not to be impregnable; nor, if we consider the state of the places possessed by the two nations in America, is there any reason upon which the French should have pre­ sumed to molest us; but that they thought our spirit so broken that we durst not re­ sist them, and in this opinion our long forbearance easily confirmed them. We forgot, or rather avoided to think, that what we delayed to do must be done at last, and done with more difficulty, as it was delayed longer; that while we were complaining, and they were eluding, or answering our complaints, fort was rising upon fort, and one invasion made a precedent for another. This confidence of the French is exalted by some real advantages. If they pos­ sess in those countries less than we, they have more to gain, and less to hazard; if they are less numerous, they are better united. The French compose one body with one head. They have all the same inter­ est, and agree to pursue it by the same means. They are subject to a governor com­ mission’d by an absolute monarch, and participating the authority of his master. Designs are therefore formed without debate, and executed without impediment. They have yet more martial than mercantile ambition, and seldom suffer their mili­ tary schemes to be entangled with collateral projects of gain: they have no wish but for conquest, of which they justly consider riches as the consequence. Some advantages they will always have as invaders. They make war at the haz­ ard of their enemies: the contest being carried on in our territories, we must lose more by a victory than they will suffer by a defeat. They will subsist, while they stay, upon our plantations, and perhaps destroy them when they can stay no longer. If we pursue them and carry the war into their dominions, our difficulties will encrease every step as we advance, for we shall leave plenty behind us, and find nothing in Canada, but lakes and forests barren and trackless, our enemies will shut themselves up in their forts, against which it is difficult to bring cannon through so rough a country, and which if they are provided with good magazines will soon starve those who besiege them. All these are the natural effects of their government, and situation; they are

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accidentally more formidable as they are less happy. But the favour of the Indians which they enjoy, with very few exceptions, among all the nations of the northern continent, we ought to consider with other thoughts; this favour we might have en­ joyed, if we had been careful to deserve it. The French by having these savage na­ tions on their side, are always supplied with spies, and guides, and with auxiliaries, like the Tartars to the Turks or the Hussars to the Germans,19 of no great use against troops ranged in order of battle, but very well qualified to maintain a war among woods and rivulets, where much mischief may be done by unexpected onsets, and safety be obtained by quick retreats. They can waste a colony by sudden inroads, surprise the straggling planters, frighten the inhabitants into towns, hinder the cul­ tivation of lands, and starve those whom they are not able to conquer.20

19. The Tartars are a people of central Asia, known for ferocity; Tartar is also a name for a military valet (OED, sense 2a). Hussars were Hungarian light cavalry that augmented Austrian troops in the War of the Aus­ trian Succession. 20. In 1756 the article ended with “To be continued.” It never was, and the three words were omitted in all reprintings.



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T H E B R AV E RY O F T H E E N G L I S H COMMON SOLDIERS. (1760)1 By those who have compared the military genius of the English with that of the French nation, it is remarked, that “the French officers will always lead, if the soldiers will follow”; and that “the English soldiers will always follow, if their offi­ cers will lead.” In all pointed sentences some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to con­ ciseness; and, in this comparison, our officers seem to lose what our soldiers gain. I know not any reason for supposing that the English officers are less willing than the French to lead; but it is, I think, universally allowed, that the English soldiers are more willing to follow. Our nation may boast, beyond any other people in the world, of a kind of epidemick bravery, diffused equally through all its ranks. We can shew a peasantry of heroes, and fill our armies with clowns,2 whose courage may vie with that of their general. There may be some pleasure in tracing the causes of this plebeian magnani­ mity.3 The qualities which commonly make an army formidable, are long habits of regularity, great exactness of discipline, and great confidence in the commander. Regularity may, in time, produce a kind of mechanical obedience to signals and commands, like that which the perverse Cartesians impute to animals:4 discipline may impress such an awe upon the mind, that any danger shall be less dreaded than the danger of punishment; and confidence in the wisdom or fortune of the general, may induce the soldiers to follow him blindly to the most dangerous enterprize. What may be done by discipline and regularity, may be seen in the troops of the Russian Empress, and Prussian Monarch.5 We find that they may be broken without confusion, and repulsed without flight. But the English troops have none of these requisites, in any eminent degree. Regularity is by no means part of their character: they are rarely exercised, and therefore shew very little dexterity in their evolutions6 as bodies of men, or in the 1. This essay first appeared in the first number of the British Magazine ( January 1760). SJ showed his fondness for it by adding it, along with two other pieces, to the second collected edition of the Idler (1767). 2. “A rustic; a country fellow; a churl” (Dictionary). 3. “Greatness of mind; bravery; elevation of soul” (Dictionary). 4. Descartes held that animals, lacking souls, are merely automata; his view was used as a justification for vivisection and other forms of animal cruelty. 5. Czarina Elizabeth (1709–1762) and Friedrich II (1712–1786), “Frederick the Great,” whose biography SJ wrote in 1756 (see Yale, xix.376). 6. “The motion made by a body of men in changing their posture, or form of drawing up, either to make

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manual use of their weapons as individuals: they neither are thought by others, nor by themselves, more active or exact than their enemies, and therefore derive none of their courage from such imaginary superiority. The manner in which they are dispersed in quarters over the country, during times of peace, naturally produces laxity of discipline: they are very little in sight of their officers; and, when they are not engaged in the slight duty of the guard, are suffered to live every man his own way.7 The equality of English privileges, the impartiality of our laws, the freedom of our tenures,8 and the prosperity of our trade, dispose us very little to reverence of superiours. It is not to any great esteem of the officers that the English soldier is in­ debted for his spirit in the hour of battle; for perhaps it does not often happen that he thinks much better of his leader than of himself. The French Count, who has lately published the Art of War, remarks how much soldiers are animated, when they see all their dangers shared by those who were born to be their masters, and whom they consider as beings of a different rank.9 The Englishman despises such motives of courage: he was born without a master; and looks not on any man, however digni­ fied by lace or titles, as deriving from Nature any claims to his respect, or inheriting any qualities superior to his own. There are some, perhaps, who would imagine that every Englishman fights better than the subjects of absolute governments, because he has more to defend. But what has the English more than the French soldier? Property they are both com­ monly without. Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving; and this choice is, I suppose, equally allowed in every country. The English soldier seldom has his head very full of the constitution; nor has there been, for more than a century,10 any war that put the property or liberty of a single Englishman in danger. Whence then is the courage of the English vulgar?11 It proceeds, in my opin­ ion, from that dissolution of dependance which obliges every man to regard his own character. While every man is fed by his own hands, he has no need of any servile arts: he may always have wages for his labour; and is no less necessary to his employer, than his employer is to him. While he looks for no protection from good the ground they are upon, or to possess themselves of another; that so they may attack the enemy, or re­ ceive his onset more advantageously” (Dictionary, sense 4). 7. Troops were widely dispersed due to the popular view that barracks and a standing army were dan­ gerous to the citizenry. 8. “The relations, rights, and duties of the tenant to the landlord” (OED, sense 2a). 9. Comte Lancelot Turpin de Crissé et de Sanzay (1716–1793), Essai sur l’art de la guerre (Paris, 1754), i.14. 10. Since the English Civil War, 1642–1651. 11. The common people.



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others, he is naturally roused to be his own protector; and having nothing to abate his esteem of himself, he consequently aspires to the esteem of others. Thus every man that crowds our streets is a man of honour, disdainful of obligation, impatient of reproach, and desirous of extending his reputation among those of his own rank; and as courage is in most frequent use, the fame of courage is most eagerly persued. From this neglect of subordination I do not deny that some inconveniences may from time to time proceed: the power of the law does not always sufficiently supply the want of reverence, or maintain the proper distinction between different ranks: but good and evil will grow up in this world together;12 and they who complain, in peace, of the insolence of the populace, must remember, that their insolence in peace is bravery in war.

12. “Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together,” John Milton, Areopagitica (1644), par. 7.

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I N T RO D U C T I O N TO P RO C E E D I N G S O F T H E COMMITTEE ON FRENCH PRISONERS (1760) British success in the Seven Years’ War brought thousands of French prisoners to Britain. They were kept in woeful conditions, with little food or clothing and with high mortality rates. John Wesley visited a camp for prisoners near Bristol in October of 1759, was ap­ palled by their deaths “like rotten sheep,” and preached a charity sermon on their behalf. A group of distinguished London citizens organized a committee to collect funds on the prisoners’ behalf. Within a few months they raised almost £4,140, and published a cata­ logue of items purchased and sums distributed. The arch-­republican committee member Thomas Hollis (1720–1774) asked Johnson to write an introduction to the pamphlet, which he gladly did.

Proceedings of the Committee Appointed to Manage the Contributions Begun at London Dec. XVIII MDCCL–­VIIII for Cloathing French Prisoners of War Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto. Ter.1 Introduction The Committee intrusted with the money contributed to the relief of the sub­ jects of France, now prisoners in the British Dominions, here lay before the public an exact account of all the sums received and expended; that the donors may judge how properly their benefactions have been applied. Charity would lose its name, were it influenced by so mean a motive as human praise: it is, therefore, not intended to celebrate, by any particular memorial, the lib­ erality of single persons, or distinct societies; it is sufficient, that their works praise them.2 Yet he who is far from seeking honour, may very justly obviate censure. If a good example has been set, it may lose its influence by misrepresentation; and to free charity from reproach, is itself a charitable action. Against the relief of the French, only one argument has been brought; but that one is so popular and specious, that if it were to remain unexamined, it would by 1. Terence (fl. 160s BCE), Heauton Timorumenos (The Self-­Tormentor): “I am human, and I regard no human business as other people’s” (Loeb, trans. John Barnsby). 2. “All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord” (Psalms 145:​10).

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many be thought irrefragable.3 It has been urged, that charity, like other virtues, may be improperly and unseasonably exerted; that while we are relieving Frenchmen, there remain many Englishmen unrelieved; that while we lavish pity on our enemies, we forget the misery of our friends. Grant this argument all it can prove, and what is the conclusion?—that to re­ lieve the French is a good action, but that a better may be conceived. This is all the result, and this all is very little. To do the best, can seldom be the lot of man; it is sufficient if, when opportunities are presented, he is ready to do good. How little virtue could be practised, if beneficence were to wait always for the most proper ob­ jects, and the noblest occasions; occasions that may never happen, and objects that never may be found? It is far from certain, that a single Englishman will suffer by the charity to the French. New scenes of misery make new impressions; and much of the charity which produced these donations, may be supposed to have been generated by a species of calamity never known among us before. Some imagine that the laws have provided all necessary relief in common cases, and remit the poor to the care of the public; some have been deceived by fictitious misery, and are afraid of encouraging imposture; many have observed want to be the effect of vice, and consider casual almsgivers as patrons of idleness. But all these difficulties vanish in the present case: we know that for the prisoners of war there is no legal provision; we see their dis­ tress, and are certain of its cause; we know that they are poor and naked, and poor and naked without a crime. But it is not necessary to make any concessions. The opponents of this charity must allow it to be good, and will not easily prove it not to be the best. That charity is best, of which the consequences are most extensive: the relief of enemies has a tendency to unite mankind in fraternal affection; to soften the acrimony of adverse nations, and dispose them to peace and amity: in the mean time, it alleviates cap­ tivity, and takes away something from the miseries of war. The rage of war, how­ ever mitigated, will always fill the world with calamity and horror: let it not then be unnecessarily extended; let animosity and hostility cease together; and no man be longer deemed an enemy, than while his sword is drawn against us. The effects of these contributions may, perhaps, reach still further. Truth is best supported by virtue: we may hope from those who feel or who see our charity, that they shall no longer detest as heresy that religion, which makes its professors the followers of Him, who has commanded us to “do good to them that hate us.”4

3. Indisputable. 4. Luke 6:27.

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T H E PAT R I OT ( 1 7 74 ) Johnson wrote and circulated The Patriot on behalf of his friend Henry Thrale, who sought reelection as a Member of Parliament for his home borough of Southwark, in south Lon­ don. The work, which became valuable for other candidates, was reprinted three times in London, once in Dublin (1775), and again in Johnson’s collected Political Tracts (1776).

The Patriot. Addressed to the Electors of Great Britain1 They bawl for freedom in their senseless mood, Yet still revolt when truth would set them free, License they mean, when they cry liberty, For who loves that must first be wise and good. —Milton 2

To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life. Many wants are suffered, which might once have been supplied; and much time is lost in regretting the time which had been lost before. At the end of every seven years comes the Saturnalian season,3 when the free­ men of Great Britain may please themselves with the choice of their representatives. This happy day has now arrived, somewhat sooner than it could be claimed.4 To select and depute those, by whom laws are to be made, and taxes to be granted, is a high dignity and an important trust: and it is the business of every elec­ tor to consider, how this dignity may be well sustained, and this trust faithfully dis­ charged. It ought to be deeply impressed on the minds of all who have voices in this national deliberation, that no man can deserve a seat in Parliament who is not a Pa­ triot. No other man will protect our rights, no other man can merit our confidence. A Patriot is he whose public conduct is regulated by one single motive, the 1. The right to vote was restricted at this time to men with property, although the specific qualifications varied among the different kinds of parliamentary seats. 2. From Sonnet XII, “I did but prompt the age to quit their cloggs,” ll. 9–12. 3. The Festival of Saturn in Rome was a time of merry-­making in December when slaves could revel like masters. Figuratively, it means any period of license and revelry (OED). 4. The prior election was in 1768; by law the next one could have been a maximum of seven years later, in 1775. On 30 September 1774, when news of the election, to be concluded two weeks later, reached them, the Thrales and SJ were at Edmund Burke’s estate Gregories. They hurried back to London to prepare (see Yale, xx.515 and n. 1).

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love of his country; who, as an agent in Parliament, has for himself neither hope nor fear, neither kindness nor resentment, but refers every thing to the common interest. That of five hundred men, such as this degenerate age affords, a majority can be found thus virtuously abstracted, who will affirm? Yet there is no good in de­ spondence: vigilance and activity often effect more than was expected. Let us take a Patriot where we can meet him; and that we may not flatter ourselves by false appear­ ances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive: for a man may have the external appearance of a Patriot, without the constituent quali­ ties; as false coins have often lustre, tho’ they want weight. Some claim a place in the list of Patriots by an acrimonious and unremitting opposition to the Court. This mark is by no means infallible. Patriotism is not necessarily included in rebellion. A man may hate his king, yet not love his country. He that has been re­ fused a reasonable or unreasonable request, who thinks his merit under-­rated, and sees his influence declining, begins soon to talk of natural equality, the absurdity of “many made for one,”5 the original compact, the foundation of authority, and the majesty of the people. As his political melancholy increases, he tells, and perhaps dreams of the advances of the prerogative, and the dangers of arbitrary power; yet his design in all his declamation is not to benefit his country, but to gratify his malice. These, however, are the most honest of the opponents of government; their patriotism is a species of disease; and they feel some part of what they express. But the greater, far the greater number of those who rave and rail, and enquire and ac­ cuse, neither suspect, nor fear, nor care for the public; but hope to force their way to riches by virulence and invective, and are vehement and clamorous, only that they may be sooner hired to be silent. A man sometimes starts up a Patriot, only by disseminating discontent and propagating reports of secret influence, of dangerous counsels, of violated rights and encroaching usurpation. This practice is no certain note of patriotism. To instigate the populace with rage beyond the provocation, is to suspend public happiness, if not to destroy it. He is no lover of his country, that unnecessarily disturbs its peace. Few errors, and few faults of government can justify an appeal to the rabble; who ought not to judge of what they cannot understand, and whose opinions are not propagated by reason, but caught by contagion. The fallaciousness of this note of patriotism is particularly apparent, when the clamour continues after the evil is past. They who are still filling our ears with Mr. Wilkes, and the Freeholders of Middlesex, lament a grievance, that is now at an end. 5. An old phrase, frequently used as a motto, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, for example, and by the United States of America. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, iii.242.

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Mr. Wilkes may be chosen, if any will choose him, and the precedent of his exclusion makes not any honest, or any decent man, think himself in danger.6 It may be doubted whether the name of a Patriot can be fairly given as the re­ ward of secret satire, or open outrage. To fill the news-­papers with sly hints of cor­ ruption and intrigue, to circulate the Middlesex Journal and London Pacquet, may indeed be zeal; but it may likewise be interest and malice. To offer a petition, not ex­ pected to be granted; to insult a king with a rude remonstrance, only because there is no punishment for legal insolence, is not courage, for there is no danger; nor pa­ triotism, for it tends to the subversion of order, and lets wickedness loose upon the land, by destroying the reverence due to sovereign authority. It is the quality of patriotism to be jealous and watchful, to observe all secret machinations, and to see public dangers at a distance. The true “Lover of his coun­ try” is ready to communicate his fears and to sound the alarm, whenever he per­ ceives the approach of mischief. But he sounds no alarm, when there is no enemy: he never terrifies his countrymen, till he is terrified himself. The patriotism there­ fore may be justly doubted of him, who professes to be disturbed by incredibilities; who tells, that the last peace was obtained by bribing the Princess of Wales;7 that the King is grasping at arbitrary power; and that because the French in the new con­ quests enjoy their own laws, there is a design at court of abolishing in England the trial by juries. Still less does the true Patriot circulate opinions, which he knows to be false. No man, who loves his country, fills the nation with clamorous complaints, that the Protestant religion is in danger, because “Popery is established in the extensive province of Quebec,”8 a falsehood so open and shameless, that it can need no con­ futation among those who know that of which it is almost impossible for the most unenlightened zealot to be ignorant, That Quebec is on the other side of the Atlantic, at too great a distance to do much good or harm to the European world: That the inhabitants, being French, were always Papists, who are certainly more dangerous as enemies, than as subjects: 6. John Wilkes (1725–1797), radical politician and journalist, was expelled from the House of Commons in 1769 for seditious writing and obscenity, but was repeatedly reelected by the voters of Middlesex. He was not seated until he won a court case declaring the primacy of the voters over the Members of Parliament who ex­ pelled him. There were numerous riots in which crowds cried “Wilkes and Liberty.” Johnson deals extensively with what he thought were the overblown claims of the Wilkites in The False Alarm (1770) (Yale, x.313–45). 7. Augusta of Saxe-­Gotha, Princess Dowager of Wales and mother of George III. Her alleged intrigues with the Prime Minister, Lord Bute, and her domination of her son George III were Opposition articles of faith. 8. The Quebec Act of 1774 allowed French civil law and Catholicism in the province of Quebec and ceded much of the American upper midwest and Ohio Valley to Quebec. The Protestant colonists, like their British cousins, resented the apparent establishment of Catholicism and what they regarded as George III’s hostility toward the colonists.



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That though the province be wide, the people are few, probably not so many as may be found in one of the larger English counties: That persecution is not more virtuous in a Protestant than a Papist; and that while we blame Lewis the Fourteenth, for his dragoons and his gallies, we ought, when power comes into our hands, to use it with greater equity:9 That when Canada with its inhabitants was yielded, the free enjoyment of their religion was stipulated; a condition, of which King William, who was no propagator of Popery, gave an example nearer home, at the surrender of Limerick:10 That in an age, where every mouth is open for “liberty of conscience,” it is equitable to shew some regard to the conscience of a Papist, who may be supposed, like other men, to think himself safest in his own religion; and that those at least, who enjoy a toleration,11 ought not to deny it to our new subjects. If liberty of conscience be a natural right, we have no power to with-­hold it; if it be an indulgence, it may be allowed to Papists, while it is not denied to other sects. A Patriot is necessarily and invariably a lover of the people. But even this mark may sometimes deceive us. The people is a very heterogeneous and confused mass of the wealthy and the poor, the wise and the foolish, the good and the bad. Before we confer on a man, who caresses the people, the title of Patriot, we must examine to what part of the people he directs his notice. It is proverbially said, that he who dissembles his own character, may be known by that of his companions. If the candidate of patriotism endeavours to infuse right opinions into the higher ranks, and by their influence to regulate the lower; if he consorts chiefly with the wise, the temperate, the regular and the virtuous, his love of the people may be rational and honest. But if his first or principal application be to the indigent, who are always inflammable; to the weak, who are naturally suspicious; to the ignorant, who are easily misled; and to the prof­ ligate, who have no hope, but from mischief and confusion; let his love of the people be no longer boasted. No man can reasonably be thought a lover of his country, for roasting an ox, or burning a boot,12 or attending the meeting at Mile-­end, or regis­ tering his name in the Lumber-­troop.13 He may, among the drunkards, be a “hearty

9. Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which deprived French Protestants of their civil rights, was preceded by dragoons forcibly converting, punishing, or imprisoning the recalcitrant as galley slaves. 10. William III’s Treaty of Limerick (1690) allowed the Irish legally to practice Catholicism after their military defeat. The Irish Protestant Parliament refused to ratify the treaty in 1697. 11. The Act of Toleration in 1689 gave political rights to English Protestants who dissented from the Church of England. 12. Burning a boot in public was a protest against the policies of John Stuart, Earl of Bute (1713–1792), who was prime minister from 1762 to 1763. 13. Respectively, an Assembly Room just east of the City of London, where Wilkites met, and a club sup­ porting John Wilkes during the Middlesex election.

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fellow,” and among sober handicraftsmen, a “free spoken gentleman”; but he must have some better distinction, before he is a Patriot. A Patriot is always ready to countenance the just claims, and animate the rea­ sonable hopes of the people; he reminds them frequently of their rights, and stimu­ lates them to resent encroachments, and to multiply securities. But all this may be done in appearance, without real patriotism. He that raises false hopes to serve a present purpose, only makes a way for disappointment and discontent. He who promises to endeavour, what he knows his endeavours unable to effect, means only to delude his followers by an empty clamour of ineffectual zeal. A true Patriot is no lavish promiser: he undertakes not to shorten parliaments to repeal laws; or to change the mode of representation, transmitted by our ances­ tors: he knows that futurity is not in his power, and that all times are not alike favour­ able to change. Much less does he make a vague and indefinite promise of obeying the man­ dates of his constituents.14 He knows the prejudices of faction, and the inconstancy of the multitude. He would first enquire, how the opinion of his constituents shall be taken. Popular instructions are commonly the work, not of the wise and steady, but the violent and rash; meetings held for directing representatives are seldom at­ tended, but by the idle and the dissolute; and he is not without suspicion, that of his constituents, as of other numbers of men, the smaller part may often be the wiser. He considers himself as deputed to promote the public good, and to preserve his constituents, with the rest of his countrymen, not only from being hurt by others, but from hurting themselves. The common marks of patriotism having been examined, and shewn to be such as artifice may counterfeit, or folly misapply, it cannot be improper to consider, whether there are not some characteristical modes of speaking or acting, which may prove a man to be not a Patriot. In this enquiry, perhaps clearer evidence may be discovered, and firmer per­ suasion attained: for it is commonly easier to know what is wrong than what is right; to find what we should avoid, than what we should pursue. As war is one of the heaviest of national evils, a calamity, in which every species of misery is involved; as it sets the general safety to hazard, suspends commerce, and desolates the country; as it exposes great numbers to hardships, dangers, captivity and death; no man, who desires the public prosperity, will inflame general resent­ ment by aggravating minute injuries, or enforcing disputable rights of little impor­ tance. 14. Giving “instructions” to MPs was popular during the 1760s and 1770s, but there was no obligation to comply. Edmund Burke’s speech “To the Electors of Bristol” (1774) outlines a representative’s deeper obliga­ tions to his constituents and his country. SJ suggests something similar.



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It may therefore be safely pronounced, that those men are no Patriots, who when the national honour was vindicated in the sight of Europe, and the Spaniards having invaded what they call their own, had shrunk to a disavowal of their attempt and a relaxation of their claim, would still have instigated us to a war for a bleak and barren spot in the Magellanic ocean, of which no use could be made, unless it were a place of exile for the hypocrites of patriotism.15 Yet let it not be forgotten, that by the howling violence of patriotic rage, the nation was for a time exasperated to such madness, that for a barren rock under a stormy sky, we might have now been fighting and dying, had not our competitors been wiser than ourselves; and those who are now courting the favour of the people by noisy professions of public spirit, would, while they were counting the profits of their artifice, have enjoyed the patriotic pleasure of hearing sometimes, that thou­ sands had been slaughtered in a battle, and sometimes that a navy had been dis­ peopled by poisoned air and corrupted food. He that wishes to see his country robbed of its rights, cannot be a Patriot. That man therefore is no Patriot, who justifies the ridiculous claims of Ameri­ can usurpation;16 who endeavours to deprive the nation of its natural and lawful au­ thority over its own colonies: those colonies, which were settled under English pro­ tection; were constituted by an English charter; and have been defended by English arms.17 To suppose, that by sending out a colony, the nation established an indepen­ dent power; that when, by indulgence and favour, emigrants are become rich, they shall not contribute to their own defence, but at their own pleasure; and that they shall not be included, like millions of their fellow subjects, in the general system of representation; involves such an accumulation of absurdity, as nothing but the shew of patriotism could palliate. He that accepts protection, stipulates18 obedience. We have always protected the Americans; we may therefore subject them to government. The less is included in the greater. That power which can take away life, may seize upon property. The Parliament may enact for America a law of capital punish­ ment; it may therefore establish a mode and proportion of taxation. But there are some who lament the state of the poor Bostonians,19 because they cannot all be supposed to have committed acts of rebellion; yet all are involved in the 15. SJ alludes to the Falklands Islands incident (1771); see his essay on that subject (Yale, x.346). 16. American colonial affairs had been in turmoil since the Stamp Act of 1765. 17. SJ expounded these views in Taxation No Tyranny (1775) (Yale, x.411). 18. Agrees to; bargains for. 19. The British government closed the port of Boston in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, 16 Decem­ ber 1773.

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penalty imposed. This, they say, is to violate the first rule of justice, by condemning the innocent to suffer with the guilty. This deserves some notice, as it seems dictated by equity and humanity, how­ ever it may raise contempt, by the ignorance which it betrays of the state of man, and the system of things. That the innocent should be confounded with the guilty, is undoubtedly an evil; but it is an evil which no care or caution can prevent. National crimes require national punishments, of which many must necessarily have their part, who have not incurred them by personal guilt. If rebels should fortify a town, the cannon of lawful authority will endanger equally the harmless burghers and the criminal garrison. In some cases, those suffer most who are least intended to be hurt. If the French in the late war had taken an English city, and permitted the natives to keep their dwellings, how could it have been recovered, but by the slaughter of our friends? A bomb might as well destroy an Englishman as a Frenchman; and by famine we know that the inhabitants would be the first that should perish. This infliction of promiscuous evil may therefore be lamented, but cannot be blamed. The power of lawful government must be maintained; and the miseries which rebellion produces, can be charged only on the rebels. That man likewise is not a Patriot, who denies his governours their due praise, and who conceals from the people the benefits which they receive. Those therefore can lay no claim to this illustrious appellation, who impute want of public spirit to the late Parliament; an assembly of men, whom, notwithstanding some fluctuation of counsel, and some weakness of agency, the nation must always remember with gratitude, since it is indebted to them for a very ample concession in the resignation of protections,20 and a wise and honest attempt to improve the constitution, in the new judicature instituted for the trial of elections.21 The right of protection, which might be necessary when it was first claimed, and was very consistent with that liberality of immunities in which the feudal con­ stitution delighted, was by its nature liable to abuse, and had in reality been some­ times misapplied, to the evasion of the law, and the defeat of justice. The evil was perhaps not adequate to the clamour; nor is it very certain, that the possible good of this privilege was not more than equal to the possible evil. It is however plain, that whether they gave any thing or not to the public, they at least lost something from themselves. They divested their dignity of a very splendid distinction, and shewed that they were more willing than their predecessors to stand on a level with their fellow-­subjects. 20. In 1770, Parliament voted to limit its Members’ immunity from arrest for debt and civil action. 21. The Elections Act of 1770 removed jurisdiction over contested elections from the highly partisan House of Commons, to an impartial smaller committee.



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The new mode of trying elections, if it be found effectual, will diffuse its con­ sequences further than seems yet to be foreseen. It is, I believe, generally consid­ ered as advantageous only to those who claim seats in Parliament; but, if to chuse representatives be one of the most valuable rights of Englishmen, every voter must consider that law as adding to his happiness, which makes his suffrage efficacious; since it was vain to chuse, while the election could be controled by any other power. With what imperious contempt of ancient rights, and what audaciousness of arbitrary authority, former Parliaments have judged the disputes about elections, it is not necessary to relate. The claim of a candidate, and the right of electors are said scarcely to have been, even in appearance, referred to conscience; but to have been decided by party, by passion, by prejudice, or by frolick. To have friends in the borough was of little use to him, who wanted friends in the house; a pretence was easily found to evade a majority, and the seat was at last his, that was chosen not by his electors, but his fellow-­senators. Thus the nation was insulted with a mock election, and the Parliament was filled with spurious representatives; one of the most important claims, that of a right to sit in the supreme council of the kingdom, was debated in jest, and no man could be confident of success from the justice of his cause. A disputed election is now tried with the same scrupulousness and solemnity, as any other title. The candidate, that has deserved well of his neighbours, may now be certain of enjoying the effect of their approbation; and the elector, who has voted honestly for known merit, may be certain that he has not voted in vain. Such was the Parliament, which some of those, who are now aspiring to sit in another, have taught the rabble to consider as an unlawful convention of men, worthless, venal, and prostitute, slaves of the court, and tyrants of the people. That the next House of Commons may act upon the principles of the last, with more constancy and higher spirit, must be the wish of all who wish well to the public; and it is surely not too much to expect, that the nation will recover from its delusion, and unite in a general abhorrence of those who, by deceiving the credu­ lous with fictitious mischiefs, overbearing the weak by audacity of falsehood, by appealing to the judgment of ignorance, and flattering the vanity of meanness, by slandering honesty and insulting dignity, have gathered round them whatever the kingdom can supply of base, and gross, and profligate; and “raised by merit to this bad eminence,”22 arrogate to themselves the name of Patriots.

FINIS

22. Satan speaking of himself in Paradise Lost, ii.5–6.

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Religious Writings

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Although he was not a clergyman and never preached before a congregation, Johnson wrote at least forty sermons; the twenty-­eight that survive are collected in Volume XIV of the Yale Edition. Johnson wrote sermons for friends, such as John Taylor, and he was usually paid: two guineas, or £2.10, was the going rate. Nevertheless, Johnson took the task very seriously. He was exceedingly well read in the then popular genre of the sermon, as the many quo­ tations of various kinds of sermons in his Dictionary show. For his own sermons Johnson chose the subgenre of the “practical sermon.” In this form, the sermon is not concerned with theological questions or niceties of biblical interpretation. In practical sermons, the minister encourages his congregants to live a good life based on fundamental Christian prin­ ciples with which all sects can agree. For this reason, Johnson’s sermons often resemble his Rambler essays, which he said were “exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity” (Yale, v.320). In his sermons he more explicitly spells out those precepts.

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S E R M O N 1 ( O N M A R R I AG E ) Therefore shall a man leave his father, and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife. —Genesis ii.24

That society is necessary to the happiness of human nature, that the gloom of solitude, and the stillness of retirement, however they may flatter at a distance, with pleasing views of independence and serenity, neither extinguish the passions, nor enlighten the understanding, that discontent will intrude upon privacy, and temp­ tations follow us to the desert, every one may be easily convinced, either by his own experience, or that of others. That knowledge is advanced by an intercourse of senti­ ments, and an exchange of observations, and that the bosom is disburthened, by a communication of its cares, is too well known for proof or illustration. In solitude perplexity swells into distraction, and grief settles into melancholy; even the satis­ factions and pleasures, that may by chance be found, are but imperfectly enjoyed, when they are enjoyed without participation. How high this disposition may extend, and how far society may contribute to the felicity of more exalted natures, it is not easy to determine, nor necessary to enquire; it seems however probable, that this inclination is allotted to all rational beings of limited excellence, and that it is the privilege only of the infinite Creator to derive all his happiness from himself. It is a proof of the regard of God for the happiness of mankind, that the means by which it must be attained, are obvious and evident; that we are not left to dis­ cover them, by difficult speculations, intricate disquisitions, or long experience, but are led to them, equally by our passions and our reason, in prosperity and distress. Every man perceives his own insufficiency to supply himself with what either neces­ sity or convenience require, and applies to others for assistance. Every one feels his satisfaction impaired by the suppression of pleasing emotions, and consequently endeavours to find an opportunity of diffusing his satisfaction. As a general relation to the rest of the species is not sufficient to procure gratifi­ cations for the private desires of particular persons; as closer ties of union are neces­ sary to promote the separate interests of individuals, the great society of the world is divided into different communities, which are again subdivided into smaller bodies, and more contracted associations, which pursue, or ought to pursue, a particular interest, in subordination to the publick good, and consistently with the general happiness of mankind. Each of these subdivisions produces new dependencies and relations, and

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every particular relation gives rise to a particular scheme of duties. Duties which are of the utmost importance, and of the most sacred obligation, as the neglect of them would defeat all the blessings of society, and cut off even the hope of happiness; as it would poison the fountain from whence it must be drawn, and make those insti­ tutions, which have been formed as necessary to peace and satisfaction, the means of disquiet and misery. The lowest subdivision of society, is that by which it is broken into private families; nor do any duties demand more to be explained and enforced, than those which this relation produces; because none are more universally obligatory, and per­ haps very few more frequently neglected. The universality of these duties requires no other proof than may be received from the most cursory and superficial observation of human life. Very few men have it in their power to injure society in a large extent; the general happiness of the world can be very little interrupted by the wickedness of any single man, and the number is not large of those by whom the peace of any particular nation can be disturbed; but every man may injure a family, and produce domestic disorders and distresses; almost every one has opportunities, and perhaps sometimes temptations, to rebel as a wife, or tyrannize as a husband; and therefore, to almost every one are those admo­ nitions necessary, that may assist in regulating the conduct, and impress just notions of the behaviour which these relations exact. Nor are these obligations more evident than the neglect of them; a neglect of which daily examples may be found, and from which daily calamities arise. Al­ most all the miseries of life, almost all the wickedness that infests, and all the dis­ tresses that afflict mankind, are the consequences of some defect in these duties. It is therefore no objection to the propriety of discoursing upon them, that they are well known and generally acknowledged; for a very small part of the disorders of the world proceed from ignorance of the laws, by which life ought to be regulated; nor do many, even of those whose hands are polluted with the foulest crimes, deny the reasonableness of virtue, or attempt to justify their own actions. Men are not blindly betrayed into corruption, but abandon themselves to their passions with their eyes open; and lose the direction of truth, because they do not attend to her voice, not because they do not hear, or do not understand it. It is therefore no less useful to rouse the thoughtless, than instruct the ignorant; to awaken the attention, than en­ lighten the understanding. There is another reason, for which it may be proper to dwell long upon these duties, and return frequently to them; that deep impressions of them may be formed and renewed, as often as time or temptation shall begin to erase them. Offences against society in its greater extent are cognizable1 by human laws. No man can in­ 1. “Proper to be tried, judged, or examined” (Dictionary, sense 2).



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vade the property, or disturb the quiet of his neighbour, without subjecting himself to penalties, and suffering in proportion to the injuries he has offered. But cruelty and pride, oppression and partiality, may tyrannize in private families without con­ troul; meekness may be trampled upon, and piety insulted, without any appeal, but to conscience and to Heaven. A thousand methods of torture may be invented, a thousand acts of unkindness, or disregard, may be committed, a thousand innocent gratifications may be denied, and a thousand hardships imposed, without any vio­ lation of national2 laws. Life may be imbittered with hourly vexation; and weeks, months and years be lingered out in misery, without any legal cause of separation, or possibility of judicial redress. Perhaps no sharper anguish is felt, than that which cannot be complained of, nor any greater cruelties inflicted, than some which no human authority can relieve. That marriage itself, an institution designed only for the promotion of happi­ ness, and for the relief of the disappointments, anxieties, and distresses to which we are subject in our present state, does not always produce the effects, for which it was appointed; that it sometimes condenses the gloom, which it was intended to dispel, and encreases the weight, which was expected to be made lighter by it, must, how­ ever unwillingly, be yet acknowledged. It is to be considered to what causes effects, so unexpected and unpleasing, so contrary to the end of the institution, and so unlikely to arise from it, are to be attributed; it is necessary to enquire, whether those that are thus unhappy, are to im­ pute their misery to any other cause, than their own folly, and to the neglect of those duties, which prudence and religion equally require. This enquiry may not only be of use in stating and explaining the duties of the marriage-­state, but may contribute to free it from licentious misrepresentations, and weak objections; which indeed can have little force upon minds not already adapted to receive impressions from them, by habits of debauchery; but which when they co-­operate with lewdness, intemperance, and vanity; when they are proposed to an understanding naturally weak, and made yet weaker, by luxury and sloth, by an im­ plicit resignation to reigning follies, and an habitual compliance with every appetite; may at least add strength to prejudices, to support an opinion already favoured, and perhaps hinder conviction, or at least retard it. It may indeed be asserted to the honour of marriage, that it has few adversaries among men either distinguished for their abilities, or eminent for their virtue. Those who have assumed the province of attacking it, of overturning the constitution of the world, of encountering the authority of the wisest legislators, from whom it has received the highest sanction of human wisdom; and subverting the maxims of the 2. “Publick; general; not private; not particular” (Dictionary).

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most flourishing states, in which it has been dignified with honours, and promoted with immunities; those who have undertaken the task of contending with reason and experience, with earth and with heaven, are men who seem generally not selected by nature for great attempts, or difficult undertakings. They are, for the most part, such as owe not their determinations to their arguments, but their arguments to their determinations; disputants animated not by a consciousness of truth, but by the numbers of their adherents; and heated not with zeal for the right, but with the rage of licentiousness and impatience of restraint. And perhaps to the sober, the under­ standing, and the pious, it may be sufficient to remark, that religion and marriage have the same enemies. There are indeed some in other communions of the Christian church, who censure marriage upon different motives, and prefer celibacy as a state more im­ mediately devoted to the honour of God, and the regular and assiduous practice of the duties of religion; and have recommended vows of abstinence, no where com­ manded in Scripture, and imposed restraints upon lawful desires; of which it is easy to judge how well they are adapted to the present state of human nature, by the fre­ quent violation of them, even in those societies where they are voluntarily incurred, and where no vigilance is omitted to secure the observation of them. But the authors of these rigorous and unnatural schemes of life, though cer­ tainly misled by false notions of holiness, and perverted conceptions of the duties of our religion; have at least the merit of mistaken endeavours to promote virtue, and must be allowed to have reasoned at least with some degree of probability, in vindication of their conduct. They were generally persons of piety, and sometimes of knowledge, and are therefore not to be confounded with the fool, the drunkard, and the libertine. They who decline marriage for the sake of a more severe and mor­ tified life, are surely to be distinguished from those, who condemn it as too rigorous a confinement, and wish the abolition of it, in favour of boundless voluptuousness and licensed debauchery. Perhaps even the errors of mistaken goodness may be rectified, and the preju­ dices surmounted by deliberate attention to the nature of the institution; and cer­ tainly the calumnies of wickedness may be, by the same means, confuted, though its clamours may not be silenced; since commonly in debates like this, confutation and conviction are very distant from each other. For that nothing but vice or folly obstructs the happiness of a married life may be made evident by examining, First, the nature and end of marriage. Secondly, the means by which that end is to be attained.



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First, the nature and end of marriage.

The vow of marriage which the wisdom of most civilized nations has enjoined, and which the rules of the Christian church enjoin, may be properly considered as a vow of perpetual and indissoluble friendship; friendship which no change of fortune, nor any alteration of external circumstances can be allowed to interrupt or weaken. After the commencement of this state there remain no longer any separate interests; the two individuals become united, and are therefore to enjoy the same felicity, and suffer the same misfortunes; to have the same friends and the same ene­ mies, the same success and the same disappointments. It is easy by pursuing the parallel between friendship and marriage, to show how exact a conformity there is between them, to prove that all the precepts laid down with respect to the contrac­ tion, and the maxims advanced with regard to the effects, of friendship, are true of marriage in a more literal sense, and a stricter acceptation. It has been long observed that friendship is to be confined to one; or that to use the words of the axiom, “he that hath friends, has no friend.”3 That ardour of kindness, that unbounded confidence, that unsuspecting security which friendship requires, cannot be extended beyond a single object. A divided affection may be termed benevolence, but can hardly rise to friendship; for the narrow limits of the human mind allow it not intensely to contemplate more than one idea. As we love one more we must love another less; and however impartially we may, for a very short time, distribute our regards, the balance of affection will quickly incline, per­ haps against our consent, to one side or the other. Besides, though we should love our friends equally, which is perhaps not possible; and each according to their merit, which is very difficult; what shall secure them from jealousy of each other? Will not each think highly of his own value, and imagine himself rated below his worth? Or what shall preserve their common friend, from the same jealousy, with regard to them? As he divides his affection and esteem between them, he can in return claim no more than a dividend of theirs; and as he regards them equally, they may justly rank some other in equality with him; and what then shall hinder an endless com­ munication of confidence, which must certainly end in treachery at last? Let these reflections be applied to marriage, and perhaps polygamy may lose its vindicators. It is remarked that “friendship amongst equals is the most lasting,”4 and per­ haps there are few causes to which more unhappy marriages are to be ascribed than a disproportion between the original condition of the two persons. Difference of 3. [SJ’s note] ὧ φίλοι οὺ φίλος [Diogenes Laertius (fl. third century CE). Lives of Eminent Philosophers, “Aristotle,” v.xxi.14]. 4. [SJ’s note] amicitia inter pares firmissima. [Quintus Curtius, History of Alexander, VII.8.27–28, as Anthony Lee informs us; see JNL, LXXII (September 2020)].

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condition makes difference of education, and difference of education produces dif­ ferences of habits, sentiments, and inclinations. From thence arise contrary views, and opposite schemes, of which the frequent, though not necessary, consequences, are debates, disgust, alienation, and settled hatred. Strict friendship “is to have the same desires and the same aversions.”5 Who­ ever is to chuse a friend is to consider first the resemblance, or the dissimilitude of tempers. How necessary this caution is to be urged as preparatory to marriage, the misery of those who neglect it sufficiently evinces. To enumerate all the varieties of disposition, to which it may on this occasion be convenient to attend, would be a tedious task, but it is at least proper to enforce one precept on this head, a precept which was never yet broken without fatal consequences, “let the religion of the man and woman be the same.” The rancour and hatred, the rage and persecution with which religious disputes have filled the world, need not to be related; every history can inform us, that no malice is so fierce, so cruel, and implacable, as that which is excited by religious discord. It is to no purpose that they stipulate for the free enjoy­ ment of their own opinion; for how can he be happy, who sees the person most dear to him in a state of dangerous errour, and ignorant of those sacred truths, which are necessary to the approbation of God, and to future felicity? How can he engage not to endeavour to propagate truth, and promote the salvation of those he loves; or if he has been betrayed into such engagements by an ungoverned passion, how can he vin­ dicate himself in the observation of them? The education of children will soon make it necessary to determine, which of the two opinions shall be transmitted to their posterity; and how can either consent to train up in errour and delusion, those from whom they expect the highest satisfactions, and the only comforts of declining life. On account of this conformity of notions it is, that equality of condition is chiefly eligible;6 for as friendship, so marriage either finds or makes an equality. No disadvantage of birth or fortune ought to impede the exaltation of virtue and of wis­ dom; for with marriage begins union, and union obliterates all distinctions. It may indeed become the person who received the benefit, to remember it, that gratitude may heighten affection; but the person that conferred it ought to forget it, because, if it was deserved, it cannot be mentioned without injustice, nor if undeserved, with­ out imprudence. All reproaches of this kind must be either retractions of a good action, or proclamations of our own weakness. Friends, says the proverbial observation, “have every thing in common.”7 This is likewise implied in the marriage covenant. Matrimony admits of no separate pos­ sessions, nor incommunicable interests. This rule, like all others, has been often bro­ 5. [SJ’s note] An observation of Catiline in Sallust [Bellum Catilinae, xx.4]. 6. “Fit to be chosen; worthy of choice; preferable” (Dictionary). 7. Plato, Phaedrus, 279c: κοινὰ γὰρ τῶν φίλων.



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ken by low views and sordid stipulations; but, like all other precepts, founded on reason and in truth, it has received a new confirmation from almost every breach of it; and those parents, whose age has had no better effects upon their understanding, than to fill them with avarice and stratagem, have brought misery and ruin upon their children, by the means which they weakly imagined conducive to their happiness. There is yet another precept equally relating to friendship and to marriage, a precept which, in either case, can never be too strongly inculcated, or too scrupu­ lously observed; “contract friendship only with the good.”8 Virtue is the first quality to be considered in the choice of a friend, and yet more in a fixed and irrevocable choice. This maxim surely requires no comment, nor any vindication; it is equally clear and certain, obvious to the superficial, and incontestable by the most accurate examiner. To dwell upon it is therefore superfluous, for, though often neglected, it never was denied. Every man will, without hesitation, confess, that it is absurd to trust a known deceiver, or voluntarily to depend for quiet and for happiness upon insolence, cruelty, and oppression. Thus marriage appears to differ from friendship chiefly in the degree of its efficacy, and the authority of its institution. It was ap­ pointed by God himself, as necessary to happiness, even in a state of innocence; and the relation produced by it, was declared more powerful than that of birth. “There­ fore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife.”9 But as notwithstanding its conformity to human nature, it sometimes fails to produce the effects intended, it is necessary to enquire, Secondly, by what means the end of marriage is to be attained.

As it appears by examining the natural system of the universe, that the greatest and smallest bodies are invested with the same properties, and moved by the same laws; so a survey of the moral world will inform us, that greater or less societies are to be made happy by the same means, and that however relations may be varied, or circumstances changed, virtue, and virtue alone, is the parent of felicity. We can only, in whatsoever state we may be placed, secure ourselves from disquiet and from misery, by a resolute attention to truth and reason. Without this, it is in vain that a man chuses a friend, or cleaves to a wife. If passion be suffered to prevail over right, and the duties of our state be broken through, or neglected, for the sake of gratifying our anger, our pride, or our revenge; the union of hearts will quickly be dissolved, and kindness will give way to resentment and aversion. The duties, by the practice of which a married life is to be made happy, are the same with those of friendship, but exalted to higher perfection. Love must be more 8. According to Aristotle, the truest friendship is between good men (Nicomachean Ethics, viii.5.4). 9. Genesis 2:24.

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ardent, and confidence without limits. It is therefore necessary on each part to de­ serve that confidence by the most unshaken fidelity, and to preserve their love un­ extinguished by continual acts of tenderness; not only to detest all real, but seeming offences; and to avoid suspicion and guilt, with almost equal solicitude. But since the frailty of our nature is such that we cannot hope from each other an unvaried rectitude of conduct, or an uninterrupted course of wisdom or virtue; as folly will sometimes intrude upon an unguarded hour; and temptations, by fre­ quent attacks, will sometimes prevail; one of the chief acts of love is readily to forgive errours, and overlook defects. Neglect is to be reclaimed by kindness, and perverse­ ness softened by compliance. Sudden starts of passion are patiently to be borne, and the calm moments of recollection silently expected. For if one offence be made a plea for another; if anger be to be opposed with anger, and reproach retorted for re­ proach; either the contest must be continued for ever, or one must at last be obliged by violence to do what might have been at first done, not only more gracefully, but with more advantage. Marriage, however in general it resembles friendship, differs from it in this; that all its duties are not reciprocal. Friends are equal in every respect, but the rela­ tion of marriage produces authority on one side, and exacts obedience on the other; obedience, an unpleasing duty; which yet the nature of the state makes indispens­ able; for friends may separate when they can no longer reconcile the sentiments, or approve the schemes of each other; but as marriage is indissoluble, either one must be content to submit, when conviction cannot be obtained; or life must be wasted in perpetual disputes. But though obedience may be justly required, servility is not to be exacted; and though it may be lawful to exert authority, it must be remembered, that to gov­ ern and to tyrannize are very different, and that oppression will naturally provoke rebellion. The great rule both of authority and obedience is the law of God; a law which is not to be broken for the promotion of any ends, or in compliance with any com­ mands; and which indeed never can be violated without destroying that confidence, which is the great source of mutual happiness; for how can that person be trusted, whom no principles oblige to fidelity? Thus religion appears, in every state of life, to be the basis of happiness, and the operating power which makes every good institution valid and efficacious. And he that shall attempt to attain happiness by the means which God has ordained; and “shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife,” shall surely find the highest degree of satisfaction that our present state allows; if, in his choice, he pays the first regard to virtue, and regulates his conduct by the precepts of r­ eligion.



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S E R M O N 25 ( O N T H E D E AT H OF ELIZABETH JOHNSON)1 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth, and be­ lieveth in me, shall never die. —John xi.25–26

To afford adequate consolations to the last hour, to chear the gloomy pas­ sage through the valley of the shadow of death,2 and to ease that anxiety, to which beings, prescient of their own dissolution, and conscious of their own danger, must be necessarily exposed, is the privilege only of revealed religion. All those to whom the supernatural light of heavenly doctrine has never been imparted, however for­ midable for power, or illustrious for wisdom, have wanted3 that knowledge of their future state, which alone can give comfort to misery, or security to enjoyment; and have been forced to rush forwards to the grave, through the darkness of ignorance; or, if they happened to be more refined and inquisitive, to solace their passage with the fallacious and uncertain glimmer of philosophy. There were, doubtless, at all times, as there are now, many who lived with very little thought concerning their end; many whose time was wholly filled up by pub­ lic, or domestic business, by the pursuits of ambition, or the desire of riches; many who dissolved themselves in luxurious enjoyments, and, when they could lull their minds by any present pleasure, had no regard to distant events, but withheld their imagination from sallying out into futurity, or catching any terror that might inter­ rupt their quiet; and there were many who rose so little above animal life, that they were completely ingrossed by the objects about them, and had their views extended no farther than to the next hour; in whom the ray of reason was half extinct, and who had neither hopes nor fears, but of some near advantage, or some pressing danger. But multitudes there must always be, and greater multitudes as arts and civility prevail, who cannot wholly withdraw their thoughts from death. All cannot be dis­ tracted with business, or stunned with the clamours of assemblies, or the shouts of armies. All cannot live in the perpetual dissipation of successive diversions, nor will 1. SJ’s wife, Elizabeth Porter (née Jervis, 1689), died on 17 March 1752. This sermon, which SJ wrote for her funeral service, was never preached. It was given to John Taylor, who declined to deliver it because he thought “the praise of the deceased was too much amplified” (Arthur Murphy, “An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson,” Works [1792], i.170–71). 2. Psalm 23:4. 3. Lacked.

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all enslave their understandings to their senses, and seek felicity in the gross grati­ fications of appetite. Some must always keep their reason and their fancy in action, and seek either honour or pleasure from intellectual operations; and from them, others, more negligent or sluggish, will be in time fixed or awakened; knowledge will be perpetually diffused, and curiosity hourly enlarged. But, when the faculties were once put in motion, when the mind had broken loose from the shackles of sense, and made excursions to remote consequences, the first consideration that would stop her course, must be the incessant waste of life, the approach of age, and the certainty of death; the approach of that time, in which strength must fail, and pleasure fly away, and the certainty of that dissolution which shall put an end to all the prospects of this world. It is impossible to think, and not sometimes to think on death. Hope, indeed, has many powers of delusion; what­ ever is possible, however unlikely, it will teach us to promise ourselves; but death no man has escaped, and therefore no man can hope to escape it. From this dreadful expectation no shelter or refuge can be found. Whatever we see, forces it upon us; whatever is, new or old, flourishing or declining, either directly, or by a very short deduction, leads man to the consideration of his end; and accordingly we find, that the fear of death has always been considered as the great enemy of human quiet, the polluter of the feast of happiness, and embitterer of the cup of joy. The young man who rejoices in his youth, amidst his music and his gaiety, has always been disturbed with the thought, that his youth will be quickly at an end. The monarch, to whom it is said that he is a god, has always been reminded by his own heart, that he shall die like man. This unwelcome conviction, which is thus continually pressed upon the mind, every art has been employed to oppose. The general remedy, in all ages, has been to chase it away from the present moment, and to gain a suspence of the pain that could not be cured. In the ancient writings, we therefore find the shortness of life frequently mentioned as an excitement to jollity and pleasure; and may plainly dis­ cover, that the authors had no other means of relieving that gloom with which the uncertainty of human life clouded their conceptions. Some of the philosophers, in­ deed, appear to have sought a nobler, and a more certain remedy, and to have en­ deavoured to overpower the force of death by arguments, and to dispel the gloom by the light of reason. They inquired into the nature of the soul of man, and shewed, at least probably, that it is a substance distinct from matter, and therefore independent on the body, and exempt from dissolution and corruption. The arguments, whether physical or moral, upon which they established this doctrine, it is not necessary to recount to a Christian audience, by whom it is believed upon more certain proofs, and higher authority; since, though they were such as might determine the calm mind of a philosopher, inquisitive only after truth, and uninfluenced by external ob­ jects; yet they were such as required leisure and capacity, not allowed in general to



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mankind; they were such as many could never understand, and of which, therefore, the efficacy and comfort were confined to a small number, without any benefit to the unenlightened multitude. Such has been hitherto the nature of philosophical arguments, and such it must probably for ever remain; for, though, perhaps, the successive industry of the studious may increase the number, or advance the probability, of arguments; and, though continual contemplation of matter will, I believe, shew it, at length, wholly incapable of motion, sensation, or order, by any powers of its own, and therefore necessarily establish the immateriality, and probably the immortality of the soul; yet there never can be expected a time, in which the gross body4 of mankind can attend to such speculations, or can comprehend them; and therefore there never can be a time, in which this knowledge can be taught in such a manner, as to be generally conducive to virtue, or happiness, but by a messenger from God, from the Creator of the world, and the Father of spirits. To persuade common and uninstructed minds to the belief of any fact, we may every day perceive, that the testimony of one man, whom they think worthy of credit, has more force than the arguments of a thousand reasoners, even when the arguments are such as they may be imagined completely qualified to comprehend. Hence it is plain, that the constitution of mankind is such, that abstruse and intellec­ tual truths can be taught no otherwise than by positive assertion, supported by some sensible evidence, by which the assertor is secured from the suspicion of falsehood; and that, if it should please God to inspire a teacher with some demonstration of the immortality of the soul, it would far less avail him for general instruction, than the power of working a miracle in its vindication, unless God should, at the same time, inspire all the hearers with docility and apprehension, and turn, at once, all the sensual, the giddy, the lazy, the busy, the corrupt and the proud, into humble, abstracted and diligent philosophers. To bring life and immortality to light, to give such proofs of our future exis­ tence, as may influence the most narrow mind, and fill the most capacious intellect, to open prospects beyond the grave, in which the thought may expatiate without obstruction, and to supply a refuge and support to the mind, amidst all the mis­ eries of decaying nature, is the peculiar excellence of the gospel of Christ. Without this heavenly instructor, he who feels himself sinking under the weight of years, or melting away by the slow waste of a lingering disease, has no other remedy than ob­ durate patience, a gloomy resignation to that which cannot be avoided; and he who follows his friend, or whoever there is yet dearer than a friend, to the grave, can have no other consolation than that which he derives from the general misery; the reflec­ tion, that he suffers only what the rest of mankind must suffer; a poor consideration, 4. Gross: “Intellectually coarse; palpable; impure; unrefined” (Dictionary, sense 3); body: mass.

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which rather awes us to silence, than sooths us to quiet, and which does not abate the sense of our calamity, though it may sometimes make us ashamed to complain. But, so much is our condition improved by the gospel, so much is the sting of death rebated, that we may now be invited to the contemplation of our mortality, as to a pleasing employment of the mind, to an exercise delightful and recreative, not only when calamity and persecution drive us out from the assemblies of men, and sorrow and woe represent the grave as a refuge and an asylum, but even in the hours of the highest earthly prosperity, when our cup is full, and when we have laid up stores for ourselves; for, in him who believes the promise of the Saviour of the world, it can cause no disturbance to remember, that this night his soul may be required of him;5 and he who suffers one of the sharpest evils which this life can shew, amidst all its varieties of misery; he that has lately been separated from the person whom a long participation of good and evil had endeared to him; he who has seen kindness snatched from his arms, and fidelity torn from his bosom; he whose ear is no more to be delighted with tender instruction, and whose virtue shall be no more awakened by the seasonable whispers of mild reproof, may yet look, without horror, on the tomb which encloses the remains of what he loved and honoured, as upon a place which, if it revives the sense of his loss, may calm him with the hope of that state in which there shall be no more grief or separation.6 To Christians the celebration of a funeral is by no means a solemnity of barren and unavailing sorrow, but established by the church for other purposes. First, for the consolation of sorrow. Secondly, for the enforcement of piety. The mournful solemnity of the burial of the dead is instituted, first, for the consolation of that grief to which the best minds, if not supported and regulated by religion, are most liable. They who most endeavour the happiness of others, who devote their thoughts to tenderness and pity, and studiously maintain the reciprocation of kind­ ness, by degrees mingle their souls, in such a manner, as to feel, from separation, a total destitution of happiness, a sudden abruption7 of all their prospects, a cessation of all their hopes, schemes and desires. The whole mind becomes a gloomy vacuity, without any image or form of pleasure, a chaos of confused wishes, directed to no 5. Luke 12:​20: in the parable, God says to the rich fool, “This night thy soul shall be required of thee.” 6. In a letter to his recently bereaved friend and doctor Thomas Laurence on 20 January 1780, SJ again expressed the sorrow he felt for the loss of his wife: “The loss, dear Sir, which You have lately suffered, I felt many years ago, and know therefore how much has been taken from You, and how little help can be had from consolation. He that outlives a Wife who he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only Mind that had the same hopes and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good or evil, and with whom he could set his mind at liberty to retrace the past, or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated. The settled course of sentiment and action is stopped, and life stands suspended and mo­ tionless till it is driven by external causes into a new channel. But the time of suspense is dreadful” (SJ Letters, iii.222–23). 7. “Breaking off, violent and sudden separation” (Dictionary).



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particular end, or to that which, while we wish, we cannot hope to obtain; for the dead will not revive; those whom God has called away from the present state of exis­ tence, can be seen no more in it; we must go to them; but they cannot return to us. Yet, to shew that grief is vain, is to afford very little comfort; yet this is all that reason can afford; but religion, our only friend in the moment of distress, in the moment when the help of man is vain, when fortitude and cowardice sink down together, and the sage and the virgin mingle their lamentations; religion will inform us, that sorrow and complaint are not only vain, but unreasonable and erroneous. The voice of God, speaking by his Son, and his apostles, will instruct us, that she, whose departure we now mourn, is not dead, but sleepeth; that only her body is committed to the ground, but that the soul is returned to God, who gave it; that God, who is infinitely merciful, who hateth nothing that he has made, who desir­ eth not the death of a sinner; to that God, who only can compare performance with ability, who alone knows how far the heart has been pure, or corrupted, how in­ advertency has surprised, fear has betrayed, or weakness has impeded; to that God, who marks every aspiration after a better state, who hears the prayer which the voice cannot utter, records the purpose that perished without opportunity of action, the wish that vanished away without attainment, who is always ready to receive the peni­ tent, to whom sincere contrition is never late, and who will accept the tears of a re­ turning sinner. Such are the reflections to which we are called by the voice of truth; and from these we shall find that comfort which philosophy cannot supply, and that peace which the world cannot give. The contemplation of the mercy of God may justly afford some consolation, even when the office of burial is performed to those who have been snatched away without visible amendment of their lives; for, who shall presume to determine the state of departed souls, to lay open what God hath con­ cealed, and to search the counsels of the Most Highest?—But, with more confident hope of pardon and acceptance, may we commit those to the receptacles of mor­ tality, who have lived without any open or enormous crimes; who have endeavoured to propitiate God by repentance, and have died, at last, with hope and resignation. Among these she surely may be remembered whom we have followed hither to the tomb, to pay her the last honours, and to resign her to the grave: she, whom many who now hear me have known, and whom none, who were capable of distinguishing either moral or intellectual excellence, could know, without esteem, or tenderness. To praise the extent of her knowledge, the acuteness of her wit, the accuracy of her judgment, the force of her sentiments, or the elegance of her expression, would ill suit with the occasion. Such praise would little profit the living, and as little gratify the dead, who is now in a place where vanity and competition are forgotten for ever; where she finds a cup of water given for the relief of a poor brother, a prayer uttered for the mercy

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of God to those whom she wanted power to relieve, a word of instruction to igno­ rance, a smile of comfort to misery, of more avail than all those accomplishments which confer honour and distinction among the sons of folly. —Yet, let it be re­ membered, that her wit was never employed to scoff at goodness, nor her reason to dispute against truth. In this age of wild opinions, she was as free from scepticism as the cloistered virgin. She never wished to signalize herself by the singularity of paradox. She had a just diffidence of her own reason, and desired to practise rather than to dispute. Her practice was such as her opinions naturally produced. She was exact and regular in her devotions, full of confidence in the divine mercy, submis­ sive to the dispensations of Providence, extensively charitable in her judgments and opinions, grateful for every kindness that she received, and willing to impart assis­ tance of every kind to all whom her little power enabled her to benefit. She passed through many months of languor, weakness and decay, without a single murmur of impatience, and often expressed her adoration of that mercy which granted her so long time for recollection and penitence. That she had no failings, cannot be sup­ posed: but she has now appeared before the Almighty Judge; and it would ill be­ come beings like us, weak and sinful as herself, to remember those faults which, we trust, Eternal Purity has pardoned. Let us therefore preserve her memory for no other end but to imitate her virtues; and let us add her example to the motives to piety which this solemnity was, secondly, instituted to enforce. It would not indeed be reasonable to expect, did we not know the inattention and perverseness of mankind, that any one who had followed a funeral, could fail to return home without new resolutions of a holy life: for, who can see the final period of all human schemes and undertakings, without conviction of the vanity of all that terminates in the present state? For, who can see the wise, the brave, the powerful, or the beauteous, carried to the grave, without reflection on the emptiness of all those distinctions which set us here in opposition to each other? And who, when he sees the vanity of all terrestrial advantages, can forbear to wish for a more permanent and certain happiness? Such wishes, perhaps, often arise, and such resolutions are often formed: but, before the resolution can be exerted, before the wish can regulate the conduct, new prospects open before us, new impressions are received; the temp­ tations of the world solicit, the passions of the heart are put into commotion; we plunge again into the tumult, engage again in the contest, and forget, that what we gain cannot be kept, and that the life, for which we are thus busy to provide, must be quickly at an end. But, let us not be thus shamefully deluded! Let us not thus idly perish in our folly, by neglecting the loudest call of Providence; nor, when we have followed our friends, and our enemies, to the tomb, suffer ourselves to be surprised by the dread­ ful summons, and die, at last, amazed and unprepared! Let every one whose eye



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glances on this bier, examine what would have been his condition, if the same hour had called him to judgment, and remember, that, though he is now spared, he may, perhaps, be to-­morrow among separate spirits. The present moment is in our power: let us, therefore, from the present moment, begin our repentance! Let us not, any longer, harden our hearts, but hear, this day, the voice of our Saviour and our God, and begin to do, with all our powers, whatever we shall wish to have done, when the grave shall open before us! Let those who came hither weeping and lament­ ing, reflect, that they have not time for useless sorrow; that their own salvation is to be secured, and that the day is far spent, and the night cometh, when no man can work;8 that tears are of no value to the dead, and that their own danger may justly claim their whole attention! Let those who entered this place unaffected and indif­ ferent, and whose only purpose was to behold this funeral spectacle, consider, that she, whom they thus behold with negligence, and pass by, was lately partaker of the same nature with themselves; and that they likewise are hastening to their end, and must soon, by others equally negligent, be buried and forgotten! Let all remember, that the day of life is short, and that the day of grace may be much shorter; that this may be the last warning which God will grant us, and that, perhaps, he who looks on this grave unalarmed, may sink unreformed into his own! Let it, therefore, be our care, when we retire from this solemnity, that we im­ mediately turn from our wickedness, and do that which is lawful and right; that, whenever disease, or violence, shall dissolve our bodies, our souls may be saved alive, and received into everlasting habitations; where, with angels and archangels, and all the glorious host of heaven, they shall sing glory to God on high, and the Lamb, for ever and ever.9

THE END

8. John 9:4. 9. The sermon, which is replete with echoes of the Book of Common Prayer, ends with phrases from the Gloria and the final Hymn of Praise in the service of Holy Communion.

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F RO M A R E V I E W O F S OA M E J E N Y N S ’ S A F R E E I N QU I RY I N TO T H E NAT U R E A N D O R I G I N O F E V I L ( 17 57 ) Soame Jenyns (1704–1787) was a wealthy country squire, a long-­serving Member of Parlia­ ment, and a commissioner on the Board of Trade. In his early days he wrote light satiric and amatory poems, but later moved on to economic, political, and philosophical-­theological texts, one of which was his Free Enquiry—a work propounding theodicy, the belief that the world is perfectly ordered and entirely good, although from our position on the great chain of beings, that order and goodness may be difficult to see. Jenyns’s optimism enraged Johnson, who reviewed A Free Inquiry across three numbers of the Literary Magazine for 1757: Numbers 13–15 (15 April–15 July). We include excerpts. The whole review is in Yale, XVII, pp. 397–432.

A FREE INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF EVIL. IN SIX LETTERS TO —. R. AND J. DODSLEY. This is a treatise consisting of six letters upon a very difficult and important question, which I am afraid this author’s endeavours will not free from the per­ plexity, which has intangled the speculatists1 of all ages, and which must always continue while we see but in part.2 He calls it a free enquiry, and indeed his freedom is, I think, greater than his modesty. Though he is far from the contemptible arro­ gance, or the impious licentiousness of Bolingbroke,3 yet he decides too easily upon questions out of the reach of human determination, with too little consideration of mortal weakness, and with too much vivacity for the necessary caution. In the first letter on evil in general, he observes, that “it is the solution of this important question, whence came evil, alone, that can ascertain the moral charac­ teristic of God, without which there is an end of all distinction between good and evil.”4 Yet he begins this enquiry by this declaration. “That there is a supreme being, infinitely powerful, wise and benevolent, the great creator and preserver of all things, is a truth so clearly demonstrated, that it shall be here taken for granted.”5 What is this but to say, that we have already reason to grant the existence of those attributes of God, which the present enquiry is designed to prove? The present enquiry is then 1. “A speculatist; one who knows only speculation, not practice” (Dictionary, s.v. theorick). 2. 1 Corinthians 13:​12: “For now we see through a glass darkly . . . now I know in part.” 3. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751), a deist—a follower of natural and rational, rather than revealed and apostolical religion. 4. Paraphrase of Jenyns, Free Inquiry, pp. 3–5. 5. Jenyns, Free Inquiry, p. 18.

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surely made to no purpose. The attributes to the demonstration of which the solu­ tion of this great question is necessary, have been demonstrated without any solu­ tion, or by means of the solution of some former writer. He rejects the Manichean system,6 but imputes to it an absurdity, from which, amidst all its absurdities it seems to be free, and adopts the system of Mr. Pope.7 That pain is no evil, if asserted with regard to the individuals who suffer it, is downright nonsense; but if considered as it affects the universal system, is an undoubted truth, and means only that there is no more pain in it than what is necessary to the production of happiness. How many soever of these evils then force themselves into the creation, so long as the good preponder­ ates, it is a work well worthy of infinite wisdom and benevolence; and, not­ withstanding the imperfections of its parts; the whole is most undoubtedly perfect.8

And in the former part of the letter, he gives the principle of his system in these words, Omnipotence cannot work contradictions, it can only effect all possible things. But so little are we acquainted with the whole system of nature, that we know not what are possible, and what are not: but if we may judge from that constant mixture of pain with pleasure, and inconveniency with advan­ tage, which we must observe in every thing around us, we have reason to conclude, that to endue created beings with perfection, that is, to produce good exclusive of evil, is one of those impossibilities which even infinite power cannot accomplish. This is elegant and acute, but will by no means calm discontent or silence curiosity; for whether evil can be wholly separated from good or not, it is plain that they may be mixed in various degrees, and as far as human eyes can judge, the degree of evil might have been less without any impedi­ ment to good.

The second letter on the evils of imperfection, is little more than a paraphrase of Pope’s epistles,9 or yet less than a paraphrase, a mere translation of poetry into 6. A heretical view derived from a Babylonian religion that posited an eternal conflict in the world be­ tween good and evil—light and dark—beginning from creation. 7. Pope’s Essay on Man (1733–34) was addressed to Bolingbroke and expounded the optimistic view that “Whatever Is, is Right” (ii.294). 8. Jenyns, Free Inquiry, p. 18. 9. Pope’s Essay on Man consists of four epistles.

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prose. This is surely to attack difficulty with very disproportionate abilities, to cut the Gordian knot10 with very blunt instruments. When we are told of the insufficiency of former solutions, why is one of the latest, which no man can have forgotten, given us again? I am told, that this pamphlet is not the effort of hunger; What can it be then but the product of vanity? and yet how can vanity be gratified by plagiarism, or tran­ scription? When this speculatist finds himself prompted to another performance, let him consider whether he is about to disburthen his mind or employ his fingers; and if I might venture to offer him a subject, I should wish that he would solve this question, Why he that has nothing to write, should desire to be a writer? . . . This doctrine of the regular subordination of beings, the scale11 of existence, and the chain of nature, I have often considered, but always left the inquiry in doubt and uncertainty. That every being not infinite, compared with infinity, must be imperfect, is evi­ dent to intuition; that whatever is imperfect must have a certain line which it cannot pass, is equally certain. But the reason which determined this limit, and for which such being was suffered to advance thus far and no further, we shall never be able to discern. Our discoverers12 tell us, the Creator has made beings of all orders, and that therefore one of them must be such as man. But this system seems to be established on a concession which if it be refused cannot be extorted. Every reason which can be brought to prove, that there are beings of every possible sort, will prove that there is the greatest number possible of every sort of beings; but this with respect to man we know, if we know any thing, not to be true. It does not appear even to the imagination, that of three orders of being, the first and the third receive any advantage from the imperfection of the second, or that indeed they may not equally exist, though the second had never been, or should cease to be, and why should that be concluded necessary, which cannot be proved even to be useful? The scale of existence from infinity to nothing, cannot possibly have being. The highest being not infinite must be, as has been often observed, at an infinite distance below infinity. Cheyne, who, with the desire inherent in mathematicians to reduce every thing to mathematical images, considers all existence as a cone, allows that the basis is at an infinite distance from the body. And in this distance between finite and infinite, there will be room for ever for an infinite series of indefinable existence.13 Between the lowest positive existence and nothing, wherever we suppose posi­ 10. A proverbial expression alluding to the feat of Alexander the Great, who untied the intricate knot at Gordium by cutting it with his sword. 11. “Regular gradation; a regular series rising like a ladder” (Dictionary, sense 7). 12. Pope and Jenyns. 13. George Cheyne (1671–1743), Philosophical Principles of Religion: Natural and Revealed (1715).



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tive existence to cease, is another chasm infinitely deep; where there is room again for endless orders of subordinate nature, continued for ever and for ever, and yet infinitely superior to non-­existence. To these meditations humanity is unequal. But yet we may ask, not of our maker, but of each other, since on the one side creation, wherever it stops, must stop infinitely below infinity, and on the other infinitely above nothing, what neces­ sity there is that it should proceed so far either way, that beings so high or so low should ever have existed. We may ask; but I believe no created wisdom can give an adequate answer. Nor is this all. In the scale, wherever it begins or ends, are infinite vacuities. At whatever distance we suppose the next order of beings to be above man, there is room for an intermediate order of beings between them; and if for one order then for infinite orders; since every thing that admits of more or less, and consequently all the parts of that which admits them, may be infinitely divided. So that, as far as we can judge, there may be room in the vacuity between any two steps of the scale, or between any two points of the cone of being for infinite exertion of infinite power. Thus it appears how little reason those who repose their reason upon the scale of being have to triumph over them who recur to any other expedient of solution, and what difficulties arise on every side to repress the rebellions of presumptu­ ous decision. Qui pauca considerat, facile pronunciat.14 In our passage through the boundless ocean of disquisition we often take fogs for land, and after having long toiled to approach them find, instead of repose and harbours, new storms of objec­ tion and fluctuations of uncertainty. . . . Concerning the portion of ignorance necessary to make the condition of the lower classes of mankind safe to the public and tolerable to themselves, both morals and policy exact a nicer enquiry than will be very soon or very easily made. There is undoubtedly a degree of knowledge which will direct a man to refer all to provi­ dence, and to acquiesce in the condition which omniscient goodness has deter­ mined to allot him; to consider this world as a phantom that must soon glide from before his eyes, and the distresses and vexations that encompass him, as dust scat­ tered in his path, as a blast that chills him for a moment, and passes off for ever. Such wisdom, arising from the comparison of a part with the whole of our exis­ tence, those that want it most cannot possibly obtain from philosophy, nor unless the method of education and the general tenour of life are changed, will very easily receive it from religion. The bulk of mankind is not likely to be very wise or very good: and I know not whether there are not many states of life, in which all knowl­ edge less than the highest wisdom, will produce discontent and danger. I believe it 14. “He who considers few things, easily decides”—and, by implication, “wrongly.”

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may be sometimes found, that a little learning is to a poor man a dangerous thing.15 But such is the condition of humanity, that we easily see, or quickly feel the wrong, but cannot always distinguish the right. Whatever knowledge is superfluous, in ir­ remediable poverty, is hurtful, but the difficulty is to determine when poverty is ir­ remediable, and at what point superfluity begins. Gross ignorance every man has found equally dangerous with perverted knowledge. Men left wholly to their appe­ tites and their instincts, with little sense of moral or religious obligation, and with very faint distinctions of right and wrong, can never be safely employed or confi­ dently trusted: they can be honest only by obstinacy, and diligent only by compul­ sion or caprice. Some instruction, therefore, is necessary, and much perhaps may be dangerous. Though it should be granted that those who are born to poverty and drudgery should not be deprived by an improper education of the opiate of ignorance; even this concession will not be of much use to direct our practice, unless it be determined who are those that are born to poverty. To entail irreversible poverty upon generation after generation only because the ancestor happened to be poor, is in itself cruel, if not unjust, and is wholly contrary to the maxims of a commercial nation, which always suppose and promote a rotation of property, and offer every individual a chance of mending his condition by his diligence. Those who communicate litera­ ture to the son of a poor man, consider him as one not born to poverty, but to the necessity of deriving a better fortune from himself. In this attempt, as in others, many fail, and many succeed. Those that fail will feel their misery more acutely; but since poverty is now confessed to be such a calamity as cannot be born without the opiate of insensibility, I hope the happiness of those whom education enables to es­ cape from it, may turn the ballance against that exacerbation which the others suffer. I am always afraid of determining on the side of envy or cruelty. The privileges of education may sometimes be improperly bestowed, but I shall always fear to with-­ hold them, lest I should be yielding to the suggestions of pride, while I persuade my­ self that I am following the maxims of policy;16 and under the appearance of salutary restraints, should be indulging the lust of dominion, and that malevolence which delights in seeing others depressed. . . . When this author presumes to speak of the universe, I would advise him a little to distrust his own faculties, however large and comprehensive. Many words easily understood on common occasion, become uncertain and figurative when applied to the works of Omnipotence. Subordination in human affairs is well understood, but when it is attributed to the universal system, its meaning grows less certain, like the 15. Pope, Essay on Criticism, l. 215. 16. Prudence.



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petty distinctions of locality, which are of good use upon our own globe, but have no meaning with regard to infinite space, in which nothing is high or low. That if man, by exaltation to a higher nature were exempted from the evils which he now suffers, some other being must suffer them; that if man were not man, some other being must be man, is a position arising from his established notion of the scale of being. A notion to which Pope has given some importance by adopting it, and of which I have therefore endeavoured to shew the uncertainty and inconsis­ tency. This scale of being I have demonstrated to be raised by presumptuous imagi­ nation, to rest on nothing at the bottom, to lean on nothing at the top, and to have vacuities from step to step through which any order of being may sink into nihility without any inconvenience, so far as we can judge to the next rank above or below it. We are therefore little enlightned by a writer who tells us that any being in the state of man must suffer what man suffers, when the only question, that requires to be resolved is, Why any being is in this state? . . . Having thus dispatched the consideration of particular evils, [ Jenyns] comes at last to a general reason for which evil may be said to be our good.17 He is of opinion that there is some inconceivable benefit in pain abstractedly considered; that pain however inflicted, or wherever felt, communicates some good to the general system of being, and that every animal is some way or other the better for the pain of every other animal. This opinion he carries so far as to suppose that there passes some principle of union through all animal life, as attraction18 is communicated to all cor­ poreal nature, and that the evils suffered on this globe, may by some inconceivable means contribute to the felicity of the inhabitants of the remotest planet. How the origin of evil is brought nearer to human conception by any inconceivable means, I am not able to discover. We believed that the present system of creation was right, though we could not explain the adaptation of one part to the other, or for the whole succession of causes and consequences. Where has this enquirer added to the little knowledge that we had before. He has told us of the benefits of evil, which no man feels, and relations between distant parts of the universe, which he cannot himself conceive. There was enough in this question inconceivable before, and we have little advantage from a new inconceivable solution. I do not mean to reproach this author for not knowing what is equally hidden from learning and from ignorance. The shame is to impose words for ideas upon ourselves or others. To imagine that we are going forward when we are only turning round. To think that there is any difference between him that gives no reason, and him that gives a reason, which by his own confession cannot be conceived. 17. “Evil be thou my Good” (Paradise Lost, iv.110). 18. Gravitational or magnetic force.

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But that he may not be thought to conceive nothing but things inconceiv­ able, he has at last thought on a way by which human sufferings may produce good effects. He imagines that as we have not only animals for food, but choose some for our diversion, the same privilege may be allowed to some beings above us, who may deceive, torment, or destroy us for the ends only of their own pleasure or utility. This he again finds impossible to be conceived, but that impossibility lessens not the probability of the conjecture, which by analogy is so strongly confirmed.19 I cannot resist the temptation of contemplating this analogy, which I think he might have carried further very much to the advantage of his argument. He might have shewn that these hunters whose game is man have many sports analogous to our own. As we drown whelps and kittens, they amuse themselves now and then with sinking a ship, and stand round the fields of Blenheim or the walls of Prague,20 as we encircle a cock-­pit. As we shoot a bird flying, they take a man in the midst of his business or pleasure, and knock him down with an apoplexy. Some of them, per­ haps, are virtuosi,21 and delight in the operations of an asthma, as a human philoso­ pher in the effects of the air pump. To swell a man with a tympany22 is as good sport as to blow a frog. Many a merry bout have these frolic beings at the vicissitudes of an ague,23 and good sport it is to see a man tumble with an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all this he knows not why. As they are wiser and more powerful than we, they have more exquisite diversions, for we have no way of procuring any sport so brisk and so lasting as the paroxysms of the gout and stone which undoubt­ edly must make high mirth, especially if the play be a little diversified with the blun­ ders and puzzles of the blind and deaf. We know not how far their sphere of obser­ vation may extend. Perhaps now and then a merry being may place himself in such a situation as to enjoy at once all the varieties of an epidemical disease, or amuse his leisure with the tossings and contortions of every possible pain exhibited together. One sport the merry malice of these beings has found means of enjoying to which we have nothing equal or similar. They now and then catch a mortal proud of his parts,24 and flattered either by the submission of those who court his kindness, or the notice of those who suffer him to court theirs. A head thus prepared for the re­ ception of false opinions, and the projection of vain designs, they easily fill with idle notions, till in time they make their plaything an author: their first diversion com­ 19. Jenyns, Free Inquiry, pp. 67–68. 20. The Duke of Marlborough defeated the French at Blenheim on 13 August 1704; ten thousand men died, and fifteen thousand were wounded. Frederick II defeated the Austrians at Prague on 6 May 1757; there were thirty thousand killed or wounded. 21. Virtuoso: “A scientist, a natural philosopher” (OED, sense 1a). 22. “A morbid swelling or tumour” (OED, sense 1a). 23. “An intermitting fever, with cold fits succeeded by hot” (Dictionary). 24. “Qualities; powers; faculties; or accomplishments” (Dictionary, sense 13).



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monly begins with an ode or an epistle, then rises perhaps to a political irony, and is at last brought to its height, by a treatise of philosophy. Then begins the poor animal to entangle himself in sophisms, and flounder in absurdity, to talk confidently of the scale of being, and to give solutions which himself confesses impossible to be under­ stood. Sometimes, however, it happens that their pleasure is without much mischief. The author feels no pain, but while they are wondering at the extravagance of his opinion, and pointing him out to one another as a new example of human folly, he is enjoying his own applause, and that of his companions, and perhaps is elevated with the hope of standing at the head of a new sect. Many of the books which now croud the world, may be justly suspected to be written for the sake of some invisible order of beings, for surely they are of no use to any of the corporeal inhabitants of the world. Of the productions of the last boun­ teous year, how many can be said to serve any purpose of use or pleasure. The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it: and how will either of those be put more in our power by him who tells us, that we are puppets, of which some creature not much wiser than ourselves manages the wires. That a set of beings unseen and unheard, are hovering about us, trying experiments upon our sensibility, putting us in agonies to see our limbs quiver, torturing us to madness, that they may laugh at our vagaries,25 sometimes obstructing the bile,26 that they may see how a man looks when he is yellow; sometimes breaking a trav­ eller’s bones to try how he will get home; sometimes wasting a man to a skeleton, and sometimes killing him fat for the greater elegance of his hide. This is an account of natural evil which though, like the rest, not quite new is very entertaining, though I know not how much it may contribute to patience. The only reason why we should contemplate evil is, that we may bear it better, and I am afraid nothing is much more placidly endured, for the sake of making others sport. . . .

25. Wanderings, ramblings (see OED, sense 1a). 26. “A thick, yellow, bitter liquour, separated in the liver, collected in the gall-­bladder” (Dictionary).

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P R AY E R S A N D M E D I TAT I O N S Johnson often urged friends and acquaintances to keep journals. He did so himself, but in an irregular and spotty way. Volume I in the Yale Edition, Diaries, Prayers, and Annals (1958), collects material of this kind from sixteen sources, including a few transcripts of lost manuscripts—mainly diaries that Johnson evidently burned shortly before his death. One of these sixteen sources comprises fourteen paperbound volumes of various sizes that John­ son gave to his friend George Strahan to edit and publish as Prayers and Meditations, first published in 1785. The Yale Edition uses the paperbound volumes themselves as copy-­text and adds some prayers and meditations from some of the other fifteen sources. We present a small selection from various periods in Johnson’s life.

6 May 1752, after the death of Elizabeth Johnson1 O Lord, our heavenly Father, without whom all purposes are frustrate, all efforts are vain, grant me the assistance of thy Holy Spirit, that I may not sorrow as one without hope, but may now return to the duties of my present state with humble confidence in thy protection, and so govern my thoughts and actions, that neither business may withdraw my mind from Thee, nor idleness lay me open to vain imaginations; that neither praise may fill me with pride, nor censure with discontent; but that in the changes of this life, I may fix my heart upon the reward which Thou hast promised to them that serve Thee, and that whatever things are true, whatever things are hon­ est, whatever things are just, whatever are pure, whatever are lovely, whatever are of good report, wherein there is virtue, wherein there is praise, I may think upon and do, and obtain mercy and everlasting happiness.2 Grant this, O Lord, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen. November 1752, “Before any new study” Almighty God, in whose hands are all the powers of man; who givest understand­ ing, and takest it away; who, as it seemeth good unto Thee, enlightenest the thoughts of the simple, and darkenest the meditations of the wise, be present with me in my studies and enquiries. Grant, O Lord, that I may not lavish away the life which Thou hast given me on useless trifles, nor waste it in vain searches after things which thou hast hidden from me.

1. Elizabeth Johnson died on 17 March 1752. SJ wrote four prayers for her, of which this is the last. 2. The last part of the prayer paraphrases Philippians 4:8.

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Enable me, by thy Holy Spirit, so to shun sloth and negligence, that every day may discharge part of the task which Thou hast allotted me; and so further with thy help that labour which, without thy help, must be ineffectual, that I may obtain, in all my undertakings, such success as will most promote thy glory, and the salvation of my own soul, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen. 3 April 1753, “I began the 2nd vol of my Dictionary”3 I began the 2d vol of my Dictionary, room being left in the first for Preface, Gram­ mar & History none of them yet begun. O God who hast hitherto supported me enable me to proceed in this labour & in the Whole task of my present state that when I shall render up at the last day an account of the talent committed to me I may receive pardon for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen. 18 September 1760, birthday prayer Resolved D. j.4 To combat notions of obligation To apply to Study. To reclaim imagination To consult the resolves on Tetty’s coffin. To rise early. To study Religion. To go to Church. To drink less strong liquours. To keep Journal. To oppose laziness, by doing what is to be done. To morrow Rise as early as I can. Send for books for Hist. of war. Put books in order. Scheme life.

O Almighty God, merciful Father, who hast continued my life to another year grant that I may spend the time which thou shalt yet give me in such obedience 3. SJ began work on his Dictionary in 1747; by May 1752, letters A, B, and C were complete and printed. There was, however, a hiatus in SJ’s work, begun perhaps while he was working on the Rambler (1750–52) and extending to the months following the death of his wife on 17 March 1752. 4. Deo juvante (with the assistance of God).

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to thy word and will that finally I may obtain everlasting life. Grant that I may re­ pent and forsake my sins before the miseries of age fall upon me, and that while my strength yet remains I may use it to thy glory and my own Salvation, by the assistance of thy Holy Spirit, for Jesus Christs sake. Amen. 18 October 1767, the death of Catherine Chambers5 sunday. Yesterday, Oct. 17 at about ten in the morning I took my leave for ever of my dear old Friend Catherine Chambers, who came to live with my Mother about 1724, and has been but little parted from us since. She buried my Father, my Brother, and my Mother. She is now fifty eight years old. I desired all to withdraw, then told her that we were to part for ever, that as Christians we should part with prayer, and that I would, if she was willing, say a short prayer beside her. She expressed great desire to hear me, and held up her poor hands, as she lay in bed, with great fervour, while I prayed, kneeling by her, nearly in the following words. Almighty and most merciful Father, whose loving kindness is over all thy works, behold, visit, and relieve this thy Servant who is grieved with sickness. Grant that the sense of her weakness may add strength to her faith, and seriousness to her Re­ pentance. And grant that by the help of thy Holy Spirit after the pains and labours of this short life, we may all obtain everlasting happiness through Jesus Christ, our Lord, for whose sake hear our Prayers. Amen. Our Father.6 I then kissed her. She told me that to part was the greatest pain that she had ever felt, and that she hoped we should meet again in a better place. I expressed with swelled eyes and great emotion of tenderness the same hopes. We kissed and parted, I humbly hope, to meet again, and to part no more. 18 September 1769, “The sixtieth year of my life” This day completes the sixtieth year of my age. What I have done and what I have left undone the unsettled state of my mind makes all endeavours to think improper. I hope to survey my life with more tranquillity, in some part of the time which God shall grant me. The last year has been wholly spent in a slow progress of recovery. My days are easier, but the perturbation of my nights is very distressful. I think to try a lower diet. I have grown fat too fast. My lungs seem encumbered, and my breath fails me, 5. Catherine (Kitty) Chambers was a servant for SJ’s mother and a member of the household for forty years. 6. Shorthand for the Lord’s Prayer.



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if my strength [is] in any unusual degree exerted, or my motion accelerated. I seem to myself to bear exercise with more difficulty than in the last winter. But though I feel all these decays of body, I have made no preparation for the grave. What shall I do to be saved? Almighty and most merciful Father, I now appear in thy presence laden with the sins, and accountable for the mercies of another year. Glory be to thee O God, for the mitigation of my troubles, and for the hope of health both of mind and body which thou hast vouchsafed me. Most merciful Lord if it seem good unto thee, com­ pose my mind, and relieve my diseases, enable me to perform the duties of my sta­ tion, and so to serve thee, as that, when my hour of departure from this painful life shall be delayed no longer, I may be received to everlasting happiness, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. O Lord, without whose help all the purposes of man are vain, enable me to use such temperance as may heal my body, and strengthen my mind and enable me to serve thee. Grant this O Lord, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen. Who hast safely brought me to &c. 31 March 1771, “Kindle in my mind holy desires”7 O Lord God, in whose hand are the wills and affections of men, kindle in my mind holy desires, and repress sinful and corrupt imaginations. Enable me to love thy commandments, and to desire thy promises; let me by thy protection and influence so pass through things temporal, as finally not to lose the things eternal, and among the hopes and fears, the pleasures and sorrows, the dangers and deliverances, and all the changes of this life, let my heart be surely fixed by the help of thy Holy Spirit on the everlasting fruition of thy presence, where true joys are to be found, grant O Lord, these petitions. Forgive, O merciful Lord, whatever I have done contrary to thy laws. Give me such a sense of my Wickedness as may produce true contrition and effectual repen­ tance, so that when I shall be called into another state, I may be received among the sinners, to whom sorrow and reformation have obtained pardon, for Jesus Christs Sake. Amen. 5 December 1784, “I am . . . about to commemorate for the last time” Almighty and most merciful Father, I am now, as to human eyes it seems, about to commemorate8 for the last time, the death of thy son Jesus Christ, our Saviour and 7. This meditation was probably composed on Easter evening. 8. The prayer, written eight days before SJ’s death, is itself the commemoration, i.e., “a service, or a short form of prayer added to a service, in memory of a saint or of a sacred event” (OED, sense 2b).

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Redeemer. Grant, O Lord, that my whole hope and confidence may be in his mer­ its and in thy mercy: forgive and accept my late conversion,9 enforce and accept my imperfect repentance; make this commemoration [of ] him available to the confirma­ tion of my Faith, the establishment of my hope, and the enlargement of my Charity, and make the Death of thy son Jesus effectual to my redemption. Have mercy upon me and pardon the multitude of my offences. Bless my Friends, have mercy upon all men. Support me by the Grace of thy Holy Spirit in the days of weakness, and at the hour of death, and receive me, at my death, to everlasting happiness, for the Sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.

9. Strahan struck this clause from the first edition of Prayers and Meditations, evidently fearing readers would think SJ converted to Christianity only on his deathbed. The sense of conversion is, however, “Change from reprobation to grace, from a bad to a holy life” (Dictionary, sense 2).



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A Dictionary of the English Language

�

Johnson signed a contract with a group of London publishers to compile an English dictio­ nary in 1746. Important writers, such as Alexander Pope and Joseph Addison, had shown interest in such a project in the previous generation, but little had come of their efforts or speculations. The booksellers were resolute when they approached Johnson. They knew that greater standardization of English would advance their commercial interests and that they could take advantage of a national zeal to make English the equal of French, which could boast of more settled and celebrated linguistic standards. Having made their choice of lexicographer, the booksellers funded Johnson adequately to set up shop in a large house in Gough Square, to hire a total of six amanuenses or secretaries, and to buy the expen­ sive paper needed for the project. Johnson first wrote a “Short Scheme of an English Dic­ tionary”; he solicited comments from several people, including Lord Chesterfield, who he hoped would act as patron to the work. The final version of this document, when it was first issued in August 1747, was addressed to Lord Chesterfield and called The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language. Almost immediately, however, the first few pages of type were reset, and the address to Chesterfield was removed from the first page. The wished-­for sup­ port had evidently not materialized, as Johnson’s famous letter to Chesterfield in February 1755 shows (p. 376 below). Johnson worked on the Dictionary for about seven years. In that time, he read a great many books and marked out passages from them that illustrated the meanings of the words in the Dictionary. He used these quotations in writing the entry for each word, and they make up much of the bulk of the work. In fact, the vast collection of illustrative quotations is one of the most important features of the Dictionary. In all he included approximately 114,000 quotations to illustrate the meanings of his nearly 43,000 headwords. Although his definitions are often brilliant short pieces of writing, the quotations were what every­ one noticed. Johnson was criticized for the bulk they added to his work as well as for the linguistic principle their inclusion demonstrated. As he says in the Preface to the Dictionary, Johnson used the quotations to make up for the unavoidable deficiencies of his defi­ nitions: “The solution of all difficulties, and the supply of all defects, must be sought in the examples, subjoined to the various senses of each word, and ranged according to the time of their authours” (below, p. 408). Johnson also believed his illustrative quotations would

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serve an encyclopedic function, providing the reader with information on all kinds of top­ ics from botany to zoology. Accordingly, he quoted encyclopedias as well as dictionaries of specialized subjects, such as gardening and building. No matter what his subject, however, Johnson was perpetually a moralist, so he also included vast numbers of quotations from religious writers, including many bishops of the Church of England, as well as ethicists, and, of course, the Bible. There had been many dictionaries of English before Johnson’s, and there had been Latin dictionaries that were larger and more comprehensive. When it appeared in two large folio volumes in 1755, however, Johnson’s was the largest, most comprehensive English dic­ tionary, and it put English lexicography at last on an equal footing with continental lexicog­ raphy. Johnson sent copies to the French Académie as well as the Italian Accademia della Crusca, both of which reciprocated with gifts of their own well-­established productions. Johnson became internationally famous, and his fame spread with the numerous editions of his great book that appeared in subsequent years—complete editions in various sizes; inexpensive abridgments; and finally, miniature versions—hundreds in all.1 Although new dictionaries of course succeeded Johnson’s, his work was not lost. James A. H. Murray, the principal editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, had a copy of Johnson’s work in his office, and he incorporated much of its contents, as well as its basic method, into the first edition of the greatest English dictionary. On the other side of the Atlantic, Noah Webster railed at Johnson in terms like those used by other critics, and he attempted to assert new, American spellings of many English words, but Webster too made extensive use of Johnson’s Dictionary. When Philip Gove undertook his great revision of the Webster’s line of dictionaries for Webster’s Third International, he had amanuenses copy all of the quotations in Johnson’s Dictionary onto three-­by-­five cards for his use, so Johnson’s work is preserved in the greatest American as well as the greatest British lexicons. In 1773, just before his famous trip to the Hebrides with Boswell, Johnson completed a massive revision of his Dictionary. He added and subtracted a great many quotations, shifted the order of the senses of many words, and corrected a great many errors.2 This work affected a relatively small percentage of the vast book, but it was still a lot of work by any measure, and as he finished it, Johnson was moved to write a Latin poem to his intellectual idol, Joseph Scaliger, whose awesome intellectual achievements always reminded Johnson that he had accomplished little compared with what might be done. Among other things, the poem shows how fully identified Johnson was with his work, especially his laborious work of lexicography. Accordingly, he called the poem, in Greek, “Know Thyself,” imitating the famous words of wisdom said to have been engraved on the Temple to Apollo at Delphi. The Yale Edition, Volume XVIII, Johnson on the English Language, includes the Plan and Preface to the Dictionary as well as Johnson’s preliminary “History of the English Lan­ 1. Most notable are the first of the many abridged editions (1756) and the much revised fourth edition of the folio (1773). 2. Allen Reddick tells the full story of this revision in The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, 1746–1773 (1990; rev. 1996).

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guage” and his “Grammar of the English Tongue.” It also prints the Preface to the first abridged edition and the advertisement to the fourth edition. Although there have been many reprints, the world still awaits a scholarly edition of the full Dictionary. The letter to Lord Chesterfield, included below, is taken from SJ Letters, I (1992), 95–97, with the per­ mission of Princeton University Press. The poem “Know Thyself,” with the translation in­ cluded below, appears in Yale, VI.



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TO LO R D C H E S T E R F I E L D, 7 F E B RUA RY 1 75 5 1 My Lord: I have been lately informed by the Proprietor of The World that two Papers in which my Dictionary is recommended to the Public were written by your Lordship.2 To be so distinguished is an honour which, being very little accustomed to favours from the Great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge. When upon some slight encouragement I first visited your Lordship I was overpowered like the rest of Mankind by the enchantment of your adress, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself Le Vainqueur du Vainqueur de la Terre,3 that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world contending, but I found my attendance so little incouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suf­ fer me to continue it.4 When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted all the Art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly Scholar can possess. I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. Seven years, My lord have now past since I waited in your outward Rooms or was repulsed from your Door, during which time I have been pushing 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 assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a Patron ­before. The Shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a Native of the Rocks.5 Is not a Patron,6 My Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a Man struggling for Life in the water and when he has reached ground encumbers 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. 1. Philip Dormer Stanhope (1694–1773), fourth Earl of Chesterfield, an important statesman and accom­ plished writer to whom SJ dedicated his Plan of a Dictionary in 1747. 2. Robert Dodsley (1704–1764), one of the prime movers of Johnson’s Dictionary, owned the periodical to which Chesterfield often contributed. Chesterfield’s pieces on the Dictionary appear in Nos. 100 and 101 (28 November and 5 December 1754). 3. As Redford points out, SJ quotes part of the opening line of Alaric, an epic poem by Georges de Scu­ déry (1601–1667), which means “The conqueror of the conqueror of the world.” 4. After an initial successful visit, it appears, SJ attempted unsuccessfully to see Chesterfield again. 5. Eclogue, viii.43–44: “Now I know what Love is; on flinty crags Tmarus bare him—or Rhodope, or the fartherst Garamantes, a child not of our race or blood!” (trans. H. R. Fairclough, rev. G. P. Goold, Loeb ed.). 6. “Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery” (Dictionary).

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I hope it is no very cinical asperity not to confess obligation where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the Public should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of Learning I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less, for I have been long wakened from that Dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, My lord, Your Lordship’s Most humble, most obedient Servant, S.J.



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T H E P L A N O F A D I C T I O NA RY O F T H E E N G L I S H L A N G UAG E ( 17 47 ) My Lord,7 When first I undertook to write an English Dictionary, I had no expectation of any higher patronage than that of the proprietors of the copy, nor prospect of any other advantage than the price of my labour; I knew, that the work in which I en­ gaged is generally considered as drudgery for the blind,8 as the proper toil of artless industry, a task that requires neither the light of learning, nor the activity of genius, but may be successfully performed without any greater quality than that of bear­ ing burthens with dull patience, and beating the track of the alphabet with sluggish resolution. Whether this opinion, so long transmitted and so widely propagated, had its beginning from truth and nature, or from accident and prejudice, whether it be de­ creed by the authority of reason, or the tyranny of ignorance, that of all the candi­ dates for literary praise, the unhappy lexicographer holds the lowest place, neither vanity nor interest incited me to enquire. It appeared that the province allotted me was of all the regions of learning generally confessed to be the least delightful, that it was believed to produce neither fruits nor flowers, and that after a long and labori­ ous cultivation, not even the barren laurel9 had been found upon it. Yet on this province, my Lord, I enter’d with the pleasing hope, that as it was low, it likewise would be safe. I was drawn forward with the prospect of employ­ ment, which, tho’ not splendid, would be useful, and which tho’ it could not make my life envied, would keep it innocent; which would awaken no passion, engage me in no contention, nor throw in my way any temptation to disturb the quiet of others by censure, or my own by flattery. I had read indeed of times, in which princes and statesmen thought it part of their honour to promote the improvement of their native tongues, and in which dic­ tionaries were written under the protection of greatness.10 To the patrons of such undertakings, I willingly paid the homage of believing that they, who were thus solicitous for the perpetuity of their language, had reason to expect that their ac­ 7. Phillip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield (see SJ’s letter to Chesterfield, p. 376 above). The first printing of the Plan included Chesterfield’s name and title, above the salutation. 8. “Intellectually dark; unable to judge; ignorant . . .” (Dictionary, sense 2). 9. As John Boyle, fifth Earl of Orrery (1707–1762), complained, after reading the Plan, the laurel is not barren (SJ Life, i.185). The entry on laurel in Johnson’s Dictionary describes its fruit and flowers. 10. The first edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie (1694) was dedicated to Louis XIV, who served as its protector.

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tions would be celebrated by posterity, and that the eloquence which they promoted would be employed in their praise. But I considered such acts of beneficence as prodigies, recorded rather to raise wonder than expectation; and content with the terms that I had stipulated, had not suffered my imagination to flatter me with any other encouragement, when I found that my design had been thought by your Lord­ ship of importance sufficient to attract your favour. How far this unexpected distinction can be rated among the happy incidents of life, I am not yet able to determine. Its first effect has been to make me anxious lest it should fix the attention of the public too much upon me, and as it once hap­ pened to an epic poet of France,11 by raising the reputation of the attempt, obstruct the reception of the work. I imagine what the world will expect from a scheme, prosecuted under your Lordship’s influence, and I know that expectation, when her wings are once expanded, easily reaches heights which performance never will attain, and when she has mounted the summit of perfection, derides her follower, who dies in the pursuit. Not therefore, to raise expectation, but to repress it, I here lay before your Lordship the plan of my undertaking, that more may not be demanded than I in­ tend, and that before it is too far advanced to be thrown into a new method, I may be advertised of its defects or superfluities. Such informations I may justly hope from the emulation with which those who desire the praise of elegance and discernment must contend in the promotion of a design that you, my Lord, have not thought un­ worthy to share your attention with treaties and with wars. In the first attempt to methodise my ideas, I found a difficulty which extended itself to the whole work. It was not easy to determine by what rule of distinction the words of this dictionary were to be chosen. The chief intent of it is to preserve the purity and ascertain the meaning of the English idiom; and this seems to require nothing more than that our language be considered so far as it is our own; that the words and phrases used in the general intercourse of life, or found in the works of those whom we commonly stile polite writers, be selected, without including the terms of particular professions, since, with the arts to which they relate, they are generally derived from other nations, and are very often the same in all the languages of this part of the world. This is perhaps the exact and pure idea of a grammatical dictionary;12 but in lexicography, as in other arts, naked science13 is too delicate for the purposes of life. The value of a work must be estimated by its use: It is not enough that a dictionary delights the critic, unless at the same time it instructs the 11. Voltaire (1694–1778), whose epic La Henriade (1728) enjoyed the support of George I. 12. Ephraim Chambers (1680–1740) defined “grammatical [dictionaries], as the common Dictionaries of languages; which for one word substitute another of equal import” (Cyclopaedia, i.xvii), as distinct from “philo­ sophical” and “technical” dictionaries. 13. “Knowledge” (Dictionary, sense 1).



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learner; as it is to little purpose, that an engine amuses the philosopher14 by the sub­ tilty of its mechanism, if it requires so much knowledge in its application, as to be of no advantage to the common workman. The title which I prefix to my work has long conveyed a very miscellaneous idea, and they that take a dictionary into their hands have been accustomed to ex­ pect from it, a solution of almost every difficulty. If foreign words therefore were re­ jected, it could be little regarded, except by critics, or those who aspire to criticism; and however it might enlighten those that write, would be all darkness to them that only read. The unlearned much oftner consult their dictionaries, for the meaning of words, than for their structures or formations; and the words that most want expla­ nation, are generally terms of art, which therefore experience has taught my prede­ cessors to spread with a kind of pompous luxuriance over their productions.15 The academicians of France, indeed, rejected terms of science in their first essay, but found afterwards a necessity of relaxing the rigour of their determination; and, tho’ they would not naturalize them at once by a single act, permitted them by degrees to settle themselves among the natives,16 with little opposition, and it would surely be no proof of judgment to imitate them in an error which they have now re­ tracted, and deprive the book of its chief use by scrupulous distinctions. Of such words however, all are not equally to be considered as parts of our lan­ guage, for some of them are naturalized and incorporated, but others still continue aliens, and are rather auxiliaries than subjects. This naturalization is produced either by an admission into common speech in some metaphorical signification, which is the acquisition of a kind of property among us, as we say the zenith of advancement, the meridian of life, the cynosure of neighbouring eyes;17 or it is the consequence of long intermixture and frequent use, by which the ear is accustomed to the sound of words till their original is forgotten, as in equator,18 satellites;19 or of the change of a foreign to an English termination, and a conformity to the laws of the speech into which they are adopted, as in category, cachexy, peripneumony.20 14. “A man deep in knowledge, ether moral or natural” (Dictionary). 15. Earlier English dictionaries, such as Edward Phillips’s New World of English Words (1658) and Nathan Bailey’s Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721), advertised the inclusion of technical terms “pomp­ ously” on their title pages. 16. Revisions of the Dictionnaire de L’Académie in 1718 and 1740 admitted more technical terms than the first edition (1694). 17. [SJ’s note] Milton [L’Allegro, l. 80]. 18. The original, Latin meaning of equator is “one who equalizes” or an assayer (Oxford Latin Dictionary). 19. “A small planet revolving round a larger” (Dictionary); the Latin word means an escort, henchman, or associate. 20. The Greek forms of these words would end in -­ia. Cachexy is a “distemperature of the humours” (Dictionary); peripneumony is “An inflammation of the lungs” (Dictionary).

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Of those which yet continue in the state of aliens, and have made no approaches towards assimilation, some seem necessary to be retained, because the purchasers of the dictionary will expect to find them. Such are many words in the common law, as capias, habeas corpus, præmunire, nisi prius: such are some terms of controversial divinity, as hypostasis;21 and of physick,22 as the names of diseases; and in general all terms which can be found in books not written professedly upon particular arts, or can be supposed necessary to those who do not regularly study them. Thus when a reader not skilled in physick happens in Milton upon this line,      . . . pining atrophy, Marasmus, and wide-­wasting pestilence.23

he will with equal expectation look into his dictionary for the word marasmus, as for atrophy, or pestilence, and will have reason to complain if he does not find it. It seems necessary to the completion of a dictionary design’d not merely for critics but for popular use, that it should comprise, in some degree, the peculiar words of every profession; that the terms of war and navigation should be inserted so far as they can be required by readers of travels, and of history; and those of law, merchandise and mechanical trades, so far as they can be supposed useful in the occurrences of common life. But there ought, however, to be some distinction made between the different classes of words, and therefore it will be proper to print those which are incorpo­ rated into the language in the usual character, and those which are still to be consid­ ered as foreign, in the italick letter.24 Another question may arise, with regard to appellatives, or the names of species. It seems of no great use to set down the words, horse, dog, cat, willow, alder, dasy, rose, and a thousand others, of which it will be hard to give an explanation not more obscure than the word itself. Yet it is to be considered, that if the names of animals be inserted, we must admit those which are more known, as well as those with which we are, by accident, less acquainted; and if they are all rejected, how will the reader be relieved from difficulties produced by allusions to the crocodile, the chamæleon, the ichneumon, and the hyæna? If no plants are to be mentioned, the most pleas­ ing part of nature will be excluded, and many beautiful epithets be unexplained. If only those which are less known are to be mentioned, who shall fix the limits of the

21. “1. Distinct substance. 2. Personality. A term used in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity” (Dictionary). 22. “The science of healing” (Dictionary). 23. Paradise Lost, xi.486–87; marasmus is “A consumption, in which persons waste much of their sub­ stance” (Dictionary). 24. Johnson makes this distinction in his Dictionary, but not consistently or thoroughly.



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reader’s learning? The importance of such explications appears from the mistakes which the want of them has occasioned. Had Shakespear had a dictionary of this kind, he had not made the woodbine entwine the honeysuckle;25 nor would Milton, with such assistance, have disposed so improperly of his ellops26 and his scorpion. Besides, as such words, like others, require that their accents should be settled, their sounds ascertained, and their etymologies deduced, they cannot be properly omitted in the dictionary. And though the explanations of some may be censured as trivial, because they are almost universally understood, and those of others as un­ necessary, because they will seldom occur, yet it seems not proper to omit them, since it is rather to be wished that many readers should find more than they expect, than that one should miss what he might hope to find. When all the words are selected and arranged, the first part of the work to be considered is the Orthography,27 which was long vague and uncertain, which at last, when its fluctuation ceased, was in many cases settled but by accident, and in which, according to your Lordship’s observation, there is still great uncertainty among the best critics;28 nor is it easy to state a rule by which we may decide be­ tween custom and reason, or between the equiponderant authorities of writers alike eminent for judgment and accuracy. The great orthographical contest has long subsisted between etymology and pronunciation. It has been demanded, on one hand, that men should write as they speak; but as it has been shewn that this conformity never was attained in any lan­ guage, and that it is not more easy to perswade men to agree exactly in speaking than in writing, it may be asked with equal propriety, why men do not rather speak as they write. In France, where this controversy was at its greatest height, neither party, however ardent, durst adhere steadily to their own rule; the etymologist was often forced to spell with the people; and the advocate for the authority of pronunciation, found it sometimes deviating so capriciously from the received use of writing, that he was constrained to comply with the rule of his adversaries, lest he should lose the end by the means, and be left alone by following the croud.29 When a question of orthography is dubious, that practice has, in my opin­ ion, a claim to preference, which preserves the greatest number of radical letters, or seems most to comply with the general custom of our language. But the chief rule 25. These are two names for the same plant; see A Midsummer Night’s Dream, iv.i.39–40. 26. “A fish; reckoned however by Milton among the serpents” (Dictionary); see Paradise Lost, x.525. 27. Correct spelling. 28. This specific observation is unlocated, but Chesterfield’s second essay on the Dictionary in the World shows how troubled he was by irregular spelling (above, p. 376, n. 2). 29. The first edition of the Dictionnaire (1694) favored etymology and analogy as rules for spelling; vig­ orous debate ensued, but by the third edition (1740), usage had become the standard of choice.

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which I propose to follow, is to make no innovation, without a reason sufficient to balance the inconvenience of change; and such reasons I do not expect often to find. All change is of itself an evil, which ought not to be hazarded but for evident ad­ vantage; and as inconstancy is in every case a mark of weakness, it will add nothing to the reputation of our tongue. There are, indeed, some who despise the inconve­ niencies of confusion, who seem to take pleasure in departing from custom, and to think alteration desirable for its own sake, and the reformation of our orthography, which these writers have attempted, should not pass without its due honours, but that I suppose they hold singularity its own reward, or may dread the fascination30 of lavish praise. The present usage of spelling, where the present usage can be distinguished, will therefore in this work be generally followed, yet there will be often occasion to observe, that it is in itself inaccurate, and tolerated rather than chosen; particularly, when by a change of one letter, or more, the meaning of a word is obscured, as in farrier, for ferrier, as it was formerly written, from ferrum or fer;31 in gibberish for gebrish, the jargon of Geber, and his chymical followers, understood by none but their own tribe.32 It will be likewise sometimes proper to trace back the orthography of different ages, and shew by what gradations the word departed from its original.33 Closely connected with orthography is Pronunciation, the stability of which is of great importance to the duration of a language, because the first change will naturally begin by corruptions in the living speech. The want of certain rules for the pronunciation of former ages, has made us wholly ignorant of the metrical art of our ancient poets;34 and since those who study their sentiments regret the loss of their numbers, it is surely time to provide that the harmony of the moderns may be more permanent. A new pronunciation will make almost a new speech, and therefore since one great end of this undertaking is to fix the English language, care will be taken to determine the accentuation of all polysyllables by proper authorities, as it is one of those capricious phænomena which cannot be easily reduced to rules. Thus there is no antecedent reason for difference of accent in the two words dolorous and sonorous, yet of the one Milton gives the sound in this line, 30. “The power or act of bewitching; enchantment; unseen inexplicable influence” (Dictionary). SJ was also satirical about spelling reformers in his Grammar of the English Tongue (see Yale, xviii.295–301). 31. Ferrum is classical Latin for iron ( ferrus is Medieval Latin for horseshoe); fer is a morpheme signify­ ing carrying or bearing. 32. OED says the word was formed by onomatopoeia, rather than on the name of Geber, the eighth-­ century Arab alchemist. 33. SJ did not do this in the Dictionary. 34. Thomas Tyrwhitt’s edition of the Canterbury Tales (1775–78) was the first fully to recover Chaucer’s metrics.



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He pass’d o’er many a region dolorous,

and that of the other in this, Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds.35

It may be likewise proper to remark metrical licences, such as contractions, generous, gen’rous, reverend, rev’rend; and coalitions, as region, question. But it is still more necessary to fix the pronunciation of monosyllables, by placing with them words of correspondent sound, that one may guard the other against the danger of that variation,36 which to some of the most common, has al­ ready happened, so that the words wound, and wind, as they are now frequently pro­ nounced, will not rhyme to sound, and mind. It is to be remarked that many words written alike are differently pronounced, as flow, and brow, which may be thus regis­ tred, flow, woe, brow, now, or of which the exemplification may be generally given by a distich.37 Thus the words tear or lacerate, and tear the water of the eye, have the same letters, but may be distinguished thus, tear, dare; tear, peer. Some words have two sounds, which may be equally admitted, as being equally defensible by authority. Thus great is differently used. For Swift and him despis’d the farce of state, The sober follies of the wise and great. Pope. As if misfortune made the throne her seat, And none could be unhappy but the great. Rowe.38

The care of such minute particulars may be censured as trifling, but these particulars have not been thought unworthy of attention in more polished languages. The accuracy of the French, in stating the sounds of their letters, is well known; and, among the Italians, Crescembeni has not thought it unnecessary to inform his countrymen of the words, which, in compliance with different rhymes, are allowed 35. Paradise Lost, ii.619 and i.540. In Dictionary, SJ indicates pronunciation only with a mark after the vowel of the stressed syllable: e.g., do´lorous and sono´rous. 36. Not done in Dictionary. 37. Sometimes Dictionary includes a distich (a couplet) that shows pronunciation through rhyme. 38. These couplets from Pope (Epistle to Robert Earl of Oxford, ll. 9–10) and Nicholas Rowe (Prologue to The Fair Penitent, ll. 3–4) illustrate sense 9 of great in Dictionary. Boswell reports SJ saying, “Lord Chesterfield told me that it should be pronounced so as to rhyme to state; and Sir William Yonge sent me word that it should be pronounced so as to rhyme to seat. . . . Now here were two men of the highest rank, the one the best speaker in the House of Lords, the other, the best speaker in the House of Commons, differing entirely” (SJ Life, ii.161).

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to be differently spelt, and of which the number is now so fix’d, that no modern poet is suffered to encrease it.39 When the orthography and pronunciation are adjusted, the Etymology or Derivation is next to be considered, and the words are to be distinguished accord­ ing to their different classes, whether simple, as day, light, or compound as day-­light; whether primitive, as, to act, or derivative, as action, actionable, active, activity.40 This will much facilitate the attainment of our language, which now stands in our dictionaries a confused heap of words without dependence, and without relation. When this part of the work is performed, it will be necessary to inquire how our primitives are to be deduced from foreign languages, which may be often very successfully performed by the assistance of our own etymologists. This search will give occasion to many curious disquisitions, and sometimes perhaps to conjectures, which, to readers unacquainted with this kind of study, cannot but appear improb­ able and capricious. But it may be reasonably imagined, that what is so much in the power of men as language, will very often be capriciously conducted. Nor are these disquisitions and conjectures to be considered altogether as wanton sports of wit, or vain shews of learning; our language is well known not to be primitive or self-­ originated, but to have adopted words of every generation, and either for the supply of its necessities, or the encrease of its copiousness, to have received additions from very distant regions; so that in search of the progenitors of our speech, we may wan­ der from the tropic to the frozen zone, and find some in the vallies of Palestine and some upon the rocks of Norway. Beside the derivation of particular words, there is likewise an etymology of phrases. Expressions are often taken from other languages, some apparently, as to run a risque, courir un risque; and some even when we do not seem to borrow their words; thus, to bring about or accomplish, appears an English phrase, but in reality our native word about has no such import, and it is only a French expression, of which we have an example in the common phrase, venir à bout d’une affaire. In exhibiting the descent of our language, our etymologists seem to have been too lavish of their learning, having traced almost every word through various tongues, only to shew what was shewn sufficiently by the first derivation. This prac­ tice is of great use in synoptical lexicons,41 where mutilated and doubtful languages are explained by their affinity to others more certain and extensive, but is generally superfluous in English etymologies. When the word is easily deduced from a Saxon 39. Mario Giovanni Crescimbeni (1663–1728), author of L’istoria della volgar poesia (1698). These spe­ cific rules are unlocated. 40. In Dictionary, words are not classified in this way. 41. “Synoptical lexicons” include Meric Casaubon, De Quatuor Linguis commentationis (1650), and John Minsheu, The Guide into Tongues (1617), which in later editions represented synonyms across eleven lan­ guages.



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original, I shall not often enquire further, since we know not the parent of the Saxon dialect, but when it is borrowed from the French, I shall shew whence the French is apparently derived. Where a Saxon root cannot be found, the defect may be sup­ plied from kindred languages, which will be generally furnished with much liber­ ality by the writers of our glossaries; writers who deserve often the highest praise, both of judgment and industry, and may expect at least to be mentioned with hon­ our by me, whom they have freed from the greatest part of a very laborious work, and on whom they have imposed, at worst, only the easy task of rejecting super­ fluities. By tracing in this manner every word to its original, and not admitting, but with great caution, any of which no original can be found, we shall secure our lan­ guage from being over-­run with cant,42 from being crouded with low terms, the spawn of folly or affectation, which arise from no just principles of speech, and of which therefore no legitimate derivation can be shewn. When the etymology is thus adjusted, the Analogy43 of our language is next to be considered; when we have discovered whence our words are derived, we are to examine by what rules they are governed, and how they are inflected through their various terminations. The terminations of the English are few, but those few have hitherto remained unregarded by the writers of our dictionaries. Our substantives are declined only by the plural termination, our adjectives admit no variation but in the degrees of comparison, and our verbs are conjugated by auxiliary words, and are only changed in the preter tense.44 To our language may be with great justness applied the observation of Quintilian, that speech was not formed by an analogy sent from heaven.45 It did not de­ scend to us in a state of uniformity and perfection, but was produced by necessity and enlarged by accident, and is therefore composed of dissimilar parts, thrown together by negligence, by affectation, by learning, or by ignorance. Our inflections therefore are by no means constant, but admit of numberless irregularities, which in this dictionary will be diligently noted. Thus fox makes in the plural foxes, but ox makes oxen. Sheep is the same in both numbers. Adjectives are sometimes compared by changing the last syllable, as proud, prouder, proudest; and sometimes by particles prefixed, as ambitious, more ambitious, most ambitious. The forms of our verbs are subject to great variety; some end their preter tense in ed, as I love, I loved, I have loved, which may be called the regular form, and is followed by 42. “A particular form of speaking peculiar to some certain class or body of men” (Dictionary). 43. “Conformity of words or language to a regular or consistent pattern; (hence) a set of rules describing the behaviour of language, or intended to govern its use” (OED, sense ii6a). 44. Preterite, or past tense. 45. Quintillian, Roman rhetorician (fl. 68 CE), Institutio Oratoria, i.6.16–17, which concludes, “there is no law of speech but observation . . . nothing but custom makes what we call analogy.”

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most of our verbs of southern original.46 But many depart from this rule, without agreeing in any other, as I shake, I shook, I have shaken, or shook as it is sometimes written in poetry; I make, I made, I have made; I bring, I brought; I wring, I wrung, and many others, which, as they cannot be reduced to rules, must be learned from the dictionary rather than the grammar. The verbs are likewise to be distinguished according to their qualities, as actives from neuters;47 the neglect of which has already introduced some barbarities in our conversation, which, if not obviated by just animadversions,48 may in time creep into our writings. Thus, my Lord, will our language be laid down, distinct in its minutest sub­ divisions, and resolved into its elemental principles. And who upon this survey can forbear to wish, that these fundamental atoms of our speech might obtain the firm­ ness and immutability of the primogenial and constituent particles of matter, that they might retain their substance while they alter their appearance, and be varied and compounded, yet not destroyed. But this is a privilege which words are scarcely to expect; for, like their au­ thor, when they are not gaining strength, they are generally losing it. Though art may sometimes prolong their duration, it will rarely give them perpetuity, and their changes will be almost always informing us, that language is the work of man, of a being from whom permanence and stability cannot be derived. Words having been hitherto considered as separate and unconnected, are now to be likewise examined as they are ranged in their various relations to others by the rules of Syntax or construction, to which I do not know that any regard has been yet shewn in English dictionaries, and in which the grammarians can give little assis­ tance. The syntax of this language is too inconstant to be reduced to rules, and can be only learned by the distinct consideration of particular words as they are used by the best authors. Thus, we say, according to the present modes of speech, the soldier died of his wounds, and the sailor perished with hunger; and every man ac­ quainted with our language would be offended by a change of these particles, which yet seem originally assigned by chance, there being no reason to be drawn from grammar why a man may not, with equal propriety, be said to dye with a wound or perish of hunger. Our syntax therefore is not to be taught by general rules, but by special prece­ dents; and in examining whether Addison has been with justice accused of a sole­ cism in this passage, 46. Latin, French, or Italian. 47. Dictionary provides separate entries for active (i.e., transitive) and neuter (intransitive) forms of verbs. 48. Critical remarks.



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The poor inhabitant - - - -­ Starves in the midst of nature’s bounty curst, And in the loaden vineyard dies for thirst.49

it is not in our power to have recourse to any established laws of speech, but we must remark how the writers of former ages have used the same word, and consider whether he can be acquitted of impropriety, upon the testimony of Davies, given in his favour by a similar passage. She loaths the watry glass wherein she gaz’d, And shuns it still, although for thirst she dye.50

When the construction of a word is explained, it is necessary to pursue it through its train of Phraseology, through those forms where it is used in a man­ ner peculiar to our language, or in senses not to be comprised in the general expla­ nations; as from the verb make, arise these phrases, to make love, to make an end, to make way, as he made way for his followers, the ship made way before the wind; to make a bed, to make merry, to make a mock, to make presents, to make a doubt, to make out an assertion, to make good a breach, to make good a cause, to make nothing of an attempt, to make lamentation, to make a merit, and many others which will occur in reading with that view, and which only their frequency hinders from being generally remarked. The great labour is yet to come, the labour of interpreting these words and phrases with brevity, fulness and perspicuity; a task of which the extent and intri­ cacy is sufficiently shewn by the miscarriage of those who have generally attempted it. This difficulty is encreased by the necessity of explaining the words in the same language, for there is often only one word for one idea; and though it be easy to translate the words bright, sweet, salt, bitter, into another language, it is not easy to explain them. With regard to the Interpretation many other questions have required con­ sideration. It was some time doubted whether it be necessary to explain the things implied by particular words. As under the term baronet, whether instead of this ex­ planation, a title of honour next in degree to that of baron, it would be better to men­ tion more particularly the creation, privileges and rank of baronets; and whether under the word barometer, instead of being satisfied with observing that it is an instrument to discover the weight of the air, it would be fit to spend a few lines upon its 49. “A Letter from Italy, to the right Honourable Charles Lord Halifax in the year 1701,” ll. 113 and 117–18. 50. Sir John Davies, Nosce Teipsum, ll. 119–20. This passage and the former are quoted in Dictionary under “to die,” sense 5.

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invention, construction and principles. It is not to be expected that with the expla­ nation of the one the herald51 should be satisfied, or the philosopher with that of the other; but since it will be required by common readers, that the explications should be sufficient for common use, and since without some attention to such demands the dictionary cannot become generally valuable, I have determined to consult the best writers for explanations real as well as verbal, and perhaps I may at last have reason to say, after one of the augmenters of Furetier, that my book is more learned than its author.52 In explaining the general and popular language, it seems necessary to sort the several senses of each word, and to exhibit first its natural and primitive significa­ tion, as To arrive, to reach the shore in a voyage. He arrived at a safe harbour.53

Then to give its consequential meaning, to arrive, to reach any place whether by land or sea; as, he arrived at his country seat. Then its metaphorical sense, to obtain any thing desired; as, he arrived at a peerage. Then to mention any observation that arises from the comparison of one mean­ ing with another; as, it may be remarked of the word arrive, that in consequence of its original and etymological sense, it cannot be properly applied but to words signi­ fying something desirable; thus, we say a man arrived at happiness, but cannot say without a mixture of irony, he arrived at misery. Ground, the earth, generally as opposed to the air or water. He swam till he reached ground. The bird fell to the ground. Then follows the accidental or consequential signification, in which ground implies any thing that lies under another; as, he laid colours upon a rough ground. The silk had blue flowers on a red ground. Then the remoter or metaphorical signification; as, the ground of his opinion was a false computation. The ground of his work was his father’s manuscript. After having gone through the natural and figurative senses, it will be proper to subjoin the poetical sense of each word, where it differs from that which is in com­ mon use; as, wanton applied to any thing of which the motion is irregular without terror, as

51. “An officer whose business it is to register genealogies, adjust ensigns armorial” (Dictionary, sense 1). 52. Henri Basnage de Bauval (1656–1710) in his preface to the second (1701) edition of the Dictionnaire universal (1690) of Antoine Furetière (1619–1688). 53. “To come to any place by water” (Dictionary, sense 1); SJ is mindful of the derivation from ripa (Latin, shore), and this was the prevalent sense until 1550 (OED).



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In wanton ringlets curl’d her hair.54

To the poetical sense may succeed the familiar; as of toast, used to imply the person whose health is drunk. The wise man’s passion, and the vain man’s toast. Pope.55

The familiar may be followed by the burlesque; as of mellow, applied to good fellowship. In all thy humours whether grave, or mellow. Addison.56

Or of bite used for cheat.    — More a dupe than wit, Sappho can tell you, how this man was bit. Pope.57

And lastly, may be produced the peculiar sense, in which a word is found in any great author. As faculties in Shakespeare signifies the powers of authority.    —— This Duncan Has born his faculties so meek, has been So clear in his great office, that &c.58

The signification of adjectives, may be often ascertained by uniting them to substantives, as simple swain, simple sheep; sometimes the sense of a substantive may be elucidated by the epithets annexed to it in good authors, as the boundless ocean, the open lawns,59 and where such advantage can be gained by a short quotation it is not to be omitted. The difference of signification in words generally accounted synonimous, ought to be carefully observed; as in pride, haughtiness, arrogance;60 and the strict and

54. “Her unadorned golden tresses wore / Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets waved” (Paradise Lost, iv.305–6). 55. The Rape of the Lock, v.10. 56. “Drunk; melted down with drink” (Dictionary, sense 4) illustrated by this line from Addison, Spectator 68, par. 3. 57. Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, ll. 368–69. 58. Macbeth, i.vii.16–18. 59. Rarely done in Dictionary. 60. Very occasionally executed in Dictionary.

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critical meaning ought to be distinguished from that which is loose and popular;61 as in the word perfection, which though in its philosophical and exact sense, it can be of little use among human beings, is often so much degraded from its original signification, that the academicians have inserted in their work the perfection of a language, and with a little more licentiousness might have prevailed on themselves to have added the perfection of a dictionary. There are many other characters of words which it will be of use to mention.62 Some have both an active and passive signification, as fearful, that which gives or which feels terror, a fearful prodigy, a fearful hare. Some have a personal, some a real meaning, as in opposition to old we use the adjective young of animated beings, and new of other things. Some are restrained to the sense of praise, and others to that of disapprobation, so commonly, though not always, we exhort to good actions, we instigate to ill; we animate, incite and encourage indifferently to good or bad. So we usually ascribe good, but impute evil; yet neither the use of these words, nor perhaps of any other in our licentious language, is so established as not to be often reversed by the correctest writers. I shall therefore, since the rules of stile, like those of law, arise from precedents often repeated, collect the testimonies on both sides, and endeavour to discover and promulgate the decrees of custom, who has so long possessed, whether by right or by usurpation, the sovereignty of words. It is necessary likewise to explain many words by their opposition to others; for contraries are best seen when they stand together. Thus the verb stand has one sense as opposed to fall, and another as opposed to fly; for want of attending to which dis­ tinction, obvious as it is, the learned Dr. Bentley has squandered his criticism to no purpose, on these lines of Paradise Lost.       — In heaps Chariot and charioteer lay over-­turn’d, And fiery foaming steeds. What stood, recoil’d, O’erwearied, through the faint Satanic host, Defensive scarce, or with pale fear surpris’d Fled ignominious —

“Here,” says the critic, “as the sentence is now read, we find that what stood, fled,” and therefore he proposes an alteration, which he might have spared if he had consulted a dictionary, and found that nothing more was affirmed than that those fled who did not fall.63 61. Occasionally executed in Dictionary but not with respect to perfection. 62. SJ mentions such “characters” sometimes in Dictionary. 63. Paradise Lost, ed. Richard Bentley (1732), p. 196. Bentley emends Paradise Lost, vi.391–92: “And fiery foaming steeds. Yet somewhile stood / The faint Satanic Host; o’erwearied stood.”



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In explaining such meanings as seem accidental and adventitious, I shall en­ deavour to give an account of the means by which they were introduced. Thus to eke out any thing, signifies to lengthen it beyond its just dimensions by some low artifice, because the word eke was the usual refuge of our old writers when they wanted a syl­ lable.64 And buxom, which means only obedient, is now made, in familiar phrases, to stand for wanton, because in an antient form of marriage, before the reformation, the bride promised complaisance and obedience in these terms, “I will be bonair and buxom in bed and at board.”65 I know well, my Lord, how trifling many of these remarks will appear separately considered, and how easily they may give occasion to the contemptuous merriment of sportive idleness, and the gloomy censures of arrogant stupidity; but dulness it is easy to despise, and laughter it is easy to repay. I shall not be solicitous what is thought of my work by such as know not the difficulty or importance of philologi­ cal studies, nor shall think those that have done nothing qualified to condemn me for doing little. It may not, however, be improper to remind them, that no terrestrial greatness is more than an aggregate of little things, and to inculcate after the Arabian proverb, that drops added to drops constitute the ocean. There remains yet to be considered the Distribution of words into their proper classes, or that part of lexicography which is strictly critical. The popular part of the language, which includes all words not appropriated to particular sciences, admits of many distinctions and subdivisions; as, into words of general use; words employed chiefly in poetry; words obsolete; words which are ad­ mitted only by particular writers, yet not in themselves improper; words used only in burlesque writing; and words impure and barbarous. Words of general use will be known by having no sign of particularity, and their various senses will be supported by authorities of all ages. The words appropriated to poetry will be distinguished by some mark pre­ fixed, or will be known by having no authorities but those of poets.66 Of antiquated or obsolete words, none will be inserted but such as are to be found in authors who wrote since the accession of Elizabeth, from which we date the golden age of our language; and of these many might be omitted, but that the reader may require, with an appearance of reason, that no difficulty should be left unresolved in books which he finds himself invited to read, as confessed and estab­ lished models of stile. These will be likewise pointed out by some note of exclusion, but not of disgrace. The words which are found only in particular books, will be known by the 64. “Also, too, moreover” (OED, where it is tagged archaic). 65. The phrase is present in the marriage ceremony as late as the Sarum Manual (1554). 66. SJ did not use marks of this kind in his Dictionary.

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single name of him that has used them; but such will be omitted, unless either their propriety, elegance, or force, or the reputation of their authors affords some extraor­ dinary reason for their reception. Words used in burlesque and familiar compositions, will be likewise men­ tioned with their proper authorities, such as dudgeon from Butler, and leasing from Prior, and will be diligently characterised by marks of distinction. Barbarous or impure words and expressions, may be branded with some note of infamy, as they are carefully to be eradicated wherever they are found; and they occur too frequently even in the best writers. As in Pope,    —— in endless errour hurl’d. ’Tis these that early taint the female soul.67

In Addison, Attend to what a lesser muse indites.68

And in Dryden, A dreadful quiet felt, and worser far Than arms ——69

If this part of the work can be well performed, it will be equivalent to the pro­ posal made by Boileau to the academicians, that they should review all their polite writers, and correct such impurities as might be found in them, that their authority might not contribute, at any distant time, to the depravation of the language.70 With regard to questions of purity, or propriety, I was once in doubt whether I should not attribute too much to myself in attempting to decide them, and whether my province was to extend beyond the proposition of the question, and the display of the suffrages on each side; but I have been since determined by your Lordship’s opinion, to interpose my own judgment, and shall therefore endeavour to support what appears to me most consonant to grammar and reason. Ausonius thought that modesty forbad him to plead inability for a task to which Cæsar had judged him equal. 67. Essay on Man, ii.17, and Rape of the Lock, i.87. 68. “To the Right Honourable Sir John Somers,” l. 19; SJ defines lesser as “A barbarous corruption of less.” 69. Astraea Redux, ll. 3–4; SJ calls worser “a barbarous word formed by corrupting worse with the usual comparative termination.” 70. Boileau, as recorded by Thoulier d’Olivet in his Histoire de l’Académie, 2 vols. (2d ed., 1730), ii.121–22.



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Cur me posse negem posse quod ille putat?71

And I may hope, my Lord, that since you, whose authority in our language is so generally acknowledged, have commissioned me to declare my own opinion, I shall be considered as exercising a kind of vicarious jurisdiction, and that the power which might have been denied to my own claim, will be readily allowed me as the delegate of your Lordship. In citing authorities, on which the credit of every part of this work must de­ pend, it will be proper to observe some obvious rules, such as of preferring writers of the first reputation to those of an inferior rank, of noting the quotations with accu­ racy, and of selecting, when it can be conveniently done, such sentences, as, besides their immediate use, may give pleasure or instruction by conveying some elegance of language, or some precept of prudence, or piety.72 It has been asked, on some occasions, who shall judge the judges?73 And since with regard to this design, a question may arise by what authority the authorities are selected, it is necessary to obviate it, by declaring that many of the writers whose testimonies will be alleged, were selected by Mr. Pope, of whom I may be justified in affirming, that were he still alive, solicitous as he was for the success of this work, he would not be displeased that I have undertaken it.74 It will be proper that the quotations be ranged according to the ages of their au­ thors, and it will afford an agreeable amusement, if to the words and phrases which are not of our own growth, the name of the writer who first introduced them can be affixed, and if, to words which are now antiquated, the authority be subjoined of him who last admitted them. Thus for scathe and buxom, now obsolete, Milton may be cited.    —— The mountain oak Stands scath’d to heaven ——    —— He with broad sails Winnow’d the buxom air ——75 71. Ausonius (late fourth century CE), Praefatiunculae, 3 (to Emperor Augustus Theodosius I): “Why should I deny what Caesar thinks I can do?” 72. Cf. SJ’s later comments (Preface, pp. 410–17 below) on the “pleasures or instruction” afforded by the Dictionary’s illustrative passages. 73. Cf. Plato, Republic, 403e, perhaps the source of the Latin proverb Quis custodiet custodes. 74. According to Joseph Spence, Pope selected in 1744 a list of prose writers and began a list of poets to be used as authorities in an English dictionary (see Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, ed. James M. Osborn, 2 vols. [1966], i.170–71, 374–75). Of Pope’s twenty prose writers, SJ often quoted fifteen, and of his nine poets, eight. 75. Paraphrases or incorrect memories of Paradise Lost, i.612–13 and v.269–70.

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By this method every word will have its history, and the reader will be in­ formed of the gradual changes of the language, and have before his eyes the rise of some words, and the fall of others. But observations so minute and accurate are to be desired rather than expected, and if use be carefully supplied, curiosity must some­ times bear its disappointments. This, my Lord, is my idea of an English dictionary, a dictionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed, and its attainment facilitated; by which its purity may be preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened. And though, perhaps, to correct the language of nations by books of grammar, and amend their manners by discourses of morality, may be tasks equally difficult; yet as it is unavoidable to wish, it is natural likewise to hope, that your Lordship’s pa­ tronage may not be wholly lost; that it may contribute to the preservation of antient, and the improvement of modern writers; that it may promote the reformation of those translators, who for want of understanding the characteristical difference of tongues, have formed a chaotic dialect of heterogeneous phrases; and awaken to the care of purer diction, some men of genius, whose attention to argument makes them negligent of stile, or whose rapid imagination, like the Peruvian torrents, when it brings down gold, mingles it with sand. When I survey the plan which I have laid before you, I cannot, my Lord, but confess, that I am frighted at its extent, and, like the soldiers of Cæsar, look on Brit­ ain as a new world, which it is almost madness to invade.76 But I hope, that though I should not complete the conquest, I shall at least discover the coast, civilize part of the inhabitants, and make it easy for some other adventurer to proceed farther, to reduce them wholly to subjection, and settle them under laws. We are taught by the great Roman orator, that every man should propose to himself the highest degree of excellence, but that he may stop with honour at the second or the third:77 though therefore my performance should fall below the excel­ lence of other dictionaries, I may obtain, at least, the praise of having endeavoured well, nor shall I think it any reproach to my diligence, that I have retired without a triumph from a contest with united academies and long successions of learned com­ pilers. I cannot hope in the warmest moments, to preserve so much caution through so long a work, as not often to sink into negligence, or to obtain so much knowledge of all its parts, as not frequently to fail by ignorance. I expect that sometimes the desire of accuracy, will urge me to superfluities, and sometimes the fear of prolixity betray me to omissions; that in the extent of such variety I shall be often bewildred, and in the mazes of such intricacy, be frequently entangled; that in one part refine­ 76. The forces of Emperor Claudius invaded Britain in 43 CE. Their fear is recorded by Dio Cassius in his history of Rome (60.19.2–4). 77. Cicero, Orator, i.3–4.



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ment will be subtilised beyond exactness, and evidence dilated in another beyond perspicuity. Yet I do not despair of approbation from those who knowing the uncer­ tainty of conjecture, the scantiness of knowledge, the fallibility of memory, and the unsteadiness of attention, can compare the causes of error with the means of avoid­ ing it, and the extent of art with the capacity of man; and whatever be the event of my endeavours, I shall not easily regret an attempt which has procured me the honour of appearing thus publickly, My Lord, Your Lordship’s Most Obedient, and Most Humble Servant, sam. johnson.

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P R E FAC E TO A D I C T I O NA RY O F T H E E N G L I S H L A N G UAG E ( 17 5 5 ) It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life, to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to cen­ sure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success would have been without applause, and diligence without reward. Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries; whom mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science,1 the pioneer2 of litera­ ture, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths through which Learning and Genius press forward to conquest and glory, without bestow­ ing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress. Every other authour may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompence has been yet granted to very few. I have, notwithstanding this discouragement, attempted a dictionary of the English language, which, while it was employed in the cultivation of every species of literature, has itself been hitherto neglected; suffered to spread, under the direction of chance, into wild exuberance; resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion; and exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of innovation. When I took the first survey of my undertaking, I found our speech copious without order, and energetick without rules: wherever I turned my view, there was perplexity to be disentangled, and confusion to be regulated; choice was to be made out of boundless variety, without any established principle of selection; adulter­ ations were to be detected, without a settled test of purity; and modes of expression to be rejected or received, without the suffrages of any writers of classical reputation or acknowledged authority. Having therefore no assistance but from general grammar, I applied myself to the perusal of our writers; and noting whatever might be of use to ascertain or illus­ trate any word or phrase, accumulated in time the materials of a dictionary, which, by degrees, I reduced to method, establishing to myself, in the progress of the work, such rules as experience and analogy3 suggested to me; experience, which practice and observation were continually increasing; and analogy, which, though in some words obscure, was evident in others. In adjusting the Orthography, which has been to this time unsettled and 1. “Knowledge” (Dictionary, sense 1). 2. “One whose business is to level the road . . . or sink mines in military operations” (Dictionary). 3. Rules of derivation (see Plan, p. 386, n. 43, above).

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fortuitous, I found it necessary to distinguish those irregularities that are inher­ ent in our tongue, and perhaps coeval with it, from others which the ignorance or negligence of later writers has produced. Every language has its anomalies, which, though inconvenient, and in themselves once unnecessary, must be tolerated among the imperfections of human things, and which require only to be registered, that they may not be increased, and ascertained, that they may not be confounded: but every language has likewise its improprieties and absurdities, which it is the duty of the lexicographer to correct or proscribe. As language was at its beginning merely oral, all words of necessary or common use were spoken before they were written; and while they were unfixed by any visible signs, must have been spoken with great diversity, as we now observe those who can­ not read to catch sounds imperfectly, and utter them negligently.4 When this wild and barbarous jargon was first reduced to an alphabet, every penman endeavoured to express, as he could, the sounds which he was accustomed to pronounce or to receive, and vitiated in writing such words as were already vitiated in speech. The powers of the letters, when they were applied to a new language, must have been vague and unsettled, and therefore different hands would exhibit the same sound by different combinations. From this uncertain pronunciation arise in a great part the various dialects of the same country, which will always be observed to grow fewer, and less different, as books are multiplied; and from this arbitrary representation of sounds by letters, proceeds that diversity of spelling observable in the Saxon remains, and I suppose in the first books of every nation, which perplexes or destroys analogy, and produces anomalous formations, that, being once incorporated, can never be afterward dis­ missed or reformed. Of this kind are the derivatives length from long, strength from strong, darling from dear, breadth from broad, from dry, drought, and from high, height, which Milton, in zeal for analogy, writes highth;5 Quid te exempta juvat spinis de pluribus una;6 to change all would be too much, and to change one is nothing. This uncertainty is most frequent in the vowels, which are so capriciously pro­ nounced, and so differently modified, by accident or affectation, not only in every province, but in every mouth, that to them, as is well known to etymologists, little regard is to be shewn in the deduction of one language from another. Such defects are not errours in orthography, but spots of barbarity impressed so deep in the English language, that criticism can never wash them away; these, 4. “Merely oral” is a note of disapproval applied to some words in Dictionary. 5. See, e.g., Paradise Lost, i.24, 92. Under height (sense 1) in Dictionary, SJ “corrects” Milton’s ­spelling. 6. Horace, Epistles, ii.2.212: “What good does it do you to pluck out a single one of many thorns” (H. R. Fairclough, trans., Loeb edition [1926]).

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therefore, must be permitted to remain untouched: but many words have been altered by accident, or depraved by ignorance, as the pronunciation of the vulgar7 has been weakly followed; and some still continue to be variously written, as au­ thours differ in their care or skill: of these it was proper to enquire the true orthog­ raphy, which I have always considered as depending on their derivation, and have therefore referred them to their original languages: thus I write enchant, enchantment, enchanter, after the French, and incantation after the Latin; thus entire is chosen rather than intire, because it passed to us not from the Latin integer, but from the French entier. Of many words it is difficult to say whether they were immediately received from the Latin or the French, since at the time when we had dominions in France, we had Latin service in our churches. It is, however, my opinion, that the French generally supplied us; for we have few Latin words, among the terms of domestick use, which are not French; but many French, which are very remote from Latin. Even in words of which the derivation is apparent, I have been often obliged to sacrifice uniformity to custom; thus I write, in compliance with a numberless majority, convey and inveigh, deceit and receipt, fancy and phantom; sometimes the derivative varies from the primitive, as explain and explanation, repeat and repetition. Some combinations of letters having the same power are used indifferently without any discoverable reason of choice, as in choak, choke; soap, sope; fewel, fuel, and many others; which I have sometimes inserted twice, that those who search for them under either form, may not search in vain. In examining the orthography of any doubtful word, the mode of spelling by which it is inserted in the series of the dictionary, is to be considered as that to which I give, perhaps not often rashly, the preference. I have left, in the examples, to every authour his own practice unmolested, that the reader may balance suffrages, and judge between us: but this question is not always to be determined by reputed or by real learning; some men, intent upon greater things, have thought little on sounds and derivations; some, knowing in the ancient tongues, have neglected those in which our words are commonly to be sought. Thus Hammond8 writes fecibleness for feasibleness, because I suppose he imagined it derived immediately from the Latin; and some words, such as dependant, dependent; dependance, dependence, vary their final syllable, as one or another language is present to the writer. In this part of the work, where caprice has long wantoned without controul, and vanity sought praise by petty reformation, I have endeavoured to proceed with 7. The common people. 8. Henry Hammond (1605–1660), chaplain to Charles I; SJ quoted his Works (1684) often, but neither fecibleness nor feasibleness appears in Dictionary.



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a scholar’s reverence for antiquity, and a grammarian’s regard to the genius9 of our tongue. I have attempted few alterations, and among those few, perhaps the greater part is from the modern to the ancient practice; and I hope I may be allowed to rec­ ommend to those, whose thoughts have been, perhaps, employed too anxiously on verbal singularities, not to disturb, upon narrow views, or for minute propriety, the orthography of their fathers. It has been asserted, that for the law to be known, is of more importance than to be right. Change, says Hooker, is not made without in­ convenience, even from worse to better.10 There is in constancy and stability a gen­ eral and lasting advantage, which will always overbalance the slow improvements of gradual correction. Much less ought our written language to comply with the corruptions of oral utterance,11 or copy that which every variation of time or place makes different from itself, and imitate those changes, which will again be changed, while imitation is employed in observing them. This recommendation of steadiness and uniformity does not proceed from an opinion, that particular combinations of letters have much influence on human hap­ piness; or that truth may not be successfully taught by modes of spelling fanciful and erroneous: I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.12 Language is only the in­ strument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote. In settling the orthography, I have not wholly neglected the pronunciation, which I have directed, by printing an accent upon the acute or elevated syllable. It will sometimes be found, that the accent is placed by the authour quoted, on a differ­ ent syllable from that marked in the alphabetical series; it is then to be understood, that custom has varied, or that the authour has, in my opinion, pronounced wrong. Short directions are sometimes given where the sound of letters is irregular; and if they are sometimes omitted, defect in such minute observations will be more easily excused, than superfluity. In the investigation both of the orthography and signification of words, their etymology was necessarily to be considered, and they were therefore to be divided into primitives and derivatives. A primitive word, is that which can be traced no further to any English root; thus circumspect, circumvent, circumstance, delude, con9. “Nature; disposition” (Dictionary, sense 5). 10. Richard Hooker (1554–1600); c.f. Plan, p. 383 above. 11. See Plan, p. 383 above. 12. This is probably not a direct quotation. The idea occurs in Quintilian (see Plan, p. 386, n. 45, above), and there is a close verbal parallel in Samuel Madden, Boulter’s Monument (1745), l. 377 (Notes & Queries, 183 [1942], 27).

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cave, and complicate, though compounds in the Latin, are to us primitives. Deriva­ tives, are all those that can be referred to any word in English of greater simplicity. The derivatives I have referred to their primitives, with an accuracy sometimes needless; for who does not see that remoteness comes from remote, lovely from love, concavity from concave, and demonstrative from demonstrate? but this grammatical exuberance the scheme of my work did not allow me to repress. It is of great im­ portance, in examining the general fabrick of a language, to trace one word from an­ other, by noting the usual modes of derivation and inflection; and uniformity must be preserved in systematical works, though sometimes at the expence of particular propriety. Among other derivatives I have been careful to insert and elucidate the anoma­ lous plurals of nouns and preterites of verbs, which in the Teutonick dialects are very frequent, and, though familiar to those who have always used them, interrupt and embarrass the learners of our language. The two languages from which our primitives have been derived are the Roman and Teutonick: under the Roman I comprehend the French and provincial tongues;13 and under the Teutonick range the Saxon, German,14 and all their kindred dialects. Most of our polysyllables are Roman, and our words of one syllable are very often Teutonick. In assigning the Roman original, it has perhaps sometimes happened that I have mentioned only the Latin, when the word was borrowed from the French; and considering myself as employed only in the illustration of my own language, I have not been very careful to observe whether the Latin word be pure or barbarous, or the French elegant or obsolete. For the Teutonick etymologies I am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner, the only names which I have forborn to quote when I copied their books;15 not that I might appropriate their labours or usurp their honours, but that I might spare a perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructors and benefactors, Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning, and Skinner in rectitude of understanding. Junius was accurately skilled in all the northern languages, Skinner probably exam­ ined the ancient and remoter dialects only by occasional inspection into dictionaries; but the learning of Junius is often of no other use than to show him a track by which he may deviate from his purpose, to which Skinner always presses forward by the 13. “Provincial tongues” means those used in Roman provinces: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, etc. 14. “German” often means High Dutch in Dictionary and “Dutch” Low Dutch, but the modern distinc­ tion was coming into focus at this time; see Yale, xviii.279, n. 4. 15. Stephen Skinner (1623–1667), Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae (1671), and Franciscus Junius (1591– 1677), Etymologicum Anglicanum (1743).



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shortest way. Skinner is often ignorant, but never ridiculous: Junius is always full of knowledge; but his variety distracts his judgment, and his learning is very frequently disgraced by his absurdities. The votaries of the northern muses will not perhaps easily restrain their in­ dignation, when they find the name of Junius thus degraded by a disadvantageous comparison; but whatever reverence is due to his diligence, or his attainments, it can be no criminal degree of censoriousness to charge that etymologist with want of judgment, who can seriously derive dream from drama, because life is a drama, and a drama is a dream; and who declares with a tone of defiance, that no man can fail to derive moan from μόνος, monos, single or solitary, who considers that grief naturally loves to be alone.16 Our knowledge of the northern literature is so scanty, that of words undoubt­ edly Teutonick the original is not always to be found in any ancient language; and I have therefore inserted Dutch or German substitutes, which I consider not as radical but parallel, not as the parents, but sisters of the English. The words which are represented as thus related by descent or cognation, do not always agree in sense; for it is incident to words, as to their authours, to degen­ erate from their ancestors, and to change their manners when they change their country. It is sufficient, in etymological enquiries, if the senses of kindred words be found such as may easily pass into each other, or such as may both be referred to one general idea. The etymology, so far as it is yet known, was easily found in the volumes where it is particularly and professedly delivered; and, by proper attention to the rules of derivation, the orthography was soon adjusted. But to collect the words of our language was a task of greater difficulty: the deficiency of dictionaries was im­ mediately apparent; and when they were exhausted, what was yet wanting must be sought by fortuitous and unguided excursions into books, and gleaned as industry should find, or chance should offer it, in the boundless chaos of a living speech. My search, however, has been either skilful or lucky; for I have much augmented the ­vocabulary.17 As my design was a dictionary, common or appellative,18 I have omitted all words which have relation to proper names; such as Arian, Socinian, Calvinist, Benedictine, Mahometan; but have retained those of a more general nature, as Heathen, Pagan. Of the terms of art I have received such as could be found either in books of science or technical dictionaries; and have often inserted, from philosophical 16. In a lengthy footnote, omitted here, SJ provides several examples of Junius’s “etymological extrava­ gance” (see Yale, xviii.82–83). 17. SJ’s word list is smaller than Nathan Bailey’s in Dictionarium Britannicum (1730, 1736), but he in­ cluded fewer proper names and specialized terms than Bailey. 18. “Common or appellative”: concerned with common nouns.

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writers,19 words which are supported perhaps only by a single authority, and which being not admitted into general use, stand yet as candidates or probationers, and must depend for their adoption on the suffrage of futurity. The words which our authours have introduced by their knowledge of foreign languages, or ignorance of their own, by vanity or wantonness, by compliance with fashion, or lust of innovation, I have registred as they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others against the folly of naturalizing useless for­ eigners to the injury of the natives. I have not rejected any by design, merely because they were unnecessary or exuberant; but have received those which by different writers have been differently formed, as viscid, and viscidity, viscous, and viscosity. Compounded or double words I have seldom noted, except when they ob­ tain a signification different from that which the components have in their simple state. Thus highwayman, woodman, and horsecourser,20 require an explication; but of thieflike or coachdriver no notice was needed, because the primitives contain the meaning of the compounds. Words arbitrarily formed by a constant and settled analogy, like diminutive ad­ jectives in ish, as greenish, bluish, adverbs in ly, as dully, openly, substantives in ness, as vileness, faultiness, were less diligently sought, and sometimes have been omitted, when I had no authority that invited me to insert them; not that they are not genuine and regular offsprings of English roots, but because their relation to the primitive being always the same, their signification cannot be mistaken. The verbal nouns in ing, such as the keeping of the castle, the leading of the army, are always neglected, or placed only to illustrate the sense of the verb, except when they signify things as well as actions, and have therefore a plural number, as dwelling, living; or have an absolute and abstract signification, as colouring, painting, learning. The participles are likewise omitted, unless, by signifying rather habit or quality than action, they take the nature of adjectives; as a thinking man, a man of prudence; a pacing horse, a horse that can pace: these I have ventured to call participial adjectives. But neither are these always inserted, because they are commonly to be understood, without any danger of mistake, by consulting the verb. Obsolete words are admitted, when they are found in authours not obsolete, or when they have any force or beauty that may deserve revival.21 19. In Dictionary, philosopher is defined as “A man deep in knowledge, either moral or natural”; sense 1 of natural is “Produced or effected by nature; not artificial.” A “philosophical writer” is therefore either a moral­ ist or a scientist, or both at the same time. 20. “One that runs horses, or keeps horses for the race” or “A dealer in horses” (Dictionary, senses 1, 2). 21. This sentence paraphrases part of the epigraph of the Dictionary taken from Horace, Epistles, ii.ii.115–16.



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As composition is one of the chief characteristicks of a language, I have endeav­ oured to make some reparation for the universal negligence of my predecessors, by inserting great numbers of compounded words, as may be found under after, fore, new, night, far, and many more. These, numerous as they are, might be multiplied, but that use and curiosity are here satisfied, and the frame of our language and modes of our combination are amply discovered. Of some forms of composition, such as that by which re is prefixed to note repetition, and un to signify contrariety or privation, all the examples cannot be accumulated, because the use of these particles, if not wholly arbitrary, is so little limited, that they are hourly united to new words as occasion requires, or is imag­ ined to require them. There is another kind of composition more frequent in our language than per­ haps in any other, from which arises to foreigners the greatest difficulty. We modify the signification of many verbs by a particle subjoined; as to come off, to escape by a fetch; to fall on, to attack; to fall off, to apostatize; to break off, to stop abruptly; to bear out, to justify; to fall in, to comply; to give over, to cease; to set off, to embellish; to set in, to begin a continual tenour; to set out, to begin a course or journey; to take off, to copy; with innumerable expressions of the same kind, of which some appear wildly irregular, being so far distant from the sense of the simple words, that no sa­ gacity will be able to trace the steps by which they arrived at the present use. These I have noted with great care; and though I cannot flatter myself that the collection is complete, I have perhaps so far assisted the students of our language, that this kind of phraseology will be no longer insuperable; and the combinations of verbs and particles, by chance omitted, will be easily explained by comparison with those that may be found. Many words yet stand supported only by the name of Bailey, Ainsworth, Philips,22 or the contracted Dict. for Dictionaries subjoined: of these I am not always certain that they are seen in any book but the works of lexicographers. Of such I have omitted many, because I had never read them; and many I have in­ serted, because they may perhaps exist, though they have escaped my notice: they are, however, to be yet considered as resting only upon the credit of former dictio­ naries. Others, which I considered as useful, or know to be proper, though I could not at present support them by authorities, I have suffered to stand upon my own attestation, claiming the same privilege with my predecessors of being sometimes credited without proof. The words, thus selected and disposed, are grammatically considered: they are referred to the different parts of speech; traced, when they are irregularly inflected, 22. Robert Ainsworth, Thesaurus Linguae Latinae Compendiarius (1736); Edward Phillips, The New World of English Words (1658); for Bailey, see n. 17 above.

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through their various terminations; and illustrated by observations, not indeed of great or striking importance, separately considered, but necessary to the elucida­ tion of our language, and hitherto neglected or forgotten by English grammarians. That part of my work on which I expect malignity most frequently to fasten, is the Explanation; in which I cannot hope to satisfy those, who are perhaps not inclined to be pleased, since I have not always been able to satisfy myself. To inter­ pret a language by itself is very difficult; many words cannot be explained by synoni­ mes, because the idea signified by them has not more than one appellation; nor by paraphrase, because simple ideas cannot be described. When the nature of things is unknown, or the notion unsettled and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words by which such notions are conveyed, or such things denoted, will be am­ biguous and perplexed. And such is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light, impedes and distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily illustrated. To explain, requires the use of terms less abstruse than that which is to be explained, and such terms cannot always be found; for as nothing can be proved but by supposing something intuitively known, and evident without proof, so nothing can be defined but by the use of words too plain to admit a definition. Other words there are, of which the sense is too subtle and evanescent to be fixed in a paraphrase; such are all those which are by the grammarians termed expletives, and, in dead languages, are suffered to pass for empty sounds, of no other use than to fill a verse, or to modulate a period,23 but which are easily perceived in living tongues to have power and emphasis, though it be sometimes such as no other form of expression can convey. My labour has likewise been much increased by a class of verbs too frequent in the English language, of which the signification is so loose and general, the use so vague and indeterminate, and the senses detorted so widely from the first idea, that it is hard to trace them through the maze of variation, to catch them on the brink of utter inanity, to circumscribe them by any limitations, or interpret them by any words of distinct and settled meaning: such are bear, break, come, cast, fall, get, give, do, put, set, go, run, make, take, turn, throw. If of these the whole power is not accu­ rately delivered, it must be remembered, that while our language is yet living, and variable by the caprice of every tongue that speaks it, these words are hourly shift­ ing their relations, and can no more be ascertained in a dictionary, than a grove, in the agitation of a storm, can be accurately delineated from its picture in the water. The particles24 are among all nations applied with so great latitude, that they 23. “To modulate a period”: “To set or regulate [a sentence] in a certain measure and proportion” (OED, sense 4a). 24. Short undeclinable words; in English, prepositions, conjunctions, articles.



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are not easily reducible under any regular scheme of explication: this difficulty is not less, nor perhaps greater, in English, than in other languages. I have laboured them with diligence, I hope with success; such at least as can be expected in a task, which no man, however learned or sagacious, has yet been able to perform. Some words there are which I cannot explain, because I do not understand them; these might have been omitted very often with little inconvenience, but I would not so far indulge my vanity as to decline this confession: for when Tully owns himself ignorant whether lessus, in the twelve tables, means a funeral song, or mourning garment;25 and Aristotle doubts whether οὔρευς, in the Iliad, signifies a mule, or muleteer,26 I may surely, without shame, leave some obscurities to happier industry, or future information. The rigour of interpretative lexicography requires that the explanation, and the word explained, should be always reciprocal; this I have always endeavoured, but could not always attain. Words are seldom exactly synonimous; a new term was not introduced, but because the former was thought inadequate: names, therefore, have often many ideas, but few ideas have many names. It was then necessary to use the proximate word, for the deficiency of single terms can very seldom be supplied by circumlocution; nor is the inconvenience great of such mutilated interpretations, be­ cause the sense may easily be collected entire from the examples. In every word of extensive use, it was requisite to mark the progress of its meaning, and show by what gradations of intermediate sense it has passed from its primitive to its remote and accidental signification; so that every foregoing expla­ nation should tend to that which follows, and the series be regularly concatenated from the first notion to the last. This is specious, but not always practicable; kindred senses may be so inter­ woven, that the perplexity cannot be disentangled, nor any reason be assigned why one should be ranged before the other. When the radical idea branches out into par­ allel ramifications, how can a consecutive series be formed of senses in their nature collateral? The shades of meaning sometimes pass imperceptibly into each other; so that though on one side they apparently differ, yet it is impossible to mark the point of contact. Ideas of the same race, though not exactly alike, are sometimes so little different, that no words can express the dissimilitude, though the mind easily per­ ceives it, when they are exhibited together; and sometimes there is such a confusion of acceptations, that discernment is wearied, and distinction puzzled, and perse­ verance herself hurries to an end, by crouding together what she cannot separate. 25. Cicero (Tully) expresses a preference for the interpretation lugubrem eiulationem, “dolorous wail­ ing” (Laws, ii.23.59). 26. Aristotle hesitates between “mules” and “sentinels” as a translation of οὔρευς in Iliad, i.50 (Poetics, 1461a, 9–11).

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These complaints of difficulty will, by those that have never considered words beyond their popular use, be thought only the jargon of a man willing to magnify his labours, and procure veneration to his studies by involution and obscurity. But every art is obscure to those that have not learned it: this uncertainty of terms, and commixture of ideas, is well known to those who have joined philosophy with gram­ mar; and if I have not expressed them very clearly, it must be remembered that I am speaking of that which words are insufficient to explain. The original sense of words is often driven out of use by their metaphorical ac­ ceptations, yet must be inserted for the sake of a regular origination. Thus I know not whether ardour is used for material heat, or whether flagrant, in English, ever sig­ nifies the same with burning; yet such are the primitive ideas of these words, which are therefore set first, though without examples, that the figurative senses may be commodiously deduced. Such is the exuberance of signification which many words have obtained, that it was scarcely possible to collect all their senses; sometimes the meaning of deriva­ tives must be sought in the mother term, and sometimes deficient explanations of the primitive may be supplied in the train of derivation. In any case of doubt or dif­ ficulty, it will be always proper to examine all the words of the same race; for some words are slightly passed over to avoid repetition, some admitted easier and clearer explanation than others, and all will be better understood, as they are considered in greater variety of structures and relations. All the interpretations of words are not written with the same skill, or the same happiness: things equally easy in themselves, are not all equally easy to any single mind. Every writer of a long work commits errours, where there appears neither ambiguity to mislead, nor obscurity to confound him; and in a search like this, many felicities of expression will be casually overlooked, many convenient parallels will be forgotten, and many particulars will admit improvement from a mind utterly un­ equal to the whole performance. But many seeming faults are to be imputed rather to the nature of the under­ taking, than the negligence of the performer. Thus some explanations are unavoid­ ably reciprocal or circular, as hind, the female of the stag; stag, the male of the hind: sometimes easier words are changed into harder, as burial into sepulture or interment, drier into desiccative, dryness into siccity or aridity, fit into paroxysm; for the easiest word, whatever it be, can never be translated into one more easy. But easi­ ness and difficulty are merely relative, and if the present prevalence of our language should invite foreigners to this dictionary,27 many will be assisted by those words which now seem only to increase or produce obscurity. For this reason I have en­ 27. In the first draft of the Plan, SJ had mentioned the possible “sale” of the Dictionary to “foreigners” (see Yale, xviii.394, 406).



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deavoured frequently to join a Teutonick and Roman interpretation, as to cheer, to gladden, or exhilarate, that every learner of English may be assisted by his own tongue. The solution of all difficulties, and the supply of all defects, must be sought in the examples, subjoined to the various senses of each word, and ranged according to the time of their authours. When first I collected these authorities, I was desirous that every quotation should be useful to some other end than the illustration of a word; I therefore ex­ tracted from philosophers principles of science; from historians remarkable facts; from chymists complete processes; from divines striking exhortations; and from poets beautiful descriptions. Such is design, while it is yet at a distance from exe­ cution. When the time called upon me to range this accumulation of elegance and wisdom into an alphabetical series, I soon discovered that the bulk of my volumes would fright away the student, and was forced to depart from my scheme of includ­ ing all that was pleasing or useful in English literature, and reduce my transcripts very often to clusters of words, in which scarcely any meaning is retained; thus to the weariness of copying, I was condemned to add the vexation of expunging. Some passages I have yet spared, which may relieve the labour of verbal searches, and intersperse with verdure and flowers the dusty desarts of barren philology. The examples, thus mutilated, are no longer to be considered as conveying the sentiments or doctrine of their authours; the word for the sake of which they are inserted, with all its appendant clauses, has been carefully preserved; but it may sometimes happen, by hasty detruncation, that the general tendency of the sentence may be changed: the divine may desert his tenets, or the philosopher his system.28 Some of the examples have been taken from writers who were never mentioned as masters of elegance or models of stile; but words must be sought where they are used; and in what pages, eminent for purity, can terms of manufacture or agriculture be found? Many quotations serve no other purpose, than that of proving the bare existence of words, and are therefore selected with less scrupulousness than those which are to teach their structures and relations. My purpose was to admit no testimony of living authours, that I might not be misled by partiality, and that none of my cotemporaries might have reason to com­ plain; nor have I departed from this resolution, but when some performance of un­ common excellence excited my veneration, when my memory supplied me, from late books, with an example that was wanting, or when my heart, in the tenderness of friendship, solicited admission for a favourite name.29 28. Although SJ frequently edited his illustrative quotations, he rarely changed their meaning. 29. Among the “favourite names” that gained admission in the first edition were David Garrick, Charlotte Lennox, Samuel Richardson, William Law, and Samuel Johnson himself.

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So far have I been from any care to grace my pages with modern decorations, that I have studiously endeavoured to collect examples and authorities from the writers before the restoration, whose works I regard as the wells of English undefiled,30 as the pure sources of genuine diction. Our language, for almost a century, has, by the concurrence of many causes, been gradually departing from its original Teutonick character, and deviating towards a Gallick structure and phraseology, from which it ought to be our endeavour to recal it, by making our ancient volumes the ground-­work of stile, admitting among the additions of later times, only such as may supply real deficiencies, such as are readily adopted by the genius of our tongue, and incorporate easily with our native idioms. But as every language has a time of rudeness antecedent to perfection, as well as of false refinement and declension, I have been cautious lest my zeal for antiquity might drive me into times too remote, and croud my book with words now no longer understood. I have fixed Sidney’s work for the boundary,31 beyond which I make few excursions. From the authours which rose in the time of Elizabeth, a speech might be formed adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance. If the language of theology were extracted from Hooker and the translation of the Bible;32 the terms of natural knowledge from Bacon; the phrases of policy,33 war, and navigation from Raleigh;34 the dialect of poetry and fiction from Spenser and Sidney; and the diction of common life from Shakespeare, few ideas would be lost to mankind, for want of English words, in which they might be expressed. It is not sufficient that a word is found, unless it be so combined as that its meaning is apparently determined by the tract35 and tenour of the sentence; such passages I have therefore chosen, and when it happened that any authour gave a definition of a term, or such an explanation as is equivalent to a definition, I have placed his authority as a supplement to my own, without regard to the chronologi­ cal order, that is otherwise observed. Some words, indeed, stand unsupported by any authority, but they are com­ monly derivative nouns or adverbs, formed from their primitives by regular and con­ stant analogy, or names of things seldom occurring in books, or words of which I have reason to doubt the existence. There is more danger of censure from the multiplicity than paucity of examples; authorities will sometimes seem to have been accumulated without necessity or use, and perhaps some will be found, which might, without loss, have been omitted. But 30. Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) characterized Chaucer’s English in this way (Faerie Queene, iv.2.32.8). 31. Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586). 32. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (Books I–­IV, 1593); the King James Bible (1611). 33. Policy: “The art of government” (Dictionary, sense 1). 34. Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World (1614) is quoted in Dictionary. 35. “Continuity; any thing protracted, or drawn out to length” (Dictionary, sense 3).



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a work of this kind is not hastily to be charged with superfluities: those quotations, which to careless or unskilful perusers appear only to repeat the same sense, will often exhibit, to a more accurate examiner, diversities of signification, or, at least, afford dif­ ferent shades of the same meaning: one will shew the word applied to persons, another to things; one will express an ill, another a good, and a third a neutral sense; one will prove the expression genuine from an ancient authour; another will shew it elegant from a modern: a doubtful authority is corroborated by another of more credit; an ambiguous sentence is ascertained by a passage clear and determinate; the word, how often soever repeated, appears with new associates and in different combinations, and every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language. When words are used equivocally, I receive them in either sense; when they are metaphorical, I adopt them in their primitive acceptation. I have sometimes, though rarely, yielded to the temptation of exhibiting a gene­ alogy of sentiments, by shewing how one authour copied the thoughts and diction of another: such quotations are indeed little more than repetitions, which might justly be censured, did they not gratify the mind, by affording a kind of intellectual history. The various syntactical structures occurring in the examples have been care­ fully noted; the licence or negligence with which many words have been hitherto used, has made our stile capricious and indeterminate; when the different combi­ nations of the same word are exhibited together, the preference is readily given to propriety, and I have often endeavoured to direct the choice. Thus have I laboured by settling the orthography, displaying the analogy, regu­ lating the structures, and ascertaining the signification of English words, to per­ form all the parts of a faithful lexicographer: but I have not always executed my own scheme, or satisfied my own expectations. The work, whatever proofs of diligence and attention it may exhibit, is yet capable of many improvements: the orthography which I recommend is still controvertible, the etymology which I adopt is uncertain, and perhaps frequently erroneous; the explanations are sometimes too much con­ tracted, and sometimes too much diffused, the significations are distinguished rather with subtilty than skill, and the attention is harrassed with unnecessary minuteness. The examples are too often injudiciously truncated, and perhaps sometimes, I hope very rarely, alleged in a mistaken sense; for in making this collection I trusted more to memory, than, in a state of disquiet and embarrassment, memory can con­ tain, and purposed to supply at the review what was left incomplete in the first tran­ scription. Many terms appropriated to particular occupations, though necessary and sig­ nificant, are undoubtedly omitted;36 and of the words most studiously considered and exemplified, many senses have escaped observation. 36. SJ left out much musical terminology, for example.

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Yet these failures, however frequent, may admit extenuation and apology. To have attempted much is always laudable, even when the enterprize is above the strength that undertakes it: To rest below his own aim is incident to every one whose fancy is active, and whose views are comprehensive; nor is any man satisfied with himself because he has done much, but because he can conceive little. When first I engaged in this work, I resolved to leave neither words nor things unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which I should revel away in feasts of literature, the obscure recesses of northern learning, which I should enter and ran­ sack, the treasures with which I expected every search into those neglected mines to reward my labour, and the triumph with which I should display my acquisitions to mankind. When I had thus enquired into the original of words, I resolved to show likewise my attention to things; to pierce deep into every science, to enquire the nature of every substance of which I inserted the name, to limit every idea by a defi­ nition strictly logical, and exhibit every production of art or nature in an accurate description, that my book might be in place of all other dictionaries whether appel­ lative or technical.37 But these were the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer. I soon found that it is too late to look for instruments, when the work calls for execution, and that whatever abilities I had brought to my task, with those I must finally perform it. To deliberate whenever I doubted, to enquire whenever I was ignorant, would have protracted the undertaking without end, and, perhaps, without much improvement; for I did not find by my first experiments, that what I had not of my own was easily to be obtained: I saw that one enquiry only gave occa­ sion to another, that book referred to book, that to search was not always to find, and to find was not always to be informed; and that thus to persue perfection, was, like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to chace the sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he seemed to rest, was still beheld at the same distance from them.38 I then contracted my design, determining to confide in myself, and no longer to solicit auxiliaries, which produced more incumbrance than assistance: by this I obtained at least one advantage, that I set limits to my work, which would in time be ended, though not completed. Despondency has never so far prevailed as to depress me to negligence; some faults will at last appear to be the effects of anxious diligence and persevering ac­ tivity. The nice and subtile ramifications of meaning were not easily avoided by a mind intent upon accuracy, and convinced of the necessity of disentangling com­ binations, and separating similitudes. Many of the distinctions which to common readers appear useless and idle, will be found real and important by men versed in 37. “Appellative or technical”: dealing with common nouns or specialized terms. 38. The image comes from Manilius, Astronomica, i.66–70. Arcadia, a mountainous region of Greece, is presented by poets as an ideal rural place, like the Garden of Eden.



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the school philosophy,39 without which no dictionary shall ever be accurately com­ piled, or skilfully examined. Some senses however there are, which, though not the same, are yet so nearly allied, that they are often confounded. Most men think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exactness; and consequently some examples might be indiffer­ ently put to either signification: this uncertainty is not to be imputed to me, who do not form, but register the language; who do not teach men how they should think, but relate how they have hitherto expressed their thoughts. The imperfect sense of some examples I lamented, but could not remedy, and hope they will be compensated by innumerable passages selected with propriety, and preserved with exactness; some shining with sparks of imagination, and some replete with treasures of wisdom. The orthography and etymology, though imperfect, are not imperfect for want of care, but because care will not always be successful, and recollection or informa­ tion come too late for use. That many terms of art and manufacture are omitted, must be frankly acknowl­ edged; but for this defect I may boldly allege that it was unavoidable: I could not visit caverns to learn the miner’s language, nor take a voyage to perfect my skill in the dialect of navigation, nor visit the warehouses of merchants, and shops of arti­ ficers, to gain the names of commodities, utensils, tools and operations, of which no mention is found in books; what favourable accident, or easy enquiry brought within my reach, has not been neglected; but it had been a hopeless labour to glean up words, by courting living information, and contesting with the sullenness of one, and the roughness of another. To furnish the academicians della Crusca with words of this kind, a series of comedies called la Fiera, or the Fair, was professedly written by Buonaroti;40 but I had no such assistant, and therefore was content to want what they must have wanted likewise, had they not luckily been so supplied. Nor are all words which are not found in the vocabulary, to be lamented as omissions. Of the laborious and mercantile part of the people, the diction is in a great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are formed for some tem­ porary or local convenience, and though current at certain times and places, are in others utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is always in a state of increase or

39. “School philosophy”: scholasticism, a medieval philosophical method that focused on defining things by means of distinctions, such as genus and species, or modes of being. 40. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1568–1646), nephew of the famous artist, wrote La Fiera Commedia, a five-­ day series of plays in which many of the characters are commercial traders and artisans (1619). He was involved in both the first (1612) and second (1623) editions of the Vocabolario della Crusca.

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decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the durable materials of a language, and therefore must be suffered to perish with other things unworthy of preservation. Care will sometimes betray to the appearance of negligence. He that is catching opportunities which seldom occur, will suffer those to pass by unregarded, which he expects hourly to return; he that is searching for rare and remote things, will neglect those that are obvious and familiar: thus many of the most common and cursory words have been inserted with little illustration, because in gathering the authorities, I forbore to copy those which I thought likely to occur whenever they were wanted. It is remarkable that, in reviewing my collection, I found the word SEA unexemplified.41 Thus it happens, that in things difficult there is danger from ignorance, and in things easy from confidence; the mind, afraid of greatness, and disdainful of littleness, hastily withdraws herself from painful searches, and passes with scornful rapidity over tasks not adequate to her powers, sometimes too secure for caution, and again too anxious for vigorous effort; sometimes idle in a plain path, and some­ times distracted in labyrinths, and dissipated by different intentions. A large work is difficult because it is large, even though all its parts might singly be performed with facility; where there are many things to be done, each must be allowed its share of time and labour, in the proportion only which it bears to the whole; nor can it be expected, that the stones which form the dome of a temple, should be squared and polished like the diamond of a ring. Of the event of this work, for which, having laboured it with so much applica­ tion, I cannot but have some degree of parental fondness, it is natural to form con­ jectures. Those who have been persuaded to think well of my design, will require that it should fix our language, and put a stop to those alterations which time and chance have hitherto been suffered to make in it without opposition. With this con­ sequence I will confess that I flattered myself for a while; but now begin to fear that I have indulged expectation which neither reason nor experience can justify. When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to cen­ tury, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no ex­ ample of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, and clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation. With this hope, however, academies have been instituted, to guard the ave­ nues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse intruders; but their vigilance 41. Before publication, however, SJ found sixteen illustrative quotations for five senses of sea.



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and activity have hitherto been vain; sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal re­ straints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength.42 The French language has visibly changed under the inspection of the academy; the stile of Amelot’s transla­ tion of father Paul is observed by Le Courayer to be un peu passé;43 and no Italian will maintain, that the diction of any modern writer is not perceptibly different from that of Boccace, Machiavel, or Caro.44 Total and sudden transformations of a language seldom happen; conquests and migrations are now very rare: but there are other causes of change, which, though slow in their operation, and invisible in their progress, are perhaps as much superiour to human resistance, as the revolutions of the sky, or intumescence of the tide. Commerce, however necessary, however lucrative, as it depraves the manners, corrupts the language; they that have frequent intercourse with strangers, to whom they endeavour to accommodate themselves, must in time learn a mingled dialect, like the jargon which serves the traffickers on the Mediterranean and Indian coasts. This will not always be confined to the exchange, the warehouse, or the port, but will be communicated by degrees to other ranks of the people, and be at last incor­ porated with the current speech. There are likewise internal causes equally forcible. The language most likely to continue long without alteration, would be that of a nation raised a little, and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniencies of life; either without books, or, like some of the Mahometan countries, with very few: men thus busied and unlearned, having only such words as common use requires, would perhaps long continue to express the same notions by the same signs. But no such constancy can be expected in a people polished by arts, and classed by subordination, where one part of the community is sustained and accommodated by the labour of the other. Those who have much leisure to think, will always be enlarging the stock of ideas, and every increase of knowledge, whether real or fancied, will produce new words, or combinations of words. When the mind is unchained from necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice. As by the cultivation of various sciences, a language is amplified, it will be 42. Xerxes ordered his men to whip and enchain the sea when bad weather foiled his attempt to build a bridge across the Hellespont (Herodotus, History, vii.35). 43. Pierre François le Courayer in the preface (p. xiii) to his translation (1736) of Paolo Sarpi’s History of the Council of Trent (1619), which replaced that of Amelot de la Houssaye (1695). SJ began a translation of le Courayer’s version into English in 1738 (see SJ Life, i.135). 44. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375), Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), and Annibal Caro (1507–1566).

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more furnished with words deflected from their original sense; the geometrician will talk of a courtier’s zenith, or the excentrick virtue of a wild hero, and the physician of sanguine expectations and phlegmatick delays. Copiousness of speech will give op­ portunities to capricious choice, by which some words will be preferred, and others degraded; vicissitudes of fashion will enforce the use of new, or extend the significa­ tion of known terms. The tropes of poetry will make hourly encroachments, and the metaphorical will become the current sense: pronunciation will be varied by levity or ignorance, and the pen must at length comply with the tongue; illiterate45 writers will at one time or other, by publick infatuation, rise into renown, who, not know­ ing the original import of words, will use them with colloquial licentiousness, con­ found distinction, and forget propriety. As politeness increases, some expressions will be considered as too gross and vulgar for the delicate, others as too formal and ceremonious for the gay and airy; new phrases are therefore adopted, which must, for the same reasons, be in time dismissed. Swift, in his petty treatise on the English language, allows that new words must sometimes be introduced, but proposes that none should be suffered to become obsolete.46 But what makes a word obsolete, more than general agreement to forbear it? and how shall it be continued, when it conveys an offensive idea, or recalled again into the mouths of mankind, when it has once become unfamiliar by disuse, and unpleasing by unfamiliarity. There is another cause of alteration more prevalent than any other, which yet in the present state of the world cannot be obviated. A mixture of two languages will produce a third distinct from both, and they will always be mixed, where the chief part of education, and the most conspicuous accomplishment, is skill in ancient or in foreign tongues. He that has long cultivated another language, will find its words and combinations croud upon his memory; and haste or negligence, refinement or affectation, will obtrude borrowed terms and exotick expressions. The great pest of speech is frequency of translation.47 No book was ever turned from one language into another, without imparting something of its native idiom; this is the most mischievous and comprehensive innovation; single words may enter by thousands, and the fabrick of the tongue continue the same, but new phrase­ ology changes much at once; it alters not the single stones of the building, but the order of the columns. If an academy should be established for the cultivation of our stile, which I, who can never wish to see dependance multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty will hinder or destroy, let them, instead of compiling grammars and 45. “Unlettered; untaught; unlearned; unenlightened by science” (Dictionary). 46. A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue, in a Letter to the Earl of Oxford (1712); see the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. II, Parodies, Hoaxes, Mock Treatises: Polite Conversation, Directions to Servants and Other Works, ed. Valerie Rumbold (2013), 129–56: 147–48. 47. Yet Dictionary contains many illustrative quotations drawn from translations, and SJ, early in his career, made a living doing translations.



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dictionaries, endeavour, with all their influence, to stop the licence of translatours, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble a dialect of France. If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? it remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure.48 Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like gov­ ernments, have a natural tendency to degeneration;49 we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language. In hope of giving longevity to that which its own nature forbids to be immortal, I have devoted this book, the labour of years, to the honour of my country, that we may no longer yield the palm of philology, without a contest, to the nations of the continent. The chief glory of every people arises from its authours: whether I shall add any thing by my own writings to the reputation of English literature, must be left to time: much of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me; but I shall not think my employment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations, and distant ages, gain access to the propagators of knowl­ edge, and understand the teachers of truth; if my labours afford light to the reposi­ tories of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle.50 When I am animated by this wish, I look with pleasure on my book, however defective, and deliver it to the world with the spirit of a man that has endeavoured well. That it will immediately become popular I have not promised to myself: a few wild blunders, and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance in con­ tempt; but useful diligence will at last prevail, and there never can be wanting some who distinguish desert;51 who will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since while it is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some falling away; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient; that he, whose design includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not understand; that a writer will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to the end, and sometimes faint 48. Cf. Rambler 32, p. 26 above. 49. Cf. Idler 63 (p. 100 above): “Language proceeds, like every thing else, thro’ improvement to degen­ eracy.” 50. All four writers are well represented in the illustrative quotations in Dictionary. Robert Boyle (1627– 1691) is quoted most from The Sceptical Chymist (1661) and other scientific works; Francis Bacon (1561–1626) from a recent edition of his varied Works (1740); Hooker from Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (above, p. 409, n. 32); and John Milton most often from Paradise Lost (1667). 51. “Distinguish desert”: recognize excellence.

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with weariness under a task, which Scaliger compares to the labours of the anvil and the mine;52 that what is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprize vigilance, slight avo­ cations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in vain trace his memory at the moment of need, for that which yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into his thoughts to-­morrow. In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of ten­ derness to the authour, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns; yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great;53 not in the soft obscurities of retirement,54 or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now im­ mutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, are yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge, and co-­operating dili­ gence of the Italian academicians, did not secure them from the censure of Beni;55 if the embodied criticks of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its oeconomy, and give their second edition another form,56 I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which, if I could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, what would it avail me? I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please, have sunk into the grave,57 and success and mis­ carriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

52. Joseph Scaliger (1540–1609), “In Lexicorum compilatores” (To the compilers of dictionaries), Poemata Omnia (1615), p. 35. For the manuscript version of the poem, see p. 420, n. 2, below. 53. Cf. SJ’s letter to Lord Chesterfield (p. 376 above). 54. “Private way of life” (Dictionary, sense 2). 55. Paolo Bèni (1552–1625) attacked the first edition of the Vocabolario della Crusca (1612) in l’ Anticrusca (1612). 56. The French Académie did this in 1718. The first edition was completed in 1694, but it had been under way for forty years. 57. SJ’s wife Tetty had died in 1752; his old friend and early supporter Gilbert Walmesley in 1751.



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K N OW T H YS E L F In late 1772, after finishing his revision of the Dictionary for the fourth edition (1773), John­ son wrote this very personal poem, which shows his fatigue with such work, and his doubts about his future literary career. Five years later he was at work on the Lives of the Poets. The free translation below was written by Arthur Murphy for his Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson (1792; p. 82). ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ

(Post lexicon Anglicanum auctum et emendatum.) Lexicon ad finem longo luctamine tandem Scaliger ut duxit, tenuis pertaesus opellae, Vile indignatus studium, nugasque molestas, Ingemit exosus, scribendaque lexica mandat Damnatis, poenam pro poenis omnibus unam.    Ille quidem recte, sublimus, doctus, et acer, Quem decuit majora sequi, majoribus aptum, Qui veterum modo facta ducum, modo carmina vatum, Gesserat et quicquid virtus, sapientia quicquid Dixerat, imperiique vices, coelique meatus, Ingentemque animo seclorum volverat orbem.    Fallimur exemplis; temere sibi turba scholarum Ima tuas credit permitti, Scaliger, iras. Quisque suum nôrit modulum; tibi, prime virorum, Ut studiis sperem, aut ausim par esse querelis, Non mihi sorte datum; lenti seu sanguinis obsint Frigora, seu nimium longo jacuisse veterno, Sive mihi mentem dederit Natura minorem.    Te sterili functum cura, vocumque salebris Tuto eluctatum spatiis sapientia dia Excipit aethereis, ars omnis plaudit amica, Linguarumque omni terra discordia concors Multiplici reducem circumsonat ore magistrum.    Me, pensi immunis cum jam mihi reddor, inertis Desidiae sors dura manet, graviorque labore Tristis et atra quies, et tardae taedia vitae. Nascuntur curis curae, vexatque dolorum Importuna cohors, vacuae mala somnia mentis.

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Nunc clamosa juvant nocturnae guadia mensae, Nunc loca sola placent; frustra te, somne, recumbens Alme voco, impatiens noctis metuensque diei. Omnia percurro trepidus, circum omnia lustro, Si qua usquam pateat melioris semita vitae, Nec quid agam invenio, meditatus grandia, cogor Notior ipse mihi fieri, incultumque fateri Pectus, et ingenium vano se robore jactans. Ingenium, nisi materiem doctrina ministret, Cessat inops rerum, ut torpet, si marmoris absit Copia, Phidiaci foecunda potentia coeli. Quicquid agam, quocunque ferar, conatibus obstat Res angusta domi, et macrae penuria mentis.    Non rationis opes animus, nunc parta recensens, Conspicit aggestas, et se miratur in illis, Nec sibi de gaza praesens quód postulet usus Summus adesse jubet celsa dominator ab arce; Non operum serie, seriem dum computat aevi, Praeteritis fruitur, laetos aut sumit honores Ipse sui judex, actae bene munera vitae; Sed sua regna videns, loca nocte silentia late Horret, ubi vanae species, umbraeque fugaces, Et rerum volitant rarae per inane figurae.    Quid faciam? tenebrisne pigram damnare senectam Restat? an accingar studiis gravioribus audax? Aut, hoc si nimium est, tandem nova lexica poscam?

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12. Dec. 1772.

KNOW YOURSELF (After revising and enlarging the English lexicon, or dictionary.) When Scaliger,1 whole years of labour past, Beheld his Lexicon complete at last, And weary of his task, with wond’ring eyes, Saw from words pil’d on words a fabric rise, He curs’d the industry, inertly strong, In creeping toil that could persist so long, And if, enrag’d he cried, heav’n meant to shed

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1. Joseph Scaliger: see p. 417, n. 2, above.



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Its keenest vengeance on the guilty head, The drudgery of words the damn’d would know, Doom’d to write lexicons in endless woe.210    Yes, you had cause, great genius! to repent; “You lost good days, that might be better spent;” You well might grudge the hours of ling’ring pain, And view your learned labours with disdain. To you were giv’n the large expanded mind, 15 The flame of genius, and the taste refin’d. ’Twas yours on eagle wings aloft to soar, And amidst rolling worlds the Great First Cause explore; To fix the aeras of recorded time, 20 And live in ev’ry age and ev’ry clime; Record the chiefs, who propt their country’s cause; Who founded empires, and establish’d laws; To learn whate’er the sage with virtue fraught, Whate’er the Muse of moral wisdom taught. These were your quarry; these to you were known, 25 And the world’s ample volume was your own.3    Yet warn’d by me, ye pigmy wits, beware, Nor with immortal Scaliger compare. For me, though his example strike my view, Oh! not for me his footsteps to pursue. 30 Whether first Nature, unpropitious, cold, This clay compounded in a ruder mould; Or the slow current, loit’ring at my heart, No gleam of wit or fancy can impart; Whate’er the cause, from me no numbers flow, 35 No visions warm me, and no raptures glow.    A mind like Scaliger’s, superior still, No grief could conquer, no misfortune chill. Though for the maze of words his native skies He seem’d to quit, ’twas but again to rise; 40 To mount once more to the bright source of day,

2. Scaliger’s outburst paraphrases a verse note he wrote in his Arabic-­Latin lexicon (now MS Or. 212 in the Leiden University Library) on the drudgery of lexicography. A version of it, from Scaliger’s published poems, appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine for January 1748 (p. 8), probably placed there by SJ. 3. SJ refers to Scaliger’s many works, including De Emendatione Temporum (1583), a vastly ambitious revision of classical chronology.

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And view the wonders of th’ aetherial way. The love of fame his gen’rous bosom fir’d; Each science hail’d him, and each Muse inspir’d, For him the sons of learning trimm’d the bays,445 And nations grew harmonious in his praise.    My task perform’d, and all my labours o’er, For me what lot has Fortune now in store? The listless will succeeds,5 that worst disease, The rack of indolence, the sluggish ease. 50 Care grows on care, and o’er my aching brain Black melancholy pours her morbid train. No kind relief, no lenitive6 at hand, I seek at midnight clubs, the social band; But midnight clubs, where wit with noise conspires, 55 Where Comus7 revels, and where wine inspires, Delight no more; I seek my lonely bed, And call on sleep to soothe my languid head. But sleep from these sad lids flies far away; I mourn all night, and dread the coming day, 60 Exhausted, tir’d, I throw my eyes around, To find some vacant spot on classic ground; And soon, vain hope! I form a grand design; Languor succeeds, and all my pow’rs decline. If science open not her richest vein, 65 Without materials all our toil is vain. A form to rugged stone when Phidias gives,8 Beneath his touch a new creation lives. Remove his marble, and his genius dies; With Nature then no breathing statue vies. 70    Whate’er I plan, I feel my pow’rs confin’d By Fortune’s frown and penury of mind. I boast no knowledge glean’d with toil and strife, That bright reward of a well-­acted life. I view myself, while reason’s feeble light 75

4. Prepared a wreath of bay laurel to celebrate his success. 5. Follows, after the heat of work. 6. Softening, soothing. 7. A Bacchic demigod, reveling in chaos and misrule. 8. Fifth-­century BCE Greek sculptor who directed the construction of the Parthenon in Athens.



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Shoots a pale glimmer through the gloom of night, While passions, error, phantoms of the brain, And vain opinions, fill the dark domain; A dreary void, where fears with grief combin’d Waste all within, and desolate the mind.    What then remains? Must I in slow decline To mute inglorious ease old age resign? Or, bold ambition kindling in my breast, Attempt some arduous task? Or, were it best Brooding o’er lexicons to pass the day, And in that labour drudge my life away?

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Shakespeare Criticism

�

Johnson took the initial steps toward producing an edition of Shakespeare’s plays in the mid-­1740s. He published proposals and a specimen of the edition in 1745, but soon deferred the project in favor of his Dictionary. Work on the Dictionary, however, became a vital way of preparing to edit Shakespeare. It immersed him in Shakespeare’s texts, and he drew more illustrative quotations from them than from those of any other author. More importantly, by the time he finished the Dictionary and published, in 1756, his new Proposals for Printing, by Subscription, the Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare, he could legitimately assert that “with regard to obsolete or peculiar diction, the editor may perhaps claim some degree of confidence, having had more motives to consider the whole extent of our language than any other man since its first formation. He hopes, that, by com­ paring the works of Shakespeare with those of writers who lived at the same time, immedi­ ately preceded, or immediately followed him, he shall be able to ascertain his ambiguities, disentangle his intricacies, and recover the meaning of words now lost in the darkness of antiquity” (Yale, vii.56). Johnson initially planned to finish the edition in eighteen months, but did not com­ plete it until 1765, when it was published in eight volumes. On textual matters (always an issue with this playwright) Johnson was relatively conservative; he generally trusted the earliest printings of Shakespeare, and—unlike some other eighteenth-­century editors—he was notably restrained about making emendations to the text. But his remarkable ability to “ascertain,” “disentangle,” and “recover” Shakespeare’s meanings, and explain them in his annotations, is a central aspect of his edition’s enduring value; modern editors still look to Johnson for help. Equally important is Johnson’s contribution as a critical commentator on Shake­ speare. For most of the plays, Johnson wrote brief but pungent endnotes, summarizing a play’s literary significance and assessing its dramatic impact, sometimes in highly personal terms. A selection of endnotes is included below. Moreover, his lengthy Preface to Shake­ speare, affixed to the 1765 edition and included here without abridgement, is one of John­ son’s greatest, most influential critical achievements. While he is occasionally stringent in his judgment of Shakespeare, Johnson’s praise is lavish and compelling, justifying his claim

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for what he calls, in Rambler 156, Shakespeare’s “transcendent and unbounded genius” (Yale, v.69). All of Johnson’s major writings on Shakespeare, including his annotations and end­ notes to the plays, are available in Volumes VII–­VIII of the Yale Edition, and in the Yale Digital Edition (YaleJohnson.com).

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T H E P R E FAC E ( 1 7 6 5 ) That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always con­ tinued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon con­ solatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last be­ stowed by time. Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the notice of mankind, has un­ doubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from reason, but from prejudice. Some seem to admire indiscriminately whatever has been long preserved, without con­ sidering that time has sometimes co-­operated with chance; all perhaps are more willing to honour past than present excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity. The great contention of criticism is to find the faults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an authour is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst per­ formance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best. To works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to observation and experience, no other test can be applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem. What mankind have long possessed they have often examined and compared, and if they persist to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favour. As among the works of nature no man can properly call a river deep or a mountain high, without the knowledge of many mountains and many rivers; so in the productions of genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been com­ pared with other works of the same kind. Demonstration immediately displays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the flux of years; but works tentative and experimental must be estimated by their proportion to the general and collec­ tive ability of man, as it is discovered in a long succession of endeavours. Of the first building that was raised, it might be with certainty determined that it was round or square, but whether it was spacious or lofty must have been referred to time. The Pythagorean scale of numbers was at once discovered to be perfect;1 but the poems of Homer we yet know not to transcend the common limits of human intelligence, 1. Pythagoras (sixth century BCE) established a system of numerical ratios in the fields of mathematics and music.

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but by remarking, that nation after nation, and century after century, has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, new name his characters, and para­ phrase his sentiments. The reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arises therefore not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom of past ages, or gloomy per­ suasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has been longest known has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood. The poet, of whose works I have undertaken the revision,2 may now begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of established fame and pre­ scriptive veneration. He has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit.3 Whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allusions, local customs, or temporary opinions, have for many years been lost; and every topick of merriment or motive of sorrow, which the modes of artificial life af­ forded him, now only obscure the scenes which they once illuminated. The effects of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of his friendships and his en­ mities has perished; his works support no opinion with arguments, nor supply any faction with invectives; they can neither indulge vanity nor gratify malignity, but are read without any other reason than the desire of pleasure, and are therefore praised only as pleasure is obtained; yet, thus unassisted by interest or passion, they have past through variations of taste and changes of manners, and, as they devolved from one generation to another, have received new honours at every transmission. But because human judgment, though it be gradually gaining upon certainty, never becomes infallible; and approbation, though long continued, may yet be only the approbation of prejudice or fashion; it is proper to inquire, by what peculiari­ ties of excellence Shakespeare has gained and kept the favour of his countrymen. Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature.4 Particular manners can be known to few, and therefore few only can judge how nearly they are copied. The irregular combinations of fanciful invention may delight a-­while, by that novelty of which the common satiety of life sends us all in quest; but the pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only repose on the stability of truth. Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers,5 the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by 2. Revision: “Review” (Dictionary). 3. See Dictionary, s.v. custom: “We cannot say that this or that is a custom, except we can justify that it hath continued so one hundred years” (quoting John Cowell; sense 6). Cf. Horace, EPISTLES, ii.1.39. 4. General nature: Human nature as it is at all times and in all places. 5. SJ adds this qualification because he is thinking of Homer.

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the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can oper­ ate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the in­ fluence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a char­ acter is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species. It is from this wide extension of design that so much instruction is derived. It is this which fills the plays of Shakespeare with practical axioms and domestick wis­ dom. It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept;6 and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and oeco­ nomical7 prudence. Yet his real power is not shewn in the splendour of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable,8 and the tenour of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.9 It will not easily be imagined how much Shakespeare excells in accommodat­ ing his sentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authours. It was observed of the ancient schools of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the student disqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he should ever meet in any other place.10 The same remark may be applied to every stage but that of Shakespeare. 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 topicks which will never arise in the com­ merce of mankind. But the dialogue of this authour is often so evidently determined by the incident which produces it, and is pursued with so much ease and simplicity, that it seems scarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned by dili­ gent selection out of common conversation, and common occurrences. 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 incon­ sistent with each other; to make them meet in rapture and part in agony; to fill their 6. Cicero, Familiar Letters, Nos. 147 and 317 (Loeb edition, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, 2001). 7. “Pertaining to the regulation of an household” (Dictionary). 8. “The series or contexture of events which constitute a poem epick or dramatick” (Dictionary, sense 4). 9. SJ probably wrote the translation of the Jests of Hierocles (Hieroclis Philosophi Facetiae de priscorum studiosorum dictis et factis ridiculis [1605]) that appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine for September 1741. For this “jest,” see Yale, xx.59. 10. Petronius, Satyricon, 1.



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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 misrep­ resented, and language is depraved. But love is only one of many passions, and as it has no great influence upon the sum of life, it has little operation in the dramas of a poet, who caught his ideas from the living world, and exhibited only what he saw before him. He knew, that any other passion, as it was regular or exorbitant, was a cause of happiness or calamity. Characters thus ample and general were not easily discriminated and pre­ served, yet perhaps no poet ever kept his personages more distinct from each other. I will not say with Pope, that every speech may be assigned to the proper speaker,11 because many speeches there are which have nothing characteristical; but perhaps, though some may be equally adapted to every person, it will be difficult to find any that can be properly transferred from the present possessor to another claimant. The choice is right, when there is reason for choice. Other dramatists can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated charac­ ters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence or depravity, as the writers of barba­ rous12 romances invigorated the reader by a giant and a dwarf; and he that should form his expectations of human affairs from the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived. Shakespeare has no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak as the reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the same occasion: Even where the agency is supernatural the dialogue is level with life. Other writers disguise the most natural passions and most frequent inci­ dents; so that he who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world: Shakespeare approximates the remote,13 and familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he represents will not happen, but if it were possible, its effects would probably be such as he has assigned; and it may be said, that he has not only shewn human nature as it acts in real exigences, but as it would be found in trials, to which it cannot be exposed. This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirrour of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious extasies,14 by reading human sentiments in human language; by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions. 11. Alexander Pope, Preface to The Works of Shakespear (1725), i.ii–­iii. 12. Unpolished; uncouth; gothic. 13. “Approximates the remote”: makes distant things seem close; cf. Rambler 60 (p. 132 above). 14. “Any passion by which the thoughts are absorbed and in which the mind is for a time lost” (Dictionary).

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His adherence to general nature has exposed him to the censure of criticks, who form their judgments upon narrower principles. Dennis and Rhymer think his Romans not sufficiently Roman; and Voltaire censures his kings as not completely royal. Dennis is offended, that Menenius, a senator of Rome, should play the buf­ foon; and Voltaire perhaps thinks decency violated when the Danish usurper is rep­ resented as a drunkard.15 But Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident; and if he preserves the essential character, is not very careful of distinctions superinduced and adventitious. His story requires Romans or kings, but he thinks only on men. He knew that Rome, like every other city, had men of all dispositions; and wanting a buffoon, he went into the senate-­house for that which the senate-­ house would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to shew an usurper and a murderer not only odious but despicable; he therefore added drunkenness to his other qualities, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that wine exerts its natural power upon kings. These are the petty cavils of petty minds; a poet over­ looks the casual distinction of country and condition, as a painter, satisfied with the figure, neglects the drapery. The censure which he has incurred by mixing comick and tragick scenes, as it extends to all his works, deserves more consideration. Let the fact be first stated, and then examined. Shakespeare’s plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real state of sub­ lunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with end­ less variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination; and expressing the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolick of another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and hindered without design. Out of this chaos of mingled purposes and casualties16 the ancient poets, ac­ cording to the laws which custom had prescribed, selected some the crimes of men, and some their absurdities; some the momentous vicissitudes of life, and some the lighter occurrences; some the terrours of distress, and some the gayeties of pros­ perity. Thus rose the two modes of imitation, known by the names of tragedy and comedy, compositions intended to promote different ends by contrary means, and 15. John Dennis (1657–1734), An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare (1712), in Critical Works of John Dennis, ed. E. N. Hooker, 2 vols. (1939–43), ii.5; Thomas Rymer (1643–1713), A Short View of Tragedy (1692), ed. C. Zimansky (1956), pp. 164–69. Here, and in subsequent remarks on Voltaire, SJ is thinking mainly of the essay Appel à toutes les nations de l’Europe (1761). The reference to the drunkenness of Claudius, the “Danish usurper,” however, is found in the Dissertation sur la tragédie ancienne et moderne, prefixed to Semiramis (1748). 16. Accidents; chance occurrences.



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considered as so little allied, that I do not recollect among the Greeks or Romans a single writer who attempted both. Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind but in one composition. Almost all his plays are divided between serious and ludicrous characters, and, in the successive evolutions of the design, sometimes produce seriousness and sorrow, and sometimes levity and laughter. That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature. The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. That the mingled drama may convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it in­ cludes both in its alternations of exhibition, and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life, by shewing how great machinations and slender designs may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low co-­operate in the general system by unavoidable concatenation. It is objected, that by this change of scenes the passions are interrupted in their progression, and that the principal event, being not advanced by a due graduation of preparatory incidents, wants at last the power to move, which constitutes the per­ fection of dramatick poetry. This reasoning is so specious,17 that it is received as true even by those who in daily experience feel it to be false. The interchanges of mingled scenes seldom fail to produce the intended vicissitudes of passion. Fiction cannot move so much, but that the attention may be easily transferred; and though it must be allowed that pleasing melancholy be sometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it be considered likewise, that melancholy is often not pleasing, and that the disturbance of one man may be the relief of another; that different auditors have dif­ ferent habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all pleasure consists in variety. The players, who in their edition divided our authour’s works into comedies, histories, and tragedies, seem not to have distinguished the three kinds, by any very exact or definite ideas.18 An action which ended happily to the principal persons, however serious or distressful through its intermediate incidents, in their opinion constituted a comedy. This idea of a comedy continued long amongst us, and plays were written, which, by changing the catastrophe,19 were tragedies to-­day and comedies to-­morrow.20 Tragedy was not in those times a poem of more general dignity or elevation than 17. “Plausible . . . striking at first view” (Dictionary). 18. SJ refers to the First Folio of Shakespeare’s works (1623), edited by the actors John Heminge and Henry Condell. 19. “The change or revolution, which produces the conclusion or final event of a dramatick piece” (Dictionary). 20. Sir John Suckling’s Aglaura (1637; altered 1638) and Sir Robert Howard’s Vestal Virgin (1665) are examples. Both authors supplied alternate endings.

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comedy; it required only a calamitous conclusion, with which the common criticism of that age was satisfied, whatever lighter pleasure it afforded in its progress. History was a series of actions, with no other than chronological succession, independent on each other, and without any tendency to introduce or regulate the conclusion. It is not always very nicely distinguished from tragedy. There is not much nearer approach to unity of action in the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, than in the history of Richard the Second. But a history might be continued through many plays; as it had no plan, it had no limits. Through all these denominations of the drama, Shakespeare’s mode of com­ position is the same; an interchange of seriousness and merriment, by which the mind is softened at one time, and exhilarated at another. But whatever be his pur­ pose, whether to gladden or depress, or to conduct the story, without vehemence or emotion, through tracts of easy and familiar dialogue, he never fails to attain his purpose; as he commands us, we laugh or mourn, or sit silent with quiet expecta­ tion, in tranquillity without indifference. When Shakespeare’s plan is understood, most of the criticisms of Rhymer and Voltaire vanish away. The play of Hamlet is opened, without impropriety, by two sentinels; Iago bellows at Brabantio’s window, without injury to the scheme of the play, though in terms which a modern audience would not easily endure; the char­ acter of Polonius is seasonable and useful; and the Grave-­diggers themselves may be heard with applause.21 Shakespeare engaged in dramatick poetry with the world open before him; the rules of the ancients were yet known to few; the publick judgment was unformed; he had no example of such fame as might force him upon imitation, nor criticks of such authority as might restrain his extravagance: He therefore indulged his natu­ ral disposition, and his disposition, as Rhymer has remarked, led him to comedy.22 In tragedy he often writes with great appearance of toil and study, what is written at last with little felicity; but in his comick scenes, he seems to produce without labour, what no labour can improve. In tragedy he is always struggling after some occa­ sion to be comick, but in comedy he seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to his nature. In his tragick scenes there is always something wanting, but his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire. His comedy pleases by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy for the greater part by incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct. 21. In his Appel à toutes les nations, Voltaire objected to the two sentinels, to Polonius, and, as Rhymer had earlier in his Short View of Tragedy, to Iago’s words to Brabantio in Othello (i.i). The gravediggers’ scene in Hamlet (v.i) exercised him most of all; he mentioned it in his Appel, his Disseration sur la tragédie ancienne et modern, his Lettres Philosophique (1730), and his Lettre à l’Académie Française (1776). 22. Rymer, A Short View of Tragedy, p. 169.



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The force of his comick scenes has suffered little diminution from the changes made by a century and a half, in manners or in words. As his personages act upon principles arising from genuine passion, very little modified by particular forms, their pleasures and vexations are communicable to all times and to all places; they are natural, and therefore durable; the adventitious peculiarities of personal habits, are only superficial dies, bright and pleasing for a little while, yet soon fading to a dim tinct, without any remains of former lustre; but the discriminations of true pas­ sion are the colours of nature; they pervade the whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits them. The accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes are dissolved by the chance which combined them; but the uniform sim­ plicity of primitive qualities neither admits increase, nor suffers decay. The sand heaped by one flood is scattered by another, but the rock always continues in its place. The stream of time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabricks23 of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant24 of Shakespeare. If there be, what I believe there is, in every nation, a stile which never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so consonant and congenial to the analogy25 and principles of its respective language as to remain settled and unaltered; this stile is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar,26 when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and below re­ finement, where propriety resides, and where this poet seems to have gathered his comick dialogue. He is therefore more agreeable to the ears of the present age than any other authour equally remote, and among his other excellencies deserves to be studied as one of the original masters of our language. These observations are to be considered not as unexceptionably constant, but as containing general and predominant truth. Shakespeare’s familiar dialogue is af­ firmed to be smooth and clear, yet not wholly without ruggedness or difficulty; as a country may be eminently fruitful, though it has spots unfit for cultivation: His characters are praised as natural, though their sentiments are sometimes forced, and their actions improbable; as the earth upon the whole is spherical, though its surface is varied with protuberances and cavities. Shakespeare with his excellencies has likewise faults, and faults sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall shew them in the proportion in 23. “Any body formed by the conjunction of dissimilar parts” (Dictionary). 24. “A stone, imagined by writers, of impenetrable hardness” (Dictionary). 25. “Conformity of words or language to a regular or consistent pattern; (hence) a set of rules describing the behavior of language, or intended to govern its use” (OED, sense 6.a). 26. The language of common people.

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which they appear to me, without envious malignity or superstitious veneration. No question can be more innocently discussed than a dead poet’s pretensions to re­ nown; and little regard is due to that bigotry which sets candour27 higher than truth. His first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in books or in men. He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose. From his writ­ ings indeed a system of social duty may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably must think morally; but his precepts and axioms drop casually from him; he makes no just distribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to shew in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their ex­ amples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer’s duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue inde­ pendant on time or place. The plots are often so loosely formed, that a very slight consideration may im­ prove them, and so carelessly pursued, that he seems not always fully to compre­ hend his own design. He omits opportunities of instructing or delighting which the train of his story seems to force upon him, and apparently rejects those exhibitions which would be more affecting, for the sake of those which are more easy. It may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently ne­ glected. When he found himself near the end of his work, and in view of his reward, he shortened the labour, to snatch the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented. He had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to one age or nation, without scruple, the customs, institutions, and opinions of another, at the expence not only of likelihood, but of possibility. These faults Pope has endeavoured, with more zeal than judgment, to transfer to his imagined interpolators.28 We need not wonder to find Hector quoting Aristotle, when we see the loves of Theseus and Hip­ polyta combined with the Gothick mythology of fairies.29 Shakespeare, indeed, was not the only violator of chronology, for in the same age Sidney, who wanted not the advantages of learning, has, in his Arcadia, confounded the pastoral with the feudal times, the days of innocence, quiet and security, with those of turbulence, violence and adventure.30 In his comick scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages his char­ 27. “Sweetness of temper; purity of mind; openness; ingenuity; kindness” (Dictionary). 28. Editors and typesetters; see Pope’s Preface to the Works of Shakespear (1725), i.xiv–­xv. 29. Hector quotes Aristotle in Troilus and Cressida, ii.ii.166–67; Theseus and Hippolyta appear along­ side fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 30. Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586), Arcadia (1590; 1593).



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acters in reciprocations of smartness and contests of sarcasm; their jests are com­ monly gross, and their pleasantry licentious; neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are sufficiently distinguished from his clowns by any ap­ pearance of refined manners. Whether he represented the real conversation of his time is not easy to determine; the reign of Elizabeth is commonly supposed to have been a time of stateliness, formality and reserve, yet perhaps the relaxations of that severity were not very elegant. There must, however, have been always some modes of gayety preferable to others, and a writer ought to chuse the best. In tragedy his performance seems constantly to be worse, as his labour is more. The effusions of passion which exigence forces out are for the most part striking and energetick; but whenever he solicits his invention, or strains his faculties, the off­ spring of his throes is tumour,31 meanness, tediousness, and obscurity. In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few. Narration in dramatick poetry is naturally tedious, as it is unanimated and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the action; it should therefore always be rapid, and enlivened by frequent interruption. Shakespeare found it an encumbrance, and instead of lightening it by brevity, en­ deavoured to recommend it by dignity and splendour. His declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak, for his power was the power of nature; when he endeavoured, like other tragick writers, to catch opportunities of amplification, and instead of inquiring what the occasion de­ manded, to show how much his stores of knowledge could supply, he seldom es­ capes without the pity or resentment of his reader. It is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not reject; he struggles with it a while, and if it continues stubborn, comprises it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disen­ tangled and evolved32 by those who have more leisure to bestow upon it. Not that always where the language is intricate the thought is subtle, or the image always great where the line is bulky; the equality of words to things is very often neglected, and trivial sentiments and vulgar ideas disappoint the attention, to which they are recommended by sonorous epithets and swelling figures.33 But the admirers of this great poet have most reason to complain when he ap­ proaches nearest to his highest excellence, and seems fully resolved to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender emotions by the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love. What he does best, he soon ceases to do. He is 31. “Affected pomp” (Dictionary, sense 2). 32. Evolve: “To unfold; to disentangle” (Dictionary). 33. Figures of speech, such as metaphor.

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not long soft and pathetick without some idle conceit,34 or contemptible equivoca­ tion. He no sooner begins to move, than he counteracts himself; and terrour and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted by sudden frigidity. A quibble35 is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation.36 A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it. It will be thought strange, that, in enumerating the defects of this writer, I have not yet mentioned his neglect of the unities; his violation of those laws which have been instituted and established by the joint authority of poets and of criticks.37 For his other deviations from the art of writing, I resign him to critical justice, without making any other demand in his favour, than that which must be indulged to all human excellence; that his virtues be rated with his failings: But, from the cen­ sure which this irregularity may bring upon him, I shall, with due reverence to that learning which I must oppose, adventure to try how I can defend him. His histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies, are not subject to any of their laws; nothing more is necessary to all the praise which they expect, than that the changes of action be so prepared as to be understood, that the incidents be vari­ ous and affecting, and the characters consistent, natural and distinct. No other unity is intended, and therefore none is to be sought. In his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of action. He has not, indeed, an intrigue regularly perplexed and regularly unravelled; he does not endeavour to hide his design only to discover it, for this is seldom the order of real events, and Shakespeare is the poet of nature: But his plan has commonly what Aris­ totle requires, a beginning, a middle, and an end; one event is concatenated with 34. “Opinion, generally in a sense of contempt; fancy; imagination; fantastical notion” (Dictionary, sense 3). 35. “A low conceit depending on the sound of words; a pun” (Dictionary). 36. In Greek myth, the speedy Atalanta loses the race because she pauses to retrieve three golden apples thrown in her path by her competitor and suitor. 37. The unities were a set of rules for drama governing time, place, and action; they were derived from Aristotle’s Poetics by neoclassical critics such as Lodovico Castelvetro (1505–1571) and widely accepted, not without debate, in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.



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another, and the conclusion follows by easy consequence. There are perhaps some incidents that might be spared, as in other poets there is much talk that only fills up time upon the stage; but the general system makes gradual advances, and the end of the play is the end of expectation. To the unities of time and place he has shewn no regard, and perhaps a nearer view of the principles on which they stand will diminish their value, and withdraw from them the veneration which, from the time of Corneille,38 they have very gen­ erally received, by discovering that they have given more trouble to the poet, than pleasure to the auditor. The necessity of observing the unities of time and place arises from the sup­ posed necessity of making the drama credible. The criticks hold it impossible, that an action of months or years can be possibly believed to pass in three hours; or that the spectator can suppose himself to sit in the theatre, while ambassadors go and return between distant kings, while armies are levied and towns besieged, while an exile wanders and returns, or till he whom they saw courting his mistress, shall lament the untimely fall of his son. The mind revolts from evident falsehood, and fiction loses its force when it departs from the resemblance of reality. From the narrow limitation of time necessarily arises the contraction of place. The spectator, who knows that he saw the first act at Alexandria, cannot suppose that he sees the next at Rome, at a distance to which not the dragons of Medea39 could, in so short a time, have transported him; he knows with certainty that he has not changed his place; and he knows that place cannot change itself; that what was a house cannot become a plain; that what was Thebes can never be Persepolis. Such is the triumphant language with which a critick exults over the misery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without resistance or reply. It is time there­ fore to tell him, by the authority of Shakespeare, that he assumes, as an unques­ tionable principle, a position, which, while his breath is forming it into words, his understanding pronounces to be false. It is false, that any representation is mistaken for reality; that any dramatick fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a single moment, was ever credited. The objection arising from the impossibility of passing the first hour at Alexan­ dria, and the next at Rome, supposes, that when the play opens the spectator really imagines himself at Alexandria, and believes that his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to Egypt, and that he lives in the days of Antony and Cleopatra. Surely he 38. Pierre Corneille (1606–1684) set off extensive debate about les trois unités when his play Le Cid (1637) violated the rules. He accepted the theory of the unities, but also defended his practice in Trois discours sur le poème dramatique (1660). 39. In Greek myth and drama, Medea flees from Corinth to Athens in a chariot of the Sun drawn by dragons.

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that imagines this may imagine more. He that can take the stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation; if the spectator can be once persuaded, that his old acquaintance are Alexander and Caesar, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of Pharsalia, or the bank of Granicus,40 he is in a state of elevation above the reach of reason, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean poetry, may despise the circumscriptions of terrestrial nature. There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in extasy should count the clock, or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains that can make the stage a field. 41 The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. They come to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation. The lines relate to some action, and an action must be in some place; but the different actions that compleat a story may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the absurdity of allowing that space to represent first Athens, and then Sicily, which was always known to be neither Sicily nor Athens, but a modern theatre. By supposition, as place is introduced, time may be extended; the time re­ quired by the fable elapses for the most part between the acts; for, of so much of the action as is represented, the real and poetical duration is the same. If, in the first act, preparations for war against Mithridates are represented to be made in Rome, the event of the war may, without absurdity, be represented, in the catastrophe, as happening in Pontus; we know that there is neither war, nor preparation for war; we know that we are neither in Rome nor Pontus; that neither Mithridates nor Lucullus are before us.42 The drama exhibits successive imitations of successive actions, and why may not the second imitation represent an action that happened years after the first; if it be so connected with it, that nothing but time can be supposed to inter­ vene. Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation we easily con­ tract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly permit it to be contracted when we only see their imitation. It will be asked, how the drama moves, if it is not credited. It is credited with 40. Alexander fought a famous battle near the river Granicus (in modern northwestern Turkey); Caesar, on the plain of Pharsalia (in modern northern Greece). 41. “A distemper peculiar to sailors, in hot climates; wherein they imagine the sea to be green fields, and will throw themselves into it” (Dictionary). 42. Mithridates VI (120–63 BCE) and Lucius Licinius Lucullus (d. 57/6 BCE) are characters in Nathaniel Lee’s historical tragedy Mithridates, King of Pontus (1702).



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all the credit due to a drama. It is credited, whenever it moves, as a just picture of a real original; as representing to the auditor what he would himself feel, if he were to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done. The reflection that strikes the heart is not, that the evils before us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence of misery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when she remembers that death may take it from her. The delight of tragedy pro­ ceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more. Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for reali­ ties, but because they bring realities to mind. When the imagination is recreated43 by a painted landscape, the trees are not supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains coolness; but we consider, how we should be pleased with such fountains playing beside us, and such woods waving over us. We are agitated in reading the history of Henry the Fifth, yet no man takes his book for the field of Agencourt. A dramatick exhibition is a book recited with concomitants that encrease or diminish its effect. Familiar comedy is often more powerful on the theatre, than in the page; imperial tragedy is always less. The humour of Petruchio may be heightened by grimace;44 but what voice or what gesture can hope to add dignity or force to the soliloquy of Cato.45 A play read, affects the mind like a play acted. It is therefore evident, that the action is not supposed to be real, and it follows that between the acts a longer or shorter time may be allowed to pass, and that no more account of space or duration is to be taken by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, before whom may pass in an hour the life of a hero, or the revolutions of an empire. Whether Shakespeare knew the unities, and rejected them by design, or de­ viated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible to decide, and use­ less to enquire. We may reasonably suppose, that, when he rose to notice, he did not want the counsels and admonitions of scholars and criticks, and that he at last deliberately persisted in a practice, which he might have begun by chance. As noth­ ing is essential to the fable, but unity of action, and as the unities of time and place arise evidently from false assumptions, and, by circumscribing the extent of the drama, lessen its variety, I cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by him, or not observed: Nor, if such another poet could arise, should I very vehemently reproach him, that his first act passed at Venice, and his next in 43. Recreate: “To delight; to gratify” (Dictionary, sense 2). 44. Petruchio appears in The Taming of the Shrew. 45. Joseph Addison, Cato v.i.1–40, a famous passage at the time.

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Cyprus. Such violations of rules merely positive, become the comprehensive genius of Shakespeare, and such censures are suitable to the minute and slender criticism of Voltaire:46    Non usque adeo permiscuit imis Longus summa dies, ut non, si voce Metelli Serventur leges, malint a Caesare tolli.47

Yet when I speak thus slightly of dramatick rules, I cannot but recollect how much wit and learning may be produced against me; before such authorities I am afraid to stand, not that I think the present question one of those that are to be de­ cided by mere authority, but because it is to be suspected, that these precepts have not been so easily received but for better reasons than I have yet been able to find. The result of my enquiries, in which it would be ludicrous to boast of impartiality, is, that the unities of time and place are not essential to a just drama, that though they may sometimes conduce to pleasure, they are always to be sacrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and instruction; and that a play, written with nice observation of critical rules, is to be contemplated as an elaborate curiosity, as the product of superfluous and ostentatious art, by which is shewn, rather what is possible, than what is necessary. He that, without diminution of any other excellence, shall preserve all the unities unbroken, deserves the like applause with the architect, who shall display all the orders of architecture in a citadel, without any deduction from its strength; but the principal beauty of a citadel is to exclude the enemy; and the greatest graces of a play, are to copy nature and instruct life. Perhaps, what I have here not dogmatically but deliberatively written, may re­ cal the principles of the drama to a new examination. I am almost frighted at my own temerity; and when I estimate the fame and the strength of those that maintain the contrary opinion, am ready to sink down in reverential silence; as Æneas withdrew from the defence of Troy, when he saw Neptune shaking the wall, and Juno head­ ing the besiegers.48 Those whom my arguments cannot persuade to give their approbation to the judgment of Shakespeare, will easily, if they consider the condition of his life, make some allowance for his ignorance. 46. Voltaire criticized Othello for taking place in Venice and Cyprus in his Appel. 47. Lucan, Pharsalia (the Civil War), iii.138–40: “The course of time has not wrought such confusion that the laws would not rather be trampled on by Caesar than saved by Metellus” (Loeb edition, trans. J. D. Duff, 1928). 48. Aeneid, ii.610–15.



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Every man’s performances, to be rightly estimated, must be compared with the state of the age in which he lived, and with his own particular opportunities; and though to the reader a book be not worse or better for the circumstances of the au­ thour, yet as there is always a silent reference of human works to human abilities, and as the enquiry, how far man may extend his designs, or how high he may rate his native force, is of far greater dignity than in what rank we shall place any particular performance, curiosity is always busy to discover the instruments, as well as to sur­ vey the workmanship, to know how much is to be ascribed to original powers, and how much to casual and adventitious help. The palaces of Peru or Mexico were cer­ tainly mean and incommodious habitations, if compared to the houses of European monarchs; yet who could forbear to view them with astonishment, who remembered that they were built without the use of iron? The English nation, in the time of Shakespeare, was yet struggling to emerge from barbarity. The philology of Italy had been transplanted hither in the reign of Henry the Eighth; and the learned languages had been successfully cultivated by Lilly, Linacer, and More; by Pole, Cheke, and Gardiner; and afterwards by Smith, Clerk, Haddon, and Ascham.49 Greek was now taught to boys in the principal schools; and those who united elegance with learning, read, with great diligence, the Italian and Spanish poets. But literature50 was yet confined to professed schol­ ars, or to men and women of high rank. The publick was gross and dark; and to be able to read and write, was an accomplishment still valued for its rarity. Nations, like individuals, have their infancy. A people newly awakened to lit­ erary curiosity, being yet unacquainted with the true state of things, knows not how to judge of that which is proposed as its resemblance. Whatever is remote from common appearances is always welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity; and of a country unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar. The study of those who then aspired to plebeian learning was laid out upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. The Death of Arthur was the favourite volume.51 The mind, which has feasted on the luxurious wonders of fiction, has no taste of the insipidity of truth. A play which imitated only the common occurrences of 49. William Lily (1468–1522/3), nominal author of a famous Latin grammar; Thomas Linacre (1460– 1524), physician and humanist, translated Galen; Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), lord chancellor, translated Lucian; Stephen Gardiner (c. 1495–1555), scholar and Bishop of Winchester; Reginald Pole (1500–1558), Arch­ bishop of Canterbury; Sir John Cheke (1514–1557), Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge; Sir Thomas Smith (1513–1577), expert on Greek pronunciation; Walter Haddon (1514/15–1571), Regius Professor of Civil Law at Cambridge; John Clerk (1481/2?–­1541), Bishop of Bath and Wells; Roger Ascham (1514/15–1568), Queen Eliza­ beth’s tutor in Greek, whose English works SJ edited (see Yale, xix.423–72). 50. Literature: Humanistic learning. 51. SJ refers to Sir Thomas Malory (1415x18–1471), Morte D’Arthur, but he may mean only a chapbook based on the original.

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the world, would, upon the admirers of Palmerin and Guy of Warwick,52 have made little impression; he that wrote for such an audience was under the necessity of look­ ing round for strange events and fabulous transactions, and that incredibility, by which maturer knowledge is offended, was the chief recommendation of writings, to unskilful curiosity. Our authour’s plots are generally borrowed from novels, and it is reasonable to suppose, that he chose the most popular, such as were read by many, and related by more; for his audience could not have followed him through the intricacies of the drama, had they not held the thread of the story in their hands. The stories, which we now find only in remoter authours, were in his time ac­ cessible and familiar. The fable of As you like it, which is supposed to be copied from Chaucer’s Gamelyn, was a little pamphlet of those times;53 and old Mr. Cibber re­ membered the tale of Hamlet in plain English prose, which the criticks have now to seek in Saxo Grammaticus.54 His English histories he took from English chronicles and English ballads; and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen by versions, they sup­ plied him with new subjects; he dilated some of Plutarch’s lives into plays, when they had been translated by North.55 His plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crouded with incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more easily caught than by sentiment or argumentation; and such is the power of the marvellous even over those who despise it, that 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, and has perhaps excelled all but Homer in securing the first purpose of a writer, by exciting restless and unquenchable curi­ osity, and compelling him that reads his work to read it through. The shows and bustle with which his plays abound have the same original. As knowledge advances, pleasure passes from the eye to the ear, but returns, as it de­ clines, from the ear to the eye. Those to whom our authour’s labours were exhib­ ited had more skill in pomps or processions than in poetical language, and perhaps wanted some visible and discriminated events, as comments on the dialogue. He

52. Palmerin (Il Palmerino d’Inghilterra) and Guy of Warwick were popular romances that also appeared in chapbook form. 53. This tale, included in some editions of Chaucer but not written by him, was the source of Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde (1590), used by Shakespeare for his play. 54. Colley Cibber (1671–1757), actor, playwright, poet laureate, and autobiographer, may have seen a later edition of, or variation on, the prose History of Hamblet, first published in 1608. The Hamlet story is earlier found in Saxo’s Historia Danica, printed in 1514. Young Cibber (Theophilus), also an actor, died in 1758. 55. Sir Thomas North (1535–1603?), Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes (1579).



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knew how he should most please; and whether his practice is more agreeable to nature, or whether his example has prejudiced the nation, we still find that on our stage something must be done as well as said, and inactive declamation is very coldly heard, however musical or elegant, passionate or sublime. Voltaire expresses his wonder, that our authour’s extravagances are endured by a nation, which has seen the tragedy of Cato.56 Let him be answered, that Addison speaks the language of poets, and Shakespeare, of men. We find in Cato innumer­ able beauties which enamour us of its authour, but we see nothing that acquaints us with human sentiments or human actions; we place it with the fairest and the noblest progeny which judgment propagates by conjunction with learning, but Othello is the vigorous and vivacious offspring of observation impregnated by genius. Cato affords a splendid exhibition of artificial and fictitious manners, and delivers just and noble sentiments, in diction easy, elevated and harmonious, but its hopes and fears com­ municate no vibration to the heart; the composition refers us only to the writer; we pronounce the name of Cato, but we think on Addison. The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely fin­ ished, wrought into shape, and polished unto brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by in­ crustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals. It has been much disputed, whether Shakespeare owed his excellence to his own native force, or whether he had the common helps of scholastick education, the precepts of critical science, and the examples of ancient authours. There has always prevailed a tradition, that Shakespeare wanted learning, that he had no regular education, nor much skill in the dead languages. Johnson, his friend, affirms, that he had small Latin, and less Greek;57 who, besides that he had no imaginable temptation to falsehood, wrote at a time when the character and ac­ quisitions of Shakespeare were known to multitudes. His evidence ought therefore to decide the controversy, unless some testimony of equal force could be opposed. Some have imagined, that they have discovered deep learning in many imita­ tions of old writers; but the examples which I have known urged, were drawn from books translated in his time; or were such easy coincidencies of thought, as will 56. Appel à toutes les nations. 57. Ben Jonson (1572–1637), usually spelled “Johnson” in the eighteenth century; he made this remark in his commendatory verses for Shakespeare in the First Folio (1623).

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happen to all who consider the same subjects; or such remarks on life or axioms of morality as float in conversation, and are transmitted through the world in prover­ bial sentences. I have found it remarked, that, in this important sentence, “Go before, I’ll fol­ low,” we read a translation of, I prae, sequar.58 I have been told, that when Caliban, after a pleasing dream, says, “I cry’d to sleep again,” the authour imitates Anacreon, who had, like every other man, the same wish on the same occasion.59 There are a few passages which may pass for imitations, but so few, that the exception only confirms the rule; he obtained them from accidental quotations, or by oral communication, and as he used what he had, would have used more if he had obtained it. The Comedy of Errors is confessedly taken from the Menaechmi of Plautus;60 from the only play of Plautus which was then in English. What can be more prob­ able, than that he who copied that, would have copied more; but that those which were not translated were inaccessible? Whether he knew the modern languages is uncertain. That his plays have some French scenes proves but little; he might easily procure them to be written, and probably, even though he had known the language in the common degree, he could not have written it without assistance. In the story of Romeo and Juliet he is ob­ served to have followed the English translation, where it deviates from the Italian; but this on the other part proves nothing against his knowledge of the original. He was to copy, not what he knew himself, but what was known to his audience. It is most likely that he had learned Latin sufficiently to make him acquainted with construction, but that he never advanced to an easy perusal of the Roman au­ thours. Concerning his skill in modern languages, I can find no sufficient ground of determination; but as no imitations of French or Italian authours have been dis­ covered, though the Italian poetry was then high in esteem, I am inclined to believe, that he read little more than English, and chose for his fables only such tales as he found translated. That much knowledge is scattered over his works is very justly observed by Pope,61 but it is often such knowledge as books did not supply. He that will under­ stand Shakespeare, must not be content to study him in the closet,62 he must look for his meaning sometimes among the sports of the field, and sometimes among the manufactures of the shop.

58. The quotations are from Richard III, i.i.144, and Terence, The Fair Andrian, l. 171. 59. The lines are from The Tempest, iii.ii.156, and Anacreontea 1. 60. Plautus (254–184 BCE). The plot of his Menaechmi turns on a confusion between twin brothers. 61. Pope, Works of Shakespear, i.ix–­xiii. 62. “A small room of privacy and retirement” (Dictionary).



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There is however proof enough that he was a very diligent reader, nor was our language then so indigent of books, but that he might very liberally indulge his curi­ osity without excursion into foreign literature. Many of the Roman authours were translated, and some of the Greek; the Reformation had filled the kingdom with theological learning; most of the topicks of human disquisition had found English writers; and poetry had been cultivated, not only with diligence, but success. This was a stock of knowledge sufficient for a mind so capable of appropriating and im­ proving it. But the greater part of his excellence was the product of his own genius. He found the English stage in a state of the utmost rudeness; no essays either in tragedy or comedy had appeared, from which it could be discovered to what degree of de­ light either one or other might be carried. Neither character nor dialogue were yet understood. Shakespeare may be truly said to have introduced them both amongst us, and in some of his happier scenes to have carried them both to the utmost height. By what gradations of improvement he proceeded, is not easily known; for the chronology of his works is yet unsettled. Rowe is of opinion, that “perhaps we are not to look for his beginning, like those of other writers, in his least perfect works; art had so little, and nature so large a share in what he did, that for ought I know,” says he, “the performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous, were the best.”63 But the power of nature is only the power of using to any certain purpose the materials which diligence procures, or opportunity supplies. Nature gives no man knowledge, and when images are collected by study and experience, can only assist in combining or applying them. Shakespeare, however favoured by nature, could impart only what he had learned; and as he must increase his ideas, like other mor­ tals, by gradual acquisition, he, like them, grew wiser as he grew older, could dis­ play life better, as he knew it more, and instruct with more efficacy, as he was himself more amply instructed. There is a vigilance of observation and accuracy of distinction which books and precepts cannot confer; from this almost all original and native excellence pro­ ceeds. Shakespeare must have looked upon mankind with perspicacity, in the high­ est degree curious and attentive. Other writers borrow their characters from pre­ ceding writers, and diversify them only by the accidental appendages of present manners; the dress is a little varied, but the body is the same. Our authour had both matter and form to provide; for except the characters of Chaucer, to whom I think he is not much indebted, there were no writers in English, and perhaps not many in other modern languages, which shewed life in its native colours. The contest about the original benevolence or malignity of man had not yet commenced. Speculation had not yet attempted to analyse the mind, to trace the pas­ 63. Nicholas Rowe (1674–1718), Some Account of the Life &c. of Mr. William Shakespear (1709), par. 4.

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sions to their sources, to unfold the seminal principles of vice and virtue, or sound the depths of the heart for the motives of action. All those enquiries, which from that time that human nature became the fashionable study, have been made some­ times with nice discernment, but often with idle subtilty, were yet unattempted. The tales, with which the infancy of learning was satisfied, exhibited only the superficial appearances of action, related the events but omitted the causes, and were formed for such as delighted in wonders rather than in truth. Mankind was not then to be studied in the closet; he that would know the world, was under the necessity of gleaning his own remarks, by mingling as he could in its business and amusements. Boyle congratulated himself upon his high birth, because it favoured his curi­ osity, by facilitating his access.64 Shakespeare had no such advantage; he came to London a needy adventurer, and lived for a time by very mean employments. Many works of genius and learning have been performed in states of life, that appear very little favourable to thought or to enquiry; so many, that he who considers them is inclined to think that he sees enterprise and perseverance predominating over all external agency, and bidding help and hindrance vanish before them. The genius of Shakespeare was not to be depressed by the weight of poverty,65 nor limited by the narrow conversation to which men in want are inevitably condemned; the in­ cumbrances of his fortune were shaken from his mind, “as dewdrops from a lion’s mane.”66 Though he had so many difficulties to encounter, and so little assistance to sur­ mount them, he has been able to obtain an exact knowledge of many modes of life, and many casts of native dispositions; to vary them with great multiplicity; to mark them by nice distinctions; and to shew them in full view by proper combinations. In this part of his performances he had none to imitate, but has himself been imitated by all succeeding writers; and it may be doubted, whether from all his successors more maxims of theoretical knowledge, or more rules of practical prudence, can be collected, than he alone has given to his country. Nor was his attention confined to the actions of men; he was an exact surveyor of the inanimate world; his descriptions have always some peculiarities, gathered by contemplating things as they really exist. It may be observed, that the oldest poets of many nations preserve their reputation, and that the following generations of wit, after a short celebrity, sink into oblivion. The first, whoever they be, must take their sentiments and descriptions immediately from knowledge; the resemblance is therefore just, their descriptions are verified by every eye, and their sentiments acknowledged by every breast. Those whom their fame invites to the same studies, 64. The Works of Robert Boyle (1627–1691), ed. Thomas Birch (1705–1766), 5 vols. (1744), i.6. 65. Johnson recalls his own line in London (1738), “Slow rises worth, by Poverty depress’d” (l. 177). 66. Troilus and Cressida, iii.iii. 224.



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copy partly them, and partly nature, till the books of one age gain such authority, as to stand in the place of nature to another, and imitation, always deviating a little, be­ comes at last capricious and casual. Shakespeare, whether life or nature be his sub­ ject, shews plainly, that he has seen with his own eyes; he gives the image which he receives, not weakened or distorted by the intervention of any other mind; the igno­ rant feel his representations to be just, and the learned see that they are compleat. Perhaps it would not be easy to find any authour, except Homer, who invented so much as Shakespeare, who so much advanced the studies which he cultivated, or effused so much novelty upon his age or country. The form, the characters, the language, and the shows of the English drama are his. “He seems,” says Dennis, “to have been the very original of our English tragical harmony, that is, the harmony of blank verse, diversified often by dissyllable and trissyllable terminations.67 For the diversity distinguishes it from heroick harmony, and by bringing it nearer to com­ mon use makes it more proper to gain attention, and more fit for action and dia­ logue. Such verse we make when we are writing prose; we make such verse in com­ mon conversation.”68 I know not whether this praise is rigorously just. The dissyllable termination, which the critick rightly appropriates to the drama, is to be found, though, I think, not in Gorboduc which is confessedly before our authour;69 yet in Hieronnymo,70 of which the date is not certain, but which there is reason to believe at least as old as his earliest plays. This however is certain, that he is the first who taught either tragedy or comedy to please, there being no theatrical piece of any older writer, of which the name is known, except to antiquaries and collectors of books, which are sought because they are scarce, and would not have been scarce, had they been much es­ teemed. To him we must ascribe the praise, unless Spenser may divide it with him, of having first discovered to how much smoothness and harmony the English language could be softened. He has speeches, perhaps sometimes scenes, which have all the delicacy of Rowe, without his effeminacy. He endeavours indeed commonly to strike by the force and vigour of his dialogue, but he never executes his purpose better, than when he tries to sooth by softness. Yet it must be at last confessed, that as we owe every thing to him, he owes something to us; that, if much of his praise is paid by perception and judgement, much is likewise given by custom and veneration. We fix our eyes upon his graces, and turn them from his deformities, and endure in him what we should in another 67. These extra syllables (such as -­ly or -­ily) are sometimes called feminine endings. 68. Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare (Hooker, Critical Works, ii.4–5). 69. Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, The Tragedie of Gorboduc (performed 1562; published 1565). 70. Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedie (1592), known as Hieronimo.

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loath or despise. If we endured without praising, respect for the father of our drama might excuse us; but I have seen, in the book of some modern critick,71 a collection of anomalies, which shew that he has corrupted language by every mode of depra­ vation, but which his admirer has accumulated as a monument of honour. He has scenes of undoubted and perpetual excellence, but perhaps not one play, which, if it were now exhibited as the work of a contemporary writer, would be heard to the conclusion. I am indeed far from thinking, that his works were wrought to his own ideas of perfection; when they were such as would satisfy the audience, they satisfied the writer. It is seldom that authours, though more studious of fame than Shakespeare, rise much above the standard of their own age; to add a little to what is best will always be sufficient for present praise, and those who find themselves exalted into fame, are willing to credit their encomiasts, and to spare the labour of contending with themselves. It does not appear, that Shakespeare thought his works worthy of posterity, that he levied any ideal tribute upon future times, or had any further prospect, than of present popularity and present profit. When his plays had been acted, his hope was at an end; he solicited no addition of honour from the reader. He therefore made no scruple to repeat the same jests in many dialogues, or to entangle different plots by the same knot of perplexity, which may be at least forgiven him, by those who recollect, that of Congreve’s four comedies, two are concluded by a marriage in a mask, by a deception, which perhaps never happened, and which, whether likely or not, he did not invent. 72 So careless was this great poet of future fame, that, though he retired to ease and plenty, while he was yet little “declined into the vale of years,”73 before he could be disgusted with fatigue, or disabled by infirmity, he made no collection of his works, nor desired to rescue those that had been already published from the depra­ vations that obscured them, or secure to the rest a better destiny, by giving them to the world in their genuine state. Of the plays which bear the name of Shakespeare in the late editions, the greater part were not published till about seven years after his death, and the few which appeared in his life are apparently thrust into the world without the care of the authour, and therefore probably without his knowledge.74 Of all the publishers, clandestine or professed, the negligence and unskilful­ ness has by the late revisers75 been sufficiently shown. The faults of all are indeed 71. John Upton (1707–1760), Critical Observations on Shakespeare (1746), pp. 284–328. 72. William Congreve (1670–1729), The Old Bachelor (1693), Love for Love (1695). 73. Othello, iii.iii.269–70. 74. The First Folio (1623) was published seven years after Shakespeare’s death; there were cheaper, quarto publications of many of his plays before that. 75. Recent editors.



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numerous and gross, and have not only corrupted many passages perhaps beyond recovery, but have brought others into suspicion, which are only obscured by obso­ lete phraseology, or by the writer’s unskilfulness and affectation. To alter is more easy than to explain, and temerity is a more common quality than diligence. Those who saw that they must employ conjecture to a certain degree, were willing to in­ dulge it a little further. Had the authour published his own works, we should have sat quietly down to disentangle his intricacies, and clear his obscurities; but now we tear what we cannot loose, and eject what we happen not to understand. The faults are more than could have happened without the concurrence of many causes. The stile of Shakespeare was in itself ungrammatical, perplexed and obscure; his works were transcribed for the players by those who may be supposed to have seldom understood them; they were transmitted by copiers equally unskilful, who still multiplied errours; they were perhaps sometimes mutilated by the actors, for the sake of shortening the speeches; and were at last printed without correction of the press. In this state they remained, not as Dr. Warburton76 supposes, because they were unregarded, but because the editor’s art was not yet applied to modern languages, and our ancestors were accustomed to so much negligence of English printers, that they could very patiently endure it. At last an edition was undertaken by Rowe;77 not because a poet was to be published by a poet, for Rowe seems to have thought very little on correction or explanation, but that our authour’s works might appear like those of his fraternity, with the appendages of a life and recommendatory preface. Rowe has been clamorously blamed for not performing what he did not undertake, and it is time that justice be done him, by confessing, that though he seems to have had no thought of corruption beyond the printer’s errours, yet he has made many emendations, if they were not made before, which his successors have received with­ out acknowledgement, and which, if they had produced them, would have filled pages and pages with censures of the stupidity by which the faults were committed, with displays of the absurdities which they involved, with ostentatious expositions of the new reading, and self congratulations on the happiness of discovering it. As of the other editors, I have preserved the prefaces, I have likewise borrowed the author’s life from Rowe, though not written with much elegance or spirit; it re­ lates however what is now to be known, and therefore deserves to pass through all succeeding publications.78 The nation had been for many years content enough with Mr. Rowe’s perfor­ 76. William Warburton (1698–1779), Preface to The Works of Shakespear (1747), par. 2. 77. The Works of Mr. William Shakespear, ed. Nicholas Rowe (1709). 78. SJ appended Rowe’s life of Shakespeare, as revised by Pope, but to this he added a dubious story about Shakespeare first working as a stableman outside the theater.

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mance, when Mr. Pope made them acquainted with the true state of Shakespeare’s text, shewed that it was extremely corrupt, and gave reason to hope that there were means of reforming it. He collated the old copies, which none had thought to ex­ amine before, and restored many lines to their integrity; but, by a very compendi­ ous79 criticism, he rejected whatever he disliked, and thought more of amputation than of cure. I know not why he is commended by Dr. Warburton for distinguishing the genuine from the spurious plays.80 In this choice he exerted no judgement of his own; the plays which he received, were given by Hemings and Condel, the first edi­ tors; and those which he rejected, though, according to the licentiousness of the press in those times, they were printed during Shakespeare’s life, with his name, had been omitted by his friends, and were never added to his works before the edition of 1664,81 from which they were copied by the later printers. This was a work which Pope seems to have thought unworthy of his abili­ ties, being not able to suppress his contempt of “the dull duty of an editor.”82 He understood but half his undertaking.83 The duty of a collator is indeed dull,84 yet, like other tedious tasks, is very necessary; but an emendatory critick would ill dis­ charge his duty, without qualities very different from dulness. In perusing a cor­ rupted piece, he must have before him all possibilities of meaning, with all possi­ bilities of expression. Such must be his comprehension of thought, and such his copiousness of language. Out of many readings possible, he must be able to select that which best suits with the state, opinions, and modes of language prevailing in every age, and with his authour’s particular cast of thought, and turn of expression. Such must be his knowledge, and such his taste. Conjectural criticism demands more than humanity possesses, and he that exercises it with most praise has very fre­ quent need of indulgence. Let us now be told no more of the dull duty of an editor. Confidence is the common consequence of success. They whose excellence of any kind has been loudly celebrated, are ready to conclude, that their powers are 79. “Short; summary; abridged; direct; comprehensive” (Dictionary). 80. Warburton, Preface to The Works of Shakespear, par. 4. 81. The Fourth Folio of Shakespeare’s works appeared in 1664 and included spurious works. Rowe used this edition as his text. Johnson chose the First Folio (1623) as his copy-­text, but he does not seem to have used a copy of it (or the quartos) directly or systematically. Although he owned a Second Folio (1632), he relied a good deal on earlier editors. See David Bevington, “The Siren Call of Earlier Editorial Practice,” in Comparative Excellence, ed. Aaron Santesso and Eric Rasmussen (2007), pp. 139–60. 82. Pope, Preface to The Works of Shakespear, i.xxii. 83. In his “Pope,” SJ wrote: “Pope in his edition undoubtedly did many things wrong, and left many things undone; but let him not be defrauded of his due praise: he was the first that knew, at least the first that told, by what helps the text might be improved. If he inspected the early editions negligently, he taught others to be more accurate” (see p. 735 below). 84. Collator: One who compares copies of books or manuscripts with each other.



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universal. Pope’s edition fell below his own expectations, and he was so much of­ fended, when he was found to have left any thing for others to do, that he past the latter part of his life in a state of hostility with verbal criticism.85 I have retained all his notes, that no fragment of so great a writer may be lost;86 his preface, valuable alike for elegance of composition and justness of remark, and containing a general criticism on his authour, so extensive that little can be added, and so exact, that little can be disputed, every editor has an interest to suppress, but that every reader would demand its insertion. Pope was succeeded by Theobald,87 a man of narrow comprehension and small acquisitions, with no native and intrinsick splendour of genius, with little of the arti­ ficial light of learning, but zealous for minute accuracy, and not negligent in pursu­ ing it. He collated the ancient copies, and rectified many errors. A man so anxiously scrupulous might have been expected to do more, but what little he did was com­ monly right. In his reports of copies and editions he is not to be trusted, without examina­ tion. He speaks sometimes indefinitely of copies, when he has only one. In his enu­ meration of editions, he mentions the two first folios as of high, and the third folio as of middle authority; but the truth is, that the first is equivalent to all others, and that the rest only deviate from it by the printer’s negligence. Whoever has any of the folios has all, excepting those diversities which mere reiteration of editions will pro­ duce. I collated them all at the beginning, but afterwards used only the first.88 Of his notes I have generally retained those which he retained himself in his second edition, except when they were confuted by subsequent annotators, or were too minute to merit preservation. I have sometimes adopted his restoration of a comma, without inserting the panegyrick in which he celebrated himself for his at­ chievement. The exuberant excrescence of his diction I have often lopped, his trium­ phant exultations over Pope and Rowe I have sometimes suppressed, and his con­ temptible ostentation I have frequently concealed; but 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. 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 es­ caped alone, with reputation, from this undertaking. So willingly does the world 85. “Verbal criticism”: The work of scholarly editors. Pope’s Dunciad ridicules many scholarly editors, including and especially Lewis Theobald. 86. Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare retains and often adds commentary on many—but not all—of the notes of Pope and other earlier editors. It is in that sense the first variorum edition. 87. Lewis Theobald (1688–1744) in Shakespeare Restored (1726) severely criticized Pope’s editorial de­ cisions. 88. See p. 449, n. 81, above.

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support those who solicite favour, against those who command reverence; and so easily is he praised, whom no man can envy. Our authour fell then into the hands of Sir Thomas Hanmer,89 the Oxford editor, a man, in my opinion, eminently qualified by nature for such studies. He had, what is the first requisite to emendatory criticism, that intuition by which the poet’s intention is immediately discovered, and that dexterity of intellect which des­ patches its work by the easiest means. He had undoubtedly read much; his acquain­ tance with customs, opinions, and traditions, seems to have been large; and he is often learned without shew. He seldom passes what he does not understand, with­ out an attempt to find or to make a meaning, and sometimes hastily makes what a little more attention would have found. He is solicitous to reduce to grammar, what he could not be sure that his authour intended to be grammatical. Shakespeare re­ garded more the series of ideas, than of words; and his language, not being designed for the reader’s desk, was all that he desired it to be, if it conveyed his meaning to the audience. Hanmer’s care of the metre has been too violently censured. He found the mea­ sures reformed in so many passages, by the silent labours of some editors, with the silent acquiescence of the rest, that he thought himself allowed to extend a little fur­ ther the license, which had already been carried so far without reprehension; and of his corrections in general, it must be confessed, that they are often just, and made commonly with the least possible violation of the text. But, by inserting his emendations, whether invented or borrowed, into the page, without any notice of varying copies, he has appropriated the labour of his predecessors, and made his own edition of little authority. His confidence indeed, both in himself and others, was too great; he supposes all to be right that was done by Pope and Theobald; he seems not to suspect a critick of fallibility, and it was but reasonable that he should claim what he so liberally granted. As he never writes without careful enquiry and diligent consideration, I have received all his notes, and believe that every reader will wish for more. Of the last editor it is more difficult to speak.90 Respect is due to high place, tenderness to living reputation, and veneration to genius and learning; but he can­ not be justly offended at that liberty of which he has himself so frequently given an example, nor very solicitous what is thought of notes, which he ought never to have considered as part of his serious employments, and which, I suppose, since the ardour of composition is remitted, he no longer numbers among his happy effusions. The original and predominant errour of his commentary, is acquiescence in his first thoughts; that precipitation which is produced by consciousness of quick 89. Sir Thomas Hanmer (1677–1746), ed., The Works of Shakespear, 6 vols. (1743–44). 90. William Warburton, whose edition appeared in 1747, was made Bishop of Gloucester in 1759.



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discernment; and that confidence which presumes to do, by surveying the surface, what labour only can perform, by penetrating the bottom. His notes exhibit some­ times perverse interpretations, and sometimes improbable conjectures; he at one time gives the authour more profundity of meaning, than the sentence admits, and at another discovers absurdities, where the sense is plain to every other reader. But his emendations are likewise often happy and just; and his interpretation of obscure passages learned and sagacious. Of his notes, I have commonly rejected those, against which the general voice of the publick has exclaimed, or which their own incongruity immediately con­ demns, and which, I suppose, the authour himself would desire to be forgotten. Of the rest, to part I have given the highest approbation, by inserting the offered reading in the text; part I have left to the judgment of the reader, as doubtful, though spe­ cious; and part I have censured without reserve, but I am sure without bitterness of malice, and, I hope, without wantonness of insult. It is no pleasure to me, in revising my volumes, to observe how much paper is wasted in confutation. Whoever considers the revolutions of learning, and the vari­ ous questions of greater or less importance, upon which wit and reason have exer­ cised their powers, must lament the unsuccessfulness of enquiry, and the slow ad­ vances of truth, when he reflects, that great part of the labour of every writer is only the destruction of those that went before him. The first care of the builder of a new system, is to demolish the fabricks which are standing. The chief desire of him that comments an authour, is to shew how much other commentators have corrupted and obscured him. The opinions prevalent in one age, as truths above the reach of controversy, are confuted and rejected in another, and rise again to reception in remoter times. Thus the human mind is kept in motion without progress. Thus sometimes truth and errour, and sometimes contrarieties of errour, take each others place by reciprocal invasion. The tide of seeming knowledge which is poured over one generation, retires and leaves another naked and barren; the sudden meteors of intelligence which for a while appear to shoot their beams into the regions of obscu­ rity, on a sudden withdraw their lustre, and leave mortals again to grope their way. These elevations and depressions of renown, and the contradictions to which all improvers of knowledge must for ever be exposed, since they are not escaped by the highest and brightest of mankind, may surely be endured with patience by crit­ icks and annotators, who can rank themselves but as the satellites of their authours. How canst thou beg for life, says Homer’s hero to his captive, when thou knowest that thou art now to suffer only what must another day be suffered by Achilles?91 Dr. Warburton had a name sufficient to confer celebrity on those who could exalt themselves into antagonists, and his notes have raised a clamour too loud to 91. Iliad, xxi.106–14.

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be distinct. His chief assailants are the authours of The Canons of Criticism and of the Revisal of Shakespeare’s Text;92 of whom one ridicules his errours with airy petu­ lance, suitable enough to the levity of the controversy; the other attacks them with gloomy malignity, as if he were dragging to justice an assassin or incendiary. The one stings like a fly, sucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter, and returns for more; the other bites like a viper, and would be glad to leave inflammations and gangrene behind him. When I think on one, with his confederates, I remember the danger of Coriolanus, who was afraid that “girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle,”93 when the other crosses my imagination, I remember the prodigy in Macbeth, A falcon tow’ring in his pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk’d at and kill’d.94

Let me however do them justice. One is a wit, and one a scholar. They have both shewn acuteness sufficient in the discovery of faults, and have both advanced some probable interpretations of obscure passages; but when they aspire to conjec­ ture and emendation, it appears how falsely we all estimate our own abilities, and the little which they have been able to perform might have taught them more candour to the endeavours of others. Before Dr. Warburton’s edition, Critical Observations on Shakespeare had been published by Mr. Upton, a man skilled in languages, and acquainted with books, but who seems to have had no great vigour of genius or nicety of taste.95 Many of his explanations are curious and useful, but he likewise, though he professed to oppose the licentious confidence of editors, and adhere to the old copies, is unable to re­ strain the rage of emendation, though his ardour is ill seconded by his skill. Every cold empirick,96 when his heart is expanded by a successful experiment, swells into a theorist, and the laborious collator at some unlucky moment frolicks in conjecture. Critical, Historical and Explanatory Notes have been likewise published upon Shakespeare by Dr. Grey, whose diligent perusal of the old English writers has en­ abled him to make some useful observations.97 What he undertook he has well 92. Thomas Edwards (d. 1757), author of Canons (1748), was a critic of Johnson’s Dictionary; Benjamin Heath (1704–1766), author of Revisal (1765), was a classicist and book collector. 93. Coriolanus, iv.iv.5–6, paraphrased. 94. Macbeth, ii.iv.12–13. 95. Critical Observations (1746; revised, 1748); see p. 447, n. 71, above. Upton also edited Spenser’s Faerie Queene, 2 vols. (1758). 96. “A trier or experimenter; such persons as have no true education . . . but venture upon hearsay” (Dictionary). 97. Zachary Grey (1688–1766), Critical, Historical, and Explanatory Notes on Shakespeare, 2 vols. (1754).



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enough performed, but as he neither attempts judicial nor emendatory criticism, he employs rather his memory than his sagacity. It were to be wished that all would en­ deavour to imitate his modesty who have not been able to surpass his knowledge. I can say with great sincerity of all my predecessors, what I hope will hereafter be said of me, that not one has left Shakespeare without improvement, nor is there one to whom I have not been indebted for assistance and information. Whatever I have taken from them it was my intention to refer to its original authour, and it is cer­ tain, that what I have not given to another, I believed when I wrote it to be my own. In some perhaps I have been anticipated; but if I am ever found to encroach upon the remarks of any other commentator, I am willing that the honour, be it more or less, should be transferred to the first claimant, for his right, and his alone, stands above dispute; the second can prove his pretensions only to himself, nor can himself always distinguish invention, with sufficient certainty, from recollection. They have all been treated by me with candour, which they have not been care­ ful of observing to one another. It is not easy to discover from what cause the acri­ mony of a scholiast98 can naturally proceed. The subjects to be discussed by him are of very small importance; they involve neither property nor liberty; nor favour the interest of sect or party. The various readings of copies, and different interpreta­ tions of a passage, seem to be questions that might exercise the wit, without engag­ ing the passions. But, whether it be, that “small things make mean men proud,”99 and vanity catches small occasions; or that all contrariety of opinion, even in those that can defend it no longer, makes proud men angry; there is often found in com­ mentaries a spontaneous strain of invective and contempt, more eager and venom­ ous than is vented by the most furious controvertist in politicks against those whom he is hired to defame. Perhaps the lightness of the matter may conduce to the vehemence of the agency; when the truth to be investigated is so near to inexistence, as to escape at­ tention, its bulk is to be enlarged by rage and exclamation: That to which all would be indifferent in its original state, may attract notice when the fate of a name is ap­ pended to it. A commentator has indeed great temptations to supply by turbulence what he wants of dignity, to beat his little gold to a spacious surface, to work that to foam which no art or diligence can exalt to spirit. The notes which I have borrowed or written are either illustrative, by which difficulties are explained; or judicial, by which faults and beauties are remarked; or emendatory, by which depravations are corrected. The explanations transcribed from others, if I do not subjoin any other inter­ 98. Commentator. 99. 2 Henry VI, iv.i.106 (with “mean” substituted for “base”).

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pretation, I suppose commonly to be right, at least I intend by acquiescence to con­ fess, that I have nothing better to propose. After the labours of all the editors, I found many passages which appeared to me likely to obstruct the greater number of readers, and thought it my duty to facili­ tate their passage. It is impossible for an expositor not to write too little for some, and too much for others. He can only judge what is necessary by his own experi­ ence; and how long soever he may deliberate, will at last explain many lines which the learned will think impossible to be mistaken, and omit many for which the igno­ rant will want his help. These are censures merely relative, and must be quietly en­ dured. I have endeavoured to be neither superfluously copious, nor scrupulously reserved, and hope that I have made my authour’s meaning accessible to many who before were frighted from perusing him, and contributed something to the publick, by diffusing innocent and rational pleasure. The compleat explanation of an authour not systematick and consequential, but desultory and vagrant,100 abounding in casual allusions and light hints, is not to be expected from any single scholiast. All personal reflections, when names are sup­ pressed, must be in a few years irrecoverably obliterated; and customs, too minute to attract the notice of law, such as modes of dress, formalities of conversation, rules of visits, disposition of furniture, and practices of ceremony, which naturally find places in familiar dialogue, are so fugitive and unsubstantial, that they are not easily retained or recovered. What can be known, will be collected by chance, from the recesses of obscure and obsolete papers, perused commonly with some other view. Of this knowledge every man has some, and none has much; but when an authour has engaged the publick attention, those who can add any thing to his illustration,101 communicate their discoveries, and time produces what had eluded diligence. To time I have been obliged to resign many passages, which, though I did not understand them, will perhaps hereafter be explained, having, I hope, illustrated some, which others have neglected or mistaken, sometimes by short remarks, or marginal directions, such as every editor has added at his will, and often by com­ ments more laborious than the matter will seem to deserve; but that which is most difficult is not always most important, and to an editor nothing is a trifle by which his authour is obscured. The poetical beauties or defects I have not been very diligent to observe. Some plays have more, and some fewer judicial observations, not in proportion to their difference of merit, but because I gave this part of my design to chance and to ca­ price. The reader, I believe, is seldom pleased to find his opinion anticipated; it is 100. “Wandering, unsettled” (Dictionary). 101. “Explanation; elucidation” (Dictionary).



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natural to delight more in what we find or make, than in what we receive. Judge­ ment, like other faculties, is improved by practice, and its advancement is hindered by submission to dictatorial decisions, as the memory grows torpid by the use of a table book.102 Some initiation is however necessary; of all skill, part is infused by precept, and part is obtained by habit; I have therefore shewn so much as may en­ able the candidate of criticism to discover the rest. To the end of most plays, I have added short strictures,103 containing a gen­ eral censure of faults, or praise of excellence; in which I know not how much I have concurred with the current opinion; but I have not, by any affectation of singularity, deviated from it. Nothing is minutely and particularly examined, and therefore it is to be supposed, that in the plays which are condemned there is much to be praised, and in those which are praised much to be condemned. The part of criticism in which the whole succession of editors has laboured with the greatest diligence, which has occasioned the most arrogant ostentation, and excited the keenest acrimony, is the emendation of corrupted passages, to which the publick attention having been first drawn by the violence of the contention between Pope and Theobald, has been continued by the persecution, which, with a kind of conspiracy, has been since raised against all the publishers of Shakespeare. That many passages have passed in a state of depravation through all the edi­ tions is indubitably certain; of these the restoration is only to be attempted by colla­ tion of copies or sagacity of conjecture. The collator’s province is safe and easy, the conjecturer’s perilous and difficult. Yet as the greater part of the plays are extant only in one copy, the peril must not be avoided, nor the difficulty refused. Of the readings which this emulation104 of amendment has hitherto produced, some from the labours of every publisher I have advanced into the text; those are to be considered as in my opinion sufficiently supported; some I have rejected without mention, as evidently erroneous; some I have left in the notes without censure or ap­ probation, as resting in equipoise between objection and defence; and some, which seemed specious but not right, I have inserted with a subsequent animadversion. Having classed the observations of others, I was at last to try what I could sub­ stitute for their mistakes, and how I could supply their omissions. I collated such copies as I could procure, and wished for more, but have not found the collectors of these rarities very communicative.105 Of the editions which chance or kindness

102. A notebook (OED, sense 1). 103. “A slight touch upon a subject; not a set discourse” (Dictionary). 104. “Ambitious rivalry” (OED, sense 2). 105. This is usually taken as a dig at David Garrick, who may have been reluctant to lend Johnson his rare books, but SJ probably did not do all he could to locate copies.

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put into my hands I have given an enumeration,106 that I may not be blamed for ne­ glecting what I had not the power to do. By examining the old copies, I soon found that the later publishers, with all their boasts of diligence, suffered many passages to stand unauthorised, and con­ tented themselves with Rowe’s regulation of the text, even where they knew it to be arbitrary, and with a little consideration might have found it to be wrong. Some of these alterations are only the ejection of a word for one that appeared to him more elegant or more intelligible. These corruptions I have often silently rectified; for the history of our language, and the true force of our words, can only be preserved, by keeping the text of authours free from adulteration. Others, and those very frequent, smoothed the cadence, or regulated the measure; on these I have not exercised the same rigour; if only a word was transposed, or a particle inserted or omitted, I have sometimes suffered the line to stand; for the inconstancy of the copies is such, as that some liberties may be easily permitted. But this practice I have not suffered to proceed far, having restored the primitive diction wherever it could for any reason be preferred. The emendations, which comparison of copies supplied, I have inserted in the text; sometimes where the improvement was slight, without notice, and sometimes with an account of the reasons of the change. Conjecture, though it be sometimes unavoidable, I have not wantonly nor licentiously indulged. It has been my settled principle, that the reading of the an­ cient books is probably true, and therefore is not to be disturbed for the sake of ele­ gance, perspicuity, or mere improvement of the sense. For though much credit is not due to the fidelity, nor any to the judgement of the first publishers, yet they who had the copy before their eyes were more likely to read it right, than we who read it only by imagination. But it is evident that they have often made strange mistakes by ignorance or negligence, and that therefore something may be properly attempted by criticism, keeping the middle way between presumption and timidity. Such criticism I have attempted to practise, and where any passage appeared inextricably perplexed, have endeavoured to discover how it may be recalled to sense, with least violence. But my first labour is, always to turn the old text on every side, and try if there be any interstice, through which light can find its way; nor would Huetius himself condemn me,107 as refusing the trouble of research, for the ambition of alteration. In this modest industry I have not been unsuccessful. I have rescued many lines from the violations of temerity, and secured many scenes from 106. A list of editions is inserted, usually after the dramatis personae, for each play. 107. Pierre Daniel Huet (1630–1721), humanist scholar, linguist, and author of De Interpretatione Libri Duo (1661).



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the inroads of correction. I have adopted the Roman sentiment, that it is more hon­ ourable to save a citizen, than to kill an enemy, and have been more careful to pro­ tect than to attack.108 I have preserved the common distribution of the plays into acts, though I be­ lieve it to be in almost all the plays void of authority. Some of those which are divided in the later editions have no division in the first folio, and some that are divided in the folio have no division in the preceding copies. The settled mode of the theatre requires four intervals in the play, but few, if any, of our authour’s compositions can be properly distributed in that manner. An act is so much of the drama as passes without intervention of time or change of place. A pause makes a new act. In every real, and therefore in every imitative action, the intervals may be more or fewer, the restriction of five acts being accidental and arbitrary. This Shakespeare knew, and this he practised; his plays were written, and at first printed in one unbroken conti­ nuity, and ought now to be exhibited with short pauses, interposed as often as the scene is changed, or any considerable time is required to pass. This method would at once quell a thousand absurdities. In restoring the authour’s works to their integrity, I have considered the punc­ tuation as wholly in my power; for what could be their care of colons and commas, who corrupted words and sentences. Whatever could be done by adjusting points is therefore silently performed, in some plays with much diligence, in others with less; it is hard to keep a busy eye steadily fixed upon evanescent atoms, or a discur­ sive mind upon evanescent truth. The same liberty has been taken with a few particles, or other words of slight effect. I have sometimes inserted or omitted them without notice. I have done that sometimes, which the other editors have done always, and which indeed the state of the text may sufficiently justify. The greater part of readers, instead of blaming us for passing trifles, will won­ der that on mere trifles so much labour is expended, with such importance of de­ bate, and such solemnity of diction. To these I answer with confidence, that they are judging of an art which they do not understand; yet cannot much reproach them with their ignorance, nor promise that they would become in general, by learning criticism, more useful, happier or wiser. As I practised conjecture more, I learned to trust it less; and after I had printed a few plays, resolved to insert none of my own readings in the text. Upon this caution I now congratulate myself, for every day encreases my doubt of my emendations. Since I have confined my imagination to the margin,109 it must not be consid­ 108. The corona civica (civic crown) consisting of oak leaves and acorns was given to Roman soldiers who saved the life of a citizen. 109. SJ means he registered his conjectural emendations in the footnotes, without altering the text itself.

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ered as very reprehensible, if I have suffered it to play some freaks in its own domin­ ion. There is no danger in conjecture, if it be proposed as conjecture; and while the text remains uninjured, those changes may be safely offered, which are not consid­ ered even by him that offers them as necessary or safe. If my readings are of little value, they have not been ostentatiously displayed or importunately obtruded. I could have written longer notes, for the art of writing notes is not of difficult attainment. The work is performed, first by railing at the stu­ pidity, negligence, ignorance, and asinine tastelessness of the former editors, and shewing, from all that goes before and all that follows, the inelegance and absurdity of the old reading; then by proposing something, which to superficial readers would seem specious, but which the editor rejects with indignation; then by producing the true reading, with a long paraphrase, and concluding with loud acclamations on the discovery, and a sober wish for the advancement and prosperity of genuine criticism. All this may be done, and perhaps done sometimes without impropriety. But I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to be right. The justness of a happy restoration strikes at once, and the moral precept may be well applied to criticism, quod dubitas ne feceris.110 To dread the shore which he sees spread with wrecks, is natural to the sailor. I had before my eye, so many critical adventures ended in miscarriage, that cau­ tion was forced upon me. I encountered in every page Wit struggling with its own sophistry, and Learning confused by the multiplicity of its views. I was forced to censure those whom I admired, and could not but reflect, while I was dispossess­ ing their emendations, how soon the same fate might happen to my own, and how many of the readings which I have corrected may be by some other editor defended and established. Criticks I saw, that other’s names efface, And fix their own, with labour, in the place; Their own, like others, soon their place resign’d, Or disappear’d, and left the first behind. Pope.111

That a conjectural critick should often be mistaken, cannot be wonderful,112 either to others or himself, if it be considered, that in his art there is no system, no principal and axiomatical truth that regulates subordinate positions. His chance of 110. “When in doubt, don’t.” Pliny, Epistles, i.xviii. 111. Temple of Fame, ll. 37–40 (Pope’s text has “deface” rather than “efface”). 112. Strange; a source of wonder.



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errour is renewed at every attempt; an oblique view of the passage, a slight misappre­ hension of a phrase, a casual inattention to the parts connected, is sufficient to make him not only fail, but fail ridiculously; and when he succeeds best, he produces per­ haps but one reading of many probable, and he that suggests another will always be able to dispute his claims. It is an unhappy state, in which danger is hid under pleasure. The allurements of emendation are scarcely resistible. Conjecture has all the joy and all the pride of invention, and he that has once started a happy change, is too much delighted to consider what objections may rise against it. Yet conjectural criticism has been of great use in the learned world; nor is it my intention to depreciate a study, that has exercised so many mighty minds, from the revival of learning to our own age, from the Bishop of Aleria to English Bent­ ley.113 The criticks on ancient authours have, in the exercise of their sagacity, many assistances, which the editor of Shakespeare is condemned to want. They are em­ ployed upon grammatical and settled languages, whose construction contributes so much to perspicuity, that Homer has fewer passages unintelligible than Chaucer. The words have not only a known regimen, but invariable quantities,114 which direct and confine the choice. There are commonly more manuscripts than one; and they do not often conspire in the same mistakes. Yet Scaliger could confess to Salmasius how little satisfaction his emendations gave him. Illudunt nobis conjecturae nostrae, quarum nos pudet, posteaquam in meliores codices incidimus.115 And Lipsius could complain, that criticks were making faults, by trying to remove them, Ut olim vitiis, ita nunc remediis laboratur.116 And indeed, where mere conjecture is to be used, the emendations of Scaliger and Lipsius, notwithstanding their wonderful sagacity and erudition, are often vague and disputable, like mine or Theobald’s. Perhaps I may not be more censured for doing wrong, than for doing little; for raising in the publick expectations, which at last I have not answered. The expecta­ tion of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to satisfy those who know not what to demand, or those who demand by design what they think impossible to be done. I have indeed disappointed no opinion more

113. Giovanni Antonio Andrea ( Joannes Andreas) (1417–­c. 1480), edited Herodotus, Livy, and other clas­ sical authors. Richard Bentley (1662–1742), the greatest classical scholar of his time, edited Homer, Manilius, and Horace, as well as Milton. 114. “The length or duration of a syllable, vowel sound, etc.” (OED, sense 8.b); classical prosody depends on quantity as well as stress. 115. “Our conjectures make fools of us, putting us to shame, when later we hit upon better MSS.” Joseph Scaliger (1540–1609), Epistolae (Leyden, 1627), Epistola CCXLVIII, to Claudius Salmasius (1588–1653), 14 July 1608. 116. Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), Ad Annales Cornelii Taciti Liber Commentarius sive Notae (1581), Pref­ ace: “As it was once burdened with faults, the text is now burdened with remedies.”

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than my own; yet I have endeavoured to perform my task with no slight solicitude. Not a single passage in the whole work has appeared to me corrupt, which I have not attempted to restore; or obscure, which I have not endeavoured to illustrate. In many I have failed like others; and from many, after all my efforts, I have retreated, and confessed the repulse. I have not passed over, with affected superiority, what is equally difficult to the reader and to myself, but where I could not instruct him, have owned my ignorance. I might easily have accumulated a mass of seeming learning upon easy scenes; but it ought not to be imputed to negligence, that, where noth­ ing was necessary, nothing has been done, or that, where others have said enough, I have said no more. Notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. Let him, that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to feel the high­ est pleasure that the drama can give, read every play from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him pre­ serve his comprehension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. And when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness, and read the commen­ tators. Particular passages are cleared by notes, but the general effect of the work is weakened. The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principal subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied. Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehension of any great work in its full design and its true proportions; a close approach shews the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is discerned no longer. It is not very grateful117 to consider how little the succession of editors has added to this authour’s power of pleasing. He was read, admired, studied, and imi­ tated, while he was yet deformed with all the improprieties which ignorance and neglect could accumulate upon him; while the reading was yet not rectified, nor his allusions understood; yet then did Dryden pronounce “that Shakespeare was the man, who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most com­ prehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: When he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater com­ mendation: he was naturally learned: he needed not the spectacles of books to read 117. Agreeable; gratifying.



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nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comick wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him: No man can say, he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets, Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.”118

It is to be lamented, that such a writer should want a commentary; that his language should become obsolete, or his sentiments obscure. But it is vain to carry wishes beyond the condition of human things; that which must happen to all, has happened to Shakespeare, by accident and time; and more than has been suffered by any other writer since the use of types, has been suffered by him through his own negligence of fame, or perhaps by that superiority of mind, which despised its own performances, when it compared them with its powers, and judged those works un­ worthy to be preserved, which the criticks of following ages were to contend for the fame of restoring and explaining. Among these candidates of inferiour fame, I am now to stand the judgment of the publick; and wish that I could confidently produce my commentary as equal to the encouragement which I have had the honour of receiving. Every work of this kind is by its nature deficient, and I should feel little solicitude119 about the sentence, were it to be pronounced only by the skilful and the learned.

118. John Dryden, An Essay of Dramatick Poesy (1667), Works of John Dryden, Vol. XVII (1971), 55–56, citing Virgil, Eclogues, i.25: “as cypresses oft do among the bending ossiers” (Loeb edition, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, 1978). 119. Anxiety.

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E N D N OT E S TO S E L E C T E D P L AYS Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 None of Shakespeare’s plays are more read than the First and Second Parts of Henry the Fourth. Perhaps no authour has ever in two plays afforded so much de­ light. The great events are interesting, for the fate of kingdoms depends upon them; the slighter occurrences are diverting, and, except one or two, sufficiently probable; the incidents are multiplied with wonderful fertility of invention, and the characters diversified with the utmost nicety of discernment, and the profoundest skill in the nature of man. The Prince, who is the hero both of the comick and tragick part, is a young man of great abilities and violent passions, whose sentiments are right, though his actions are wrong; whose virtues are obscured by negligence, and whose under­ standing is dissipated by levity. In his idle hours he is rather loose than wicked, and when the occasion forces out his latent qualities, he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in the trifler. This character is great, original, and just. Percy is a rugged soldier, cholerick, and quarrelsome, and has only the sol­ dier’s virtues, generosity and courage. But Falstaff unimitated, unimitable Falstaff, how shall I describe thee? Thou compound of sense and vice; of sense which may be admired but not esteemed, of vice which may be despised, but hardly detested. Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with those faults which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief, and a glutton, a coward, and a boaster, always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor; to terrify the timorous and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious and ma­ lignant, he satirises in their absence those whom he lives by flattering. He is familiar with the Prince only as an agent of vice, but of this familiarity he is so proud as not only to be supercilious and haughty with common men, but to think his interest of importance to the Duke of Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despicable, makes himself necessary to the prince that despises him, by the most pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gaiety, by an unfailing power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but con­ sists in easy escapes and sallies of levity, which make sport but raise no envy. It must be observed that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his mirth. The moral to be drawn from this representation is, that no man is more dan­ gerous than he that with a will to corrupt, hath the power to please; and that neither

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wit nor honesty ought to think themselves safe with such a companion when they see Henry seduced by Falstaff. King Lear The tragedy of Lear is deservedly celebrated among the dramas of Shake­ speare. There is perhaps no play which keeps the attention so strongly fixed; which so much agitates our passions and interests our curiosity. The artful involutions of distinct interests, the striking opposition of contrary characters, the sudden changes of fortune, and the quick succession of events, fill the mind with a perpetual tumult of indignation, pity, and hope. There is no scene which does not contribute to the aggravation of the distress or conduct of the action, and scarce a line which does not conduce to the progress of the scene. So powerful is the current of the poet’s imagi­ nation, that the mind, which once ventures within it, is hurried irresistibly along. On the seeming improbability of Lear’s conduct it may be observed, that he is represented according to histories at that time vulgarly received as true. And per­ haps if we turn our thoughts upon the barbarity and ignorance of the age to which this story is referred, it will appear not so unlikely as while we estimate Lear’s man­ ners by our own. Such preference of one daughter to another, or resignation of do­ minion on such conditions, would be yet credible, if told of a petty prince of Guinea or Madagascar. Shakespeare, indeed, by the mention of his earls and dukes, has given us the idea of times more civilised, and of life regulated by softer manners; and the truth is, that though he so nicely discriminates, and so minutely describes the characters of men, he commonly neglects and confounds the characters of ages, by mingling customs ancient and modern, English and foreign. My learned friend Mr. Warton, who has in the Adventurer1 very minutely criti­ cised this play, remarks, that the instances of cruelty are too savage and shocking, and that the intervention of Edmund destroys the simplicity of the story. These ob­ jections may, I think, be answered, by repeating, that the cruelty of the daughters is an historical fact, to which the poet has added little, having only drawn it into a series by dialogue and action. But I am not able to apologise with equal plausibility for the extrusion of Gloucester’s eyes, which seems an act too horrid to be endured in dramatick exhibition, and such as must always compel the mind to relieve its dis­ tress by incredulity. Yet let it be remembered that our authour well knew what would please the audience for which he wrote. The injury done by Edmund to the simplicity of the action is abundantly rec­ ompensed by the addition of variety, by the art with which he is made to co-­operate with the chief design, and the opportunity which he gives the poet of combining 1. Nos. 113 (4 December 1753), 116 (15 December 1753), and 122 (5 January 1754).

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perfidy with perfidy, and connecting the wicked son with the wicked daughters, to impress this important moral, that villany is never at a stop, that crimes lead to crimes, and at last terminate in ruin. But though this moral be incidentally enforced, Shakespeare has suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and, what is yet more strange, to the faith of chronicles.2 Yet this conduct is justified by the Spectator, who blames Tate3 for giving Cor­ delia success and happiness in his alteration, and declares, that, in his opinion, “the tragedy has lost half its beauty.”4 Dennis has remarked, whether justly or not, that, to secure the favourable reception of Cato, “the town was poisoned with much false and abominable criticism,” and that endeavours had been used to discredit and de­ cry poetical justice.5 A play in which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miscarry, may doubtless be good, because it is a just representation of the common events of human life: but since all reasonable beings naturally love justice, I cannot easily be persuaded, that the observation of justice makes a play worse; or, that if other ex­ cellencies are equal, the audience will not always rise better pleased from the final triumph of persecuted virtue. In the present case the publick has decided. Cordelia, from the time of Tate, has always retired with victory and felicity.6 And, if my sensations could add any thing to the general suffrage, I might relate, that I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia’s death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor. There is another controversy among the criticks concerning this play. It is dis­ puted whether the predominant image in Lear’s disordered mind be the loss of his kingdom or the cruelty of his daughters. Mr. Murphy, a very judicious critick, has evinced by induction of particular passages, that the cruelty of his daughters is the primary source of his distress, and that the loss of royalty affects him only as a sec­ ondary and subordinate evil; he observes with great justness, that Lear would move our compassion but little, did we not rather consider the injured father than the de­ graded king.7 The story of this play, except the episode of Edmund, which is derived, I think, 2. Shakespeare’s sources include Geoffrey of Monmouth (1100–1155?), Historia Regum Britanniae (1138); Raphael Hollinshed (1529–1580), Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577, 1587); and The True Chronicle History of King Leir, and his three daughters, Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordella (1605). 3. In The History of King Lear (1681), an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play by Nahum Tate (1652–1715), Cordelia lives and marries Edgar. 4. Joseph Addison (1672–1719), Spectator, No. 40 (16 April 1711). 5. John Dennis (1658–1734), Remarks Upon Cato, A Tragedy (1713), in Hooker, Critical Works, ii.43. 6. Tate’s version dominated the stage until early in the nineteenth century. 7. Arthur Murphy (1727–1805), Gray’s-­Inn Journal, Nos. 65 and 66 (12 and 19 January 1754).



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from Sidney,8 is taken originally from Geoffry of Monmouth, whom Hollingshead generally copied; but perhaps immediately from an old historical ballad. . . . My reason for believing that the play was posteriour to the ballad rather than the ballad to the play, is, that the ballad has nothing of Shakespeare’s nocturnal tempest, which is too striking to have been omitted, and that it follows the chronicle; it has the rudi­ ments of the play, but none of its amplifications: it first hinted Lear’s madness, but did not array it in circumstances. The writer of the ballad added something to the history, which is a proof that he would have added more, if more had occurred to his mind, and more must have occurred if he had seen Shakespeare.9 Romeo and Juliet This play is one of the most pleasing of our author’s performances. The scenes are busy and various, the incidents numerous and important, the catastrophe irre­ sistibly affecting, and the process of the action carried on with such probability, at least with such congruity to popular opinions, as tragedy requires. Here is one of the few attempts of Shakespeare to exhibit the conversation of gentlemen, to represent the airy sprightliness of juvenile elegance. Mr. Dryden mentions a tradition, which might easily reach his time, of a declaration made by Shakespeare, that “he was obliged to kill Mercutio in the third act, lest he should have been killed by him.” Yet he thinks him “no such formidable person, but that he might have lived through the play, and died in his bed,” without danger to a poet.10 Dryden well knew, had he been in quest of truth, that, in a pointed sentence, more regard is commonly had to the words than the thought, and that it is very seldom to be rigorously understood. Mercutio’s wit, gaiety and courage, will always procure him friends that wish him a longer life; but his death is not precipitated, he has lived out the time allotted him in the construction of the play; nor do I doubt the ability of Shakespeare to have continued his existence, though some of his sallies are per­ haps out of the reach of Dryden; whose genius was not very fertile of merriment, nor ductile11 to humour, but acute, argumentative, comprehensive, and sublime. The Nurse is one of the characters in which the authour delighted: he has, with great subtilty of distinction, drawn her at once loquacious and secret, obsequious and insolent, trusty and dishonest. His comick scenes are happily wrought, but his pathetick strains are always 8. Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia (1590; 1593). 9. SJ appends “A lamentable song of the Death of King Leir and his Three Daughters.” 10. John Dryden, Defence of the Epilogue, or, An Essay on the Dramatique Poetry of the Last Age (1678; Works of John Dryden, 20 vols. [University of California Press, 1956–2000], Vol. XI [1978], 215). 11. Easily led.

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polluted with some unexpected depravations. His persons, however distressed, “have a conceit left them in their misery, a miserable conceit.”12 Hamlet If the dramas of Shakespeare were to be characterised, each by the particu­ lar excellence which distinguishes it from the rest, we must allow to the tragedy of Hamlet the praise of variety. The incidents are so numerous, that the argument of the play would make a long tale. The scenes are interchangeably diversified with merri­ ment and solemnity; with merriment that includes judicious and instructive obser­ vations, and solemnity, not strained by poetical violence above the natural senti­ ments of man. New characters appear from time to time in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life and particular modes of conversation. The pretended madness of Hamlet causes much mirth, the mournful distraction of Ophelia fills the heart with tenderness, and every personage produces the effect intended, from the apparition that in the first act chills the blood with horror, to the fop in the last, that exposes affectation to just contempt. The conduct is perhaps not wholly secure against objections. The action is in­ deed for the most part in continual progression, but there are some scenes which neither forward nor retard it. Of the feigned madness of Hamlet there appears no adequate cause, for he does nothing which he might not have done with the repu­ tation of sanity. He plays the madman most, when he treats Ophelia with so much rudeness, which seems to be useless and wanton cruelty. Hamlet is, through the whole play, rather an instrument than an agent. After he has, by the stratagem of the play, convicted the King, he makes no attempt to pun­ ish him, and his death is at last effected by an incident which Hamlet has no part in producing. The catastrophe is not very happily produced; the exchange of weapons is rather an expedient of necessity, than a stroke of art. A scheme might easily have been formed, to kill Hamlet with the dagger, and Laertes with the bowl. The poet is accused of having shewn little regard to poetical justice, and may be charged with equal neglect of poetical probability. The apparition left the regions of the dead to little purpose; the revenge which he demands is not obtained but by the death of him that was required to take it; and the gratification which would arise from the destruction of an usurper and a murderer, is abated by the untimely death of Ophelia, the young, the beautiful, the harmless, and the pious. 12. Dryden, misquoting Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, says this to disparage Ovid in his Preface to Fables Ancient and Modern (1700; Works of John Dryden, Vol. vii [2000], 32).



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Othello The beauties of this play impress themselves so strongly upon the attention of the reader, that they can draw no aid from critical illustration. The fiery openness of Othello, magnanimous, artless, and credulous, boundless in his confidence, ardent in his affection, inflexible in his resolution, and obdurate in his revenge; the cool ma­ lignity of Iago, silent in his resentment, subtle in his designs, and studious at once of his interest and his vengeance; the soft simplicity of Desdemona, confident of merit, and conscious of innocence, her artless perseverance in her suit, and her slowness to suspect that she can be suspected, are such proofs of Shakespeare’s skill in human nature, as, I suppose, it is vain to seek in any modern writer. The gradual progress which Iago makes in the Moor’s conviction, and the circumstances which he em­ ploys to inflame him, are so artfully natural, that, though it will perhaps not be said of him as he says of himself, that he is “a man not easily jealous,” yet we cannot but pity him when at last we find him “perplexed in the extreme.”13 There is always danger lest wickedness conjoined with abilities should steal upon esteem, though it misses of approbation; but the character of Iago is so con­ ducted, that he is from the first scene to the last hated and despised. Even the inferiour characters of this play would be very conspicuous in any other piece, not only for their justness but their strength. Cassio is brave, benevo­ lent, and honest, ruined only by his want of stubbornness to resist an insidious invitation. Rodorigo’s suspicious credulity, and impatient submission to the cheats which he sees practised upon him, and which by persuasion he suffers to be re­ peated, exhibit a strong picture of a weak mind betrayed by unlawful desires, to a false friend; and the virtue of Aemilia is such as we often find, worn loosely, but not cast off, easy to commit small crimes, but quickened and alarmed at atrocious ­villanies. The scenes from the beginning to the end are busy, varied by happy inter­ changes, and regularly promoting the progression of the story; and the narrative in the end, though it tells but what is known already, yet is necessary to produce the death of Othello. Had the scene opened in Cyprus, and the preceding incidents been occasion­ ally related, there had been little wanting to a drama of the most exact and scrupu­ lous regularity.14

13. Othello, v.ii.405–6. 14. The play lacks “regularity” according to the rules of drama, which SJ largely rejected in his Preface (see p. 436 above). One of these rules—unity of place—restricted the drama to a single locale. Othello opens in Venice and closes in Cyprus.

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From A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland

�

Johnson’s interest in visiting the western part of Scotland began when his father gave him Martin Martin’s A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (1703). That interest per­ sisted throughout his life, and he mentioned it to Boswell during their first meeting in 1763. In 1773, after completing the exhausting task of revising the Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare, he decided the time had finally come to realize his ambition. On 14 August, he joined Boswell in Edinburgh, and soon thereafter they set out on a three-­month trip that would take them up the east coast of Scotland past Aberdeen, west to Banff, Inverness, and Loch Ness, around the isles of Skye, Coll, and Mull, on to Glasgow, then to the Boswell family seat of Auchinlech in Ayreshire, and finally back to Edinburgh. It was hardly a luxurious vacation: they were often traveling in bad weather through rough, desolate terrain, visiting places where there were few amenities—or even basic provisions— for travelers. But Johnson, who was sixty-­three when the journey began, gamely endured the challenges with little complaint. Early in the journey, in a letter to Hester Thrale, Johnson wrote that “the use of travel­ ling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.”1 What Johnson saw was not always what he expected. He had hoped to find a storied and ancient way of life, but found instead—or, sometimes, in addition— a country struggling to adjust to new realities. The memory of the Jacobite defeat at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746 was still fresh; many Scots felt humiliated by subsequent laws regulating clothing and other signs of nationalism, and resented the various ways in which England controlled the trade and economy of the defeated nation. Johnson’s judgments about Scotland were sometimes harsh. “Of these Islands,” he wrote, “it must be confessed, that they have not many allurements, but to the mere lover of naked nature. The inhabitants are thin, provisions are scarce, and desolation and penury 1. SJ Letters, ii.78 (21 September 1773).

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give little pleasure” (see p. 512 below). Still, he often expressed appreciation for the people and places he encountered there. At a minimum, Scotland deeply engaged his curiosity, and the account of his journey is a remarkable demonstration of Johnson’s wide-­ranging inter­ ests, his powers of minute observation of both people and the natural world, and his com­ plex understanding of the political and economic forces that shape a society. A Journey was first published in 1775. (Ten years later, Boswell would publish his own account of the trip in The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.) The selection below represents roughly one-­third of the full text; we have indicated where omissions have been made. The complete text is available in Volume IX (1971, edited by Mary Lascelles) of the Yale Edition and in the digital edition (YaleJohnson.com). In annotating the text, we have drawn on the Yale volume as well as A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, ed. J. David Fleeman (Oxford 1985).

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[JOHNSON’S INTRODUCTION] I had desired to visit the Hebrides, or Western Islands of Scotland, so long, that I scarcely remember how the wish was originally excited; and was in the autumn of the year 1773 induced to undertake the journey, by finding in Mr. Boswell a com­ panion, whose acuteness would help my inquiry, and whose gaiety of conversation and civility of manners are sufficient to counteract the inconveniencies of travel, in countries less hospitable than we have passed. On the eighteenth of August we left Edinburgh, a city too well known to admit description, and directed our course northward, along the eastern coast of Scotland, accompanied the first day by another gentleman,2 who could stay with us only long enough to shew us how much we lost at separation. As we crossed the Frith3 of Forth, our curiosity was attracted by Inch Keith, a small island, which neither of my companions had ever visited, though, lying within their view, it had all their lives solicited their notice. Here, by climbing with some difficulty over shattered crags, we made the first experiment4 of unfrequented coasts. Inch Keith is nothing more than a rock covered with a thin layer of earth, not wholly bare of grass, and very fertile of thistles. A small herd of cows grazes annu­ ally upon it in the summer. It seems never to have afforded to man or beast a per­ manent habitation. We found only the ruins of a small fort, not so injured by time but that it might be easily restored to its former state. It seems never to have been intended as a place of strength, nor was built to endure a siege, but merely to afford cover to a few soldiers, who perhaps had the charge of a battery, or were stationed to give signals of approaching danger. There is therefore no provision of water within the walls, though the spring is so near, that it might have been easily enclosed. One of the stones had this inscription: “Maria Reg. 1564.”5 It has probably been neglected from the time that the whole island had the same king.6 We left this little island with our thoughts employed awhile on the different appearance that it would have made, if it had been placed at the same distance from London, with the same facility of approach; with what emulation of price a few rocky acres would have been purchased, and with what expensive industry they would have been cultivated and adorned. 2. William Nairne, afterwards Lord Dunsinane (1731–1811). 3. Elsewhere SJ spells the word “firth,” which is the more common spelling. 4. “The action of trying anything” (OED, 1a). 5. Maria Regina, Mary Queen of Scots (1542–1587). SJ elsewhere said she was unfairly treated and de­ plored her execution; see, for example, a note in his edition of Roger Ascham, English Works (Yale, xix.466). 6. In 1603, James VI of Scotland became James I of England.



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When we landed, we found our chaise7 ready, and passed through Kinghorn, Kirkaldy, and Cowpar, places not unlike the small or straggling market-­towns in those parts of England where commerce and manufactures have not yet produced opulence. Though we were yet in the most populous part of Scotland, and at so small a distance from the capital, we met few passengers. The roads are neither rough nor dirty; and it affords a southern stranger a new kind of pleasure to travel so commodiously without the interruption of toll-­gates. Where the bottom is rocky, as it seems commonly to be in Scotland, a smooth way is made indeed with great labour, but it never wants repairs; and in those parts where adventitious materials are necessary, the ground once consolidated is rarely broken; for the inland commerce is not great, nor are heavy commodities often transported otherwise than by water. The carriages in common use are small carts, drawn each by one little horse; and a man seems to derive some degree of dignity and importance from the reputation of possessing a two-­horse cart. ST. ANDREWS At an hour somewhat late we came to St. Andrews, a city once archiepiscopal;8 where that university still subsists in which philosophy was formerly taught by Buchanan,9 whose name has as fair a claim to immortality as can be conferred by modern latinity, and perhaps a fairer than the instability of vernacular languages ­admits. We found, that by the interposition of some invisible friend, lodgings had been provided for us at the house of one of the professors, whose easy civility quickly made us forget that we were strangers; and in the whole time of our stay we were gratified by every mode of kindness, and entertained with all the elegance of lettered hospitality. In the morning we rose to perambulate a city, which only history shews to have once flourished, and surveyed the ruins of ancient magnificence, of which even the ruins cannot long be visible, unless some care be taken to preserve them; and where is the pleasure of preserving such mournful memorials? They have been till very lately so much neglected, that every man carried away the stones who fancied that he wanted them. The cathedral, of which the foundations may be still traced, and a small part of the wall is standing, appears to have been a spacious and majestick building, not 7. “A light open carriage for one or two persons” (OED). 8. St. Andrews had been the seat of an archbishop in the Church of Scotland until 1689. 9. George Buchanan (1506–1582), humanist scholar, poet, and polemicist who wrote mainly in Latin; an enemy of Mary Queen of Scots.

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When we landed, we found our chaise7 ready, and passed through Kinghorn, Kirkaldy, and Cowpar, places not unlike the small or straggling market-­towns in those parts of England where commerce and manufactures have not yet produced opulence. Though we were yet in the most populous part of Scotland, and at so small a distance from the capital, we met few passengers. The roads are neither rough nor dirty; and it affords a southern stranger a new kind of pleasure to travel so commodiously without the interruption of toll-­gates. Where the bottom is rocky, as it seems commonly to be in Scotland, a smooth way is made indeed with great labour, but it never wants repairs; and in those parts where adventitious materials are necessary, the ground once consolidated is rarely broken; for the inland commerce is not great, nor are heavy commodities often transported otherwise than by water. The carriages in common use are small carts, drawn each by one little horse; and a man seems to derive some degree of dignity and importance from the reputation of possessing a two-­horse cart. ST. ANDREWS At an hour somewhat late we came to St. Andrews, a city once archiepiscopal;8 where that university still subsists in which philosophy was formerly taught by Buchanan,9 whose name has as fair a claim to immortality as can be conferred by modern latinity, and perhaps a fairer than the instability of vernacular languages ­admits. We found, that by the interposition of some invisible friend, lodgings had been provided for us at the house of one of the professors, whose easy civility quickly made us forget that we were strangers; and in the whole time of our stay we were gratified by every mode of kindness, and entertained with all the elegance of lettered hospitality. In the morning we rose to perambulate a city, which only history shews to have once flourished, and surveyed the ruins of ancient magnificence, of which even the ruins cannot long be visible, unless some care be taken to preserve them; and where is the pleasure of preserving such mournful memorials? They have been till very lately so much neglected, that every man carried away the stones who fancied that he wanted them. The cathedral, of which the foundations may be still traced, and a small part of the wall is standing, appears to have been a spacious and majestick building, not 7. “A light open carriage for one or two persons” (OED). 8. St. Andrews had been the seat of an archbishop in the Church of Scotland until 1689. 9. George Buchanan (1506–1582), humanist scholar, poet, and polemicist who wrote mainly in Latin; an enemy of Mary Queen of Scots.

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unsuitable to the primacy10 of the kingdom. Of the architecture, the poor remains can hardly exhibit, even to an artist, a sufficient specimen. It was demolished, as is well known, in the tumult and violence of Knox’s reformation.11 Not far from the cathedral, on the margin of the water, stands a fragment of the castle, in which the archbishop anciently resided. It was never very large, and was built with more attention to security than pleasure. Cardinal Beatoun is said to have had workmen employed in improving its fortifications at the time when he was mur­ dered by the ruffians of reformation, in the manner of which Knox has given what he himself calls a merry narrative.12 The change of religion in Scotland, eager and vehement as it was, raised an epidemical enthusiasm, compounded of sullen scrupulousness and warlike ferocity, which, in a people whom idleness resigned to their own thoughts, and who, con­ versing only with each other, suffered no dilution of their zeal from the gradual in­ flux of new opinions, was long transmitted in its full strength from the old to the young, but by trade and intercourse with England, is now visibly abating, and giving way too fast to that laxity of practice and indifference of opinion, in which men, not sufficiently instructed to find the middle point, too easily shelter themselves from rigour and constraint. The city of St. Andrews, when it had lost its archiepiscopal preeminence, gradually decayed: One of its streets is now lost; and in those that remain, there is the silence and solitude of inactive indigence and gloomy depopulation. The university, within a few years, consisted of three colleges, but is now re­ duced to two; the college of St. Leonard being lately dissolved by the sale of its buildings and the appropriation of its revenues to the professors of the two others. The chapel of the alienated13 college is yet standing, a fabrick not inelegant of ex­ ternal structure; but I was always, by some civil excuse, hindred from entering it. A decent attempt, as I was since told, has been made to convert it into a kind of green­ house, by planting its area with shrubs. This new method of gardening is unsuccess­ ful; the plants do not hitherto prosper. To what use it will next be put I have no plea­ sure in conjecturing. It is something that its present state is at least not ostentatiously displayed. Where there is yet shame, there may in time be virtue. The dissolution of St. Leonard’s college was doubtless necessary; but of that 10. The seat of an archbishop. 11. John Knox (c. 1514–1572) preached fiery sermons at St. Andrews and was a leader of the Scottish ref­ ormation, but the ruination of the cathedral may have been the result of lawlessness and scarcity rather than religious zeal. 12. In his History of the Reformation of Religion within the Realm of Scotland (1587; rpt. 1640), Knox de­ scribes both the murder and the handling of the corpse of Archbishop Beaton (1494–1546) “merrily,” but asks the reader to “observe God’s just judgments” (pp. 71–72). 13. A legal term referring to the transfer of properties.



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necessity there is reason to complain. It is surely not without just reproach, that a nation, of which the commerce is hourly extending, and the wealth encreasing, de­ nies any participation of its prosperity to its literary societies; and while its mer­ chants or its nobles are raising palaces, suffers its universities to moulder into dust. Of the two colleges yet standing, one is by the institution of its founder ap­ propriated to divinity. It is said to be capable of containing fifty students; but more than one must occupy a chamber. The library, which is of late erection, is not very spacious, but elegant and luminous. The doctor, by whom it was shewn, hoped to irritate or subdue my English vanity by telling me, that we had no such repository of books in England. Saint Andrews seems to be a place eminently adapted to study and education, being situated in a populous, yet a cheap country,14 and exposing the minds and manners of young men neither to the levity and dissoluteness of a capital city, nor to the gross luxury of a town of commerce, places naturally unpropitious to learning; in one the desire of knowledge easily gives way to the love of pleasure, and in the other, is in danger of yielding to the love of money. The students however are represented as at this time not exceeding a hun­ dred. Perhaps it may be some obstruction to their increase that there is no episcopal chapel in the place. I saw no reason for imputing their paucity to the present profes­ sors; nor can the expence of an academical education be very reasonably objected. A student of the highest class may keep his annual session, or as the English call it, his term, which lasts seven months, for about fifteen pounds, and one of lower rank for less than ten; in which board, lodging, and instruction are all included. The chief magistrate resident in the university, answering to our vice-­chancellor, and to the rector magnificus on the continent, had commonly the title of Lord Rec­ tor; but being addressed only as “Mr. Rector” in an inauguratory speech by the present chancellor, he has fallen from his former dignity of style. Lordship was very liberally annexed by our ancestors to any station or character of dignity: They said, the “Lord General,” and “Lord Ambassador”; so we still say, “my Lord,” to the judge upon the circuit, and yet retain in our Liturgy “the Lords of the Council.”15 In walking among the ruins of religious buildings, we came to two vaults over which had formerly stood the house of the sub-­prior. One of the vaults was inhab­ ited by an old woman, who claimed the right of abode there, as the widow of a man whose ancestors had possessed the same gloomy mansion for no less than four gen­ erations. The right, however it began, was considered as established by legal pre­ scription, and the old woman lives undisturbed. She thinks however that she has a 14. A region or county; in this case, Fife. 15. In the “Litany” of the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer.

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claim to something more than sufferance; for as her husband’s name was Bruce,16 she is allied to royalty, and told Mr. Boswell that when there were persons of quality in the place, she was distinguished by some notice; that indeed she is now neglected, but she spins a thread, has the company of her cat, and is troublesome to nobody. Having now seen whatever this ancient city offered to our curiosity, we left it with good wishes, having reason to be highly pleased with the attention that was paid us. But whoever surveys the world must see many things that give him pain. The kindness of the professors did not contribute to abate the uneasy remembrance of an university declining, a college alienated,17 and a church profaned and hasten­ ing to the ground. St. Andrews indeed has formerly suffered more atrocious ravages and more extensive destruction, but recent evils affect with greater force. We were reconciled to the sight of archiepiscopal ruins. The distance of a calamity from the present time seems to preclude the mind from contact or sympathy. Events long past are barely known; they are not considered. We read with as little emotion the violence of Knox and his followers, as the irruptions of Alaric and the Goths.18 Had the university been destroyed two centuries ago, we should not have regretted it; but to see it pin­ ing in decay and struggling for life, fills the mind with mournful images and ineffec­ tual wishes. ABERBROTHICK As we knew sorrow and wishes to be vain, it was now our business to mind our way. The roads of Scotland afford little diversion to the traveller, who seldom sees himself either encountered or overtaken, and who has nothing to contemplate but grounds that have no visible boundaries, or are separated by walls of loose stone. From the bank of the Tweed to St. Andrews I had never seen a single tree, which I did not believe to have grown up far within the present century. Now and then about a gentleman’s house stands a small plantation, which in Scotch is called a policy, but of these there are few, and those few all very young. The variety of sun and shade is here utterly unknown. There is no tree for either shelter or timber. The oak and the thorn is equally a stranger, and the whole country is extended in uniform nakedness, except that in the road between Kirkaldy and Cowpar, I passed for a few yards be­ tween two hedges. A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in Venice. At St. Andrews Mr. Boswell found only one, and recommended it to my notice; I told him 16. A noble family, tracing its line to a baron who fought beside Henry I in the early twelfth century. 17. St. Leonard’s, one of the three colleges in the university, had been absorbed by another and its prop­ erty alienated or transferred, in the legal sense. 18. Alaric I (c. 370–410), king of the Visigoths, sacked Rome in the year of his death.



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claim to something more than sufferance; for as her husband’s name was Bruce,16 she is allied to royalty, and told Mr. Boswell that when there were persons of quality in the place, she was distinguished by some notice; that indeed she is now neglected, but she spins a thread, has the company of her cat, and is troublesome to nobody. Having now seen whatever this ancient city offered to our curiosity, we left it with good wishes, having reason to be highly pleased with the attention that was paid us. But whoever surveys the world must see many things that give him pain. The kindness of the professors did not contribute to abate the uneasy remembrance of an university declining, a college alienated,17 and a church profaned and hasten­ ing to the ground. St. Andrews indeed has formerly suffered more atrocious ravages and more extensive destruction, but recent evils affect with greater force. We were reconciled to the sight of archiepiscopal ruins. The distance of a calamity from the present time seems to preclude the mind from contact or sympathy. Events long past are barely known; they are not considered. We read with as little emotion the violence of Knox and his followers, as the irruptions of Alaric and the Goths.18 Had the university been destroyed two centuries ago, we should not have regretted it; but to see it pin­ ing in decay and struggling for life, fills the mind with mournful images and ineffec­ tual wishes. ABERBROTHICK As we knew sorrow and wishes to be vain, it was now our business to mind our way. The roads of Scotland afford little diversion to the traveller, who seldom sees himself either encountered or overtaken, and who has nothing to contemplate but grounds that have no visible boundaries, or are separated by walls of loose stone. From the bank of the Tweed to St. Andrews I had never seen a single tree, which I did not believe to have grown up far within the present century. Now and then about a gentleman’s house stands a small plantation, which in Scotch is called a policy, but of these there are few, and those few all very young. The variety of sun and shade is here utterly unknown. There is no tree for either shelter or timber. The oak and the thorn is equally a stranger, and the whole country is extended in uniform nakedness, except that in the road between Kirkaldy and Cowpar, I passed for a few yards be­ tween two hedges. A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in Venice. At St. Andrews Mr. Boswell found only one, and recommended it to my notice; I told him 16. A noble family, tracing its line to a baron who fought beside Henry I in the early twelfth century. 17. St. Leonard’s, one of the three colleges in the university, had been absorbed by another and its prop­ erty alienated or transferred, in the legal sense. 18. Alaric I (c. 370–410), king of the Visigoths, sacked Rome in the year of his death.



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that it was rough and low, or looked as if I thought so. This, said he, is nothing to another a few miles off. I was still less delighted to hear that another tree was not to be seen nearer. Nay, said a gentleman that stood by, I know but of this and that tree in the country. The Lowlands of Scotland had once undoubtedly an equal portion of woods with other countries. Forests are every where gradually diminished, as architecture and cultivation prevail by the increase of people and the introduction of arts. But I believe few regions have been denuded like this, where many centuries must have passed in waste without the least thought of future supply. Davies observes in his account of Ireland, that no Irishman had ever planted an orchard.19 For that negli­ gence some excuse might be drawn from an unsettled state of life, and the instability of property; but in Scotland possession has long been secure, and inheritance regu­ lar, yet it may be doubted whether before the Union any man between Edinburgh and England had ever set a tree. Of this improvidence no other account can be given than that it probably began in times of tumult, and continued because it had begun. Established custom is not easily broken, till some great event shakes the whole system of things, and life seems to recommence upon new principles. That before the Union the Scots had little trade and little money, is no valid apology; for plantation is the least expensive of all methods of improvement. To drop a seed into the ground can cost nothing, and the trouble is not great of protecting the young plant, till it is out of danger; though it must be allowed to have some difficulty in places like these, where they have neither wood for palisades, nor thorns for hedges. Our way was over the Firth of Tay, where, though the water was not wide, we paid four shillings for ferrying the chaise. In Scotland the necessaries of life are easily procured, but superfluities and elegancies are of the same price at least as in England, and therefore may be considered as much dearer. We stopped a while at Dundee, where I remember nothing remarkable, and mounting our chaise again, came about the close of the day to Aberbrothick. The monastery of Aberbrothick is of great renown in the history of Scotland. Its ruins afford ample testimony of its ancient magnificence: Its extent might, I suppose, easily be found by following the walls among the grass and weeds, and its height is known by some parts yet standing. The arch of one of the gates is entire, and of another only so far dilapidated as to diversify the appearance. A square apartment of great loftiness is yet standing; its use I could not conjecture, as its elevation was very disproportionate to its area. Two corner towers, particularly attracted our atten­ tion. Mr. Boswell, whose inquisitiveness is seconded by great activity, scrambled in 19. Sir John Davies (1569–1626), A Discoverie of the True Causes why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued (1612), p. 170.

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at a high window, but found the stairs within broken, and could not reach the top. Of the other tower we were told that the inhabitants sometimes climbed it, but we did not immediately discern the entrance, and as the night was gathering upon us, thought proper to desist. Men skilled in architecture might do what we did not at­ tempt: They might probably form an exact ground-­plot of this venerable edifice. They may from some parts yet standing conjecture its general form, and perhaps by comparing it with other buildings of the same kind and the same age, attain an idea very near to truth. I should scarcely have regretted my journey, had it afforded noth­ ing more than the sight of Aberbrothick. [We omit here twenty-four pages in the Yale Edition, carrying SJ and JB up the east coast to the Buller of Buchan, west to Inverness, and south past Fort Augustus.]

ANOCH Early in the afternoon we came to Anoch, a village in Glenmorrison20 of three huts, one of which is distinguished by a chimney. Here we were to dine and lodge, and were conducted through the first room, that had the chimney, into another lighted by a small glass window. The landlord attended us with great civility, and told us what he could give us to eat and drink. I found some books on a shelf, among which were a volume or more of Prideaux’s Connection.21 This I mentioned as something unexpected, and perceived that I did not please him: I praised the propriety of his language, and was answered that I need not won­ der, for he had learned it by grammar.22 By subsequent opportunities of observation, I found that my host’s diction had nothing peculiar. Those Highlanders that can speak English, commonly speak it well, with few of the words, and little of the tone by which a Scotchman is distin­ guished. Their language seems to have been learned in the army or the navy, or by some communication with those who could give them good examples of accent and pronunciation. By their Lowland neighbours they would not willingly be taught; for they have long considered them as a mean and degenerate race. These prejudices are wearing fast away; but so much of them still remains, that when I asked a very learned minister in the islands, which they considered as their most savage clans: “Those,” said he, “that live next the Lowlands.” As we came hither early in the day, we had time sufficient to survey the place. The house was built like other huts of loose stones, but the part in which we dined 20. “Glenmollison” in all the early editions, but persuasively emended by Fleeman (1985) to read Glen­ morrison. 21. Humphrey Prideaux (1648–1724), The Old and New Testament Connected, 2 vols. in 3 (1716–18). 22. He means that he learned English by studying Latin grammar.



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at a high window, but found the stairs within broken, and could not reach the top. Of the other tower we were told that the inhabitants sometimes climbed it, but we did not immediately discern the entrance, and as the night was gathering upon us, thought proper to desist. Men skilled in architecture might do what we did not at­ tempt: They might probably form an exact ground-­plot of this venerable edifice. They may from some parts yet standing conjecture its general form, and perhaps by comparing it with other buildings of the same kind and the same age, attain an idea very near to truth. I should scarcely have regretted my journey, had it afforded noth­ ing more than the sight of Aberbrothick. [We omit here twenty-four pages in the Yale Edition, carrying SJ and JB up the east coast to the Buller of Buchan, west to Inverness, and south past Fort Augustus.]

ANOCH Early in the afternoon we came to Anoch, a village in Glenmorrison20 of three huts, one of which is distinguished by a chimney. Here we were to dine and lodge, and were conducted through the first room, that had the chimney, into another lighted by a small glass window. The landlord attended us with great civility, and told us what he could give us to eat and drink. I found some books on a shelf, among which were a volume or more of Prideaux’s Connection.21 This I mentioned as something unexpected, and perceived that I did not please him: I praised the propriety of his language, and was answered that I need not won­ der, for he had learned it by grammar.22 By subsequent opportunities of observation, I found that my host’s diction had nothing peculiar. Those Highlanders that can speak English, commonly speak it well, with few of the words, and little of the tone by which a Scotchman is distin­ guished. Their language seems to have been learned in the army or the navy, or by some communication with those who could give them good examples of accent and pronunciation. By their Lowland neighbours they would not willingly be taught; for they have long considered them as a mean and degenerate race. These prejudices are wearing fast away; but so much of them still remains, that when I asked a very learned minister in the islands, which they considered as their most savage clans: “Those,” said he, “that live next the Lowlands.” As we came hither early in the day, we had time sufficient to survey the place. The house was built like other huts of loose stones, but the part in which we dined 20. “Glenmollison” in all the early editions, but persuasively emended by Fleeman (1985) to read Glen­ morrison. 21. Humphrey Prideaux (1648–1724), The Old and New Testament Connected, 2 vols. in 3 (1716–18). 22. He means that he learned English by studying Latin grammar.



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and slept was lined with turf and wattled with twigs, which kept the earth from fall­ ing. Near it was a garden of turnips and a field of potatoes. It stands in a glen, or val­ ley, pleasantly watered by a winding river. But this country, however it may delight the gazer or amuse the naturalist, is of no great advantage to its owners. Our landlord told us of a gentleman, who possesses lands, eighteen Scotch miles in length, and three in breadth; a space containing at least a hundred square English miles. He has raised his rents, to the danger of depopulating his farms, and he sells his timber, and by exerting every art of augmentation, has obtained an yearly revenue of four hun­ dred pounds, which for a hundred square miles is three halfpence an acre.23 Some time after dinner we were surprised by the entrance of a young woman, not inelegant either in mien or dress, who asked us whether we would have tea. We found that she was the daughter of our host, and desired her to make it. Her conver­ sation, like her appearance, was gentle and pleasing. We knew that the girls of the Highlands are all gentlewomen, and treated her with great respect, which she re­ ceived as customary and due, and was neither elated by it, nor confused, but repaid my civilities without embarassment, and told me how much I honoured her country by coming to survey it. She had been at Inverness to gain the common female qualifications, and had, like her father, the English pronunciation. I presented her with a book, which I hap­ pened to have about me, and should not be pleased to think that she forgets me.24 In the evening the soldiers, whom we had passed on the road, came to spend at our inn the little money that we had given them.25 They had the true military im­ patience of coin in their pockets, and had marched at least six miles to find the first place where liquor could be bought. Having never been before in a place so wild and unfrequented, I was glad of their arrival, because I knew that we had made them friends, and to gain still more of their good will, we went to them, where they were carousing in the barn, and added something to our former gift. All that we gave was not much, but it detained them in the barn, either merry or quarrelling, the whole night, and in the morning they went back to their work, with great indignation at the bad qualities of whisky. We had gained so much the favour of our host, that, when we left his house in the morning, he walked by us a great way, and entertained us with conversation both on his own condition, and that of the country. His life seemed to be merely pastoral, 23. The Complete Farmer or a General Dictionary of Husbandry (1767) predicts profits of up to £1.25 per acre for a wheat crop produced with the new husbandry or about £.40 (about 200 halfpence) with the old. 24. As SJ revealed in a letter to Hester Thrale, the book was Cocker’s Arithmetic, one of many editions based on Edward Cocker’s Rules of Arithmetic (1660?), which he bought at Inverness (SJ Letters, ii.67 and n. 30). 25. The soldiers were from Fort Augustus, which SJ visited before arriving in Anoch.

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except that he differed from some of the ancient Nomades in having a settled dwell­ ing. His wealth consists of one hundred sheep, as many goats, twelve milk-­cows, and twenty-­eight beeves ready for the drover. From him we first heard of the general dissatisfaction, which is now driving the Highlanders into the other hemisphere; and when I asked him whether they would stay at home, if they were well treated, he answered with indignation, that no man willingly left his native country. Of the farm, which he himself occupied, the rent had, in twenty-­five years, been advanced from five to twenty pounds, which he found himself so little able to pay, that he would be glad to try his fortune in some other place. Yet he owned the reasonableness of raising the Highland rents in a cer­ tain degree, and declared himself willing to pay ten pounds for the ground which he had formerly had for five. Our host having amused us for a time, resigned us to our guides. The journey of this day was long, not that the distance was great, but that the way was difficult. We were now in the bosom of the Highlands, with full leisure to contemplate the ap­ pearance and properties of mountainous regions, such as have been, in many coun­ tries, the last shelters of national distress, and are every where the scenes of adven­ tures, stratagems, surprises and escapes. . . . [We omit here six paragraphs in which SJ remarks on the mountains and streams.]

Of the hills many may be called with Homer’s Ida “abundant in springs,” but few can deserve the epithet which he bestows upon Pelion by “waving their leaves.”26 They exhibit very little variety; being almost wholly covered with dark heath, and even that seems to be checked in its growth. What is not heath is naked­ ness, a little diversified by now and then a stream rushing down the steep. An eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility. The appearance is that of matter incapable of form or usefulness, dismissed by nature from her care and disinherited of her favours, left in its original elemental state, or quickened only with one sullen power of useless vegetation. It will very readily occur, that this uniformity of barrenness can afford very little amusement to the traveller; that it is easy to sit at home and conceive rocks and heath, and waterfalls; and that these journeys are useless labours, which neither impregnate the imagination, nor enlarge the understanding. It is true that of far the greater part of things, we must content ourselves with such knowledge as de­ scription may exhibit, or analogy supply; but it is true likewise, that these ideas are 26. References to Homeric epithets for Mt. Ida and Mt. Pelion (see, e.g., Iliad 23.117 and 2.757, respec­ tively).



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always incomplete, and that at least, till we have compared them with realities, we do not know them to be just. As we see more, we become possessed of more cer­ tainties, and consequently gain more principles of reasoning, and found a wider basis of analogy. Regions mountainous and wild, thinly inhabited, and little cultivated, make a great part of the earth, and he that has never seen them, must live unacquainted with much of the face of nature, and with one of the great scenes of human existence. As the day advanced towards noon, we entered a narrow valley not very flowery, but sufficiently verdant. Our guides told us, that the horses could not travel all day without rest or meat, and intreated us to stop here, because no grass would be found in any other place. The request was reasonable and the argument cogent. We there­ fore willingly dismounted and diverted ourselves as the place gave us opportunity. I sat down on a bank, such as a writer of romance might have delighted to feign. I had indeed no trees to whisper over my head, but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the air soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude. Before me, and on either side, were high hills, which by hindering the eye from ranging, forced the mind to find entertainment for itself. Whether I spent the hour well I know not; for here I first conceived the thought of this narration. We were in this place at ease and by choice, and had no evils to suffer or to fear; yet the imaginations excited by the view of an unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the artificial solitude of parks and gardens, a flattering notion of self-­sufficiency, a placid indulgence of voluntary delusions, a secure expansion of the fancy, or a cool concentration of the mental powers. The phantoms which haunt a desert are want, and misery, and danger; the evils of dereliction rush upon the thoughts; man is made unwillingly acquainted with his own weakness, and medita­ tion shews him only how little he can sustain, and how little he can perform. There were no traces of inhabitants, except perhaps a rude pile of clods called a summer hut, in which a herdsman had rested in the favourable seasons. Whoever had been in the place where I then sat, unprovided with provisions and ignorant of the coun­ try, might, at least before the roads were made, have wandered among the rocks, till he had perished with hardship, before he could have found either food or shelter. Yet what are these hillocks to the ridges of Taurus, or these spots of wildness to the desarts of America? It was not long before we were invited to mount, and continued our journey along the side of a lough, kept full by many streams, which with more or less rapidity and noise, crossed the road from the hills on the other hand. These currents, in their diminished state, after several dry months, afford, to one who has always lived in level countries, an unusual and delightful spectacle; but in the rainy season, such as every winter may be expected to bring, must precipitate an impetuous and tremen­ dous flood. I suppose the way by which we went, is at that time impassable.

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[We omit here thirty-­six pages in the Yale Edition, bringing SJ and JB onto the Isle of Skye, past Dunvegan, Ullinish, and Talisker.]

OSTIG IN SKY At Ostig, of which Mr. Macpherson is minister,27 we were entertained for some days, then removed to Armidel, where we finished our observations on the island of Sky. As this island lies in the fifty-­seventh degree, the air cannot be supposed to have much warmth. The long continuance of the sun above the horizon, does in­ deed sometimes produce great heat in northern latitudes; but this can only happen in sheltered places, where the atmosphere is to a certain degree stagnant, and the same mass of air continues to receive for many hours the rays of the sun, and the vapours of the earth. Sky lies open on the west and north to a vast extent of ocean, and is cooled in the summer by perpetual ventilation, but by the same blasts is kept warm in winter. Their weather is not pleasing. Half the year is deluged with rain. From the autumnal to the vernal equinox, a dry day is hardly known, except when the showers are suspended by a tempest. Under such skies can be expected no great exuberance of vegetation. Their winter overtakes their summer, and their harvest lies upon the ground drenched with rain. The autumn struggles hard to produce some of our early fruits. I gathered gooseberries in September; but they were small, and the husk was thick. Their winter is seldom such as puts a full stop to the growth of plants, or re­ duces the cattle to live wholly on the surplusage of the summer. In the year seventy-­ one they had a severe season, remembered by the name of the Black Spring, from which the island has not yet recovered. The snow lay long upon the ground, a ca­ lamity hardly known before. Part of their cattle died for want, part were unseason­ ably sold to buy sustenance for the owners; and, what I have not read or heard of before, the kine28 that survived were so emaciated and dispirited, that they did not require the male at the usual time. Many of the roebucks perished. The soil, as in other countries, has its diversities. In some parts there is only a thin layer of earth spread upon a rock, which bears nothing but short brown heath, and perhaps is not generally capable of any better product. There are many bogs or mosses of greater or less extent, where the soil cannot be supposed to want depth, though it is too wet for the plow. But we did not observe in these any aquatick plants. The vallies and the mountains are alike darkened with heath. Some grass, however, grows here and there, and some happier spots of earth are capable of tillage.

27. Martin Macpherson (1743–1812), minister of Sleat. 28. Cows.



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[We omit here thirty-­six pages in the Yale Edition, bringing SJ and JB onto the Isle of Skye, past Dunvegan, Ullinish, and Talisker.]

OSTIG IN SKY At Ostig, of which Mr. Macpherson is minister,27 we were entertained for some days, then removed to Armidel, where we finished our observations on the island of Sky. As this island lies in the fifty-­seventh degree, the air cannot be supposed to have much warmth. The long continuance of the sun above the horizon, does in­ deed sometimes produce great heat in northern latitudes; but this can only happen in sheltered places, where the atmosphere is to a certain degree stagnant, and the same mass of air continues to receive for many hours the rays of the sun, and the vapours of the earth. Sky lies open on the west and north to a vast extent of ocean, and is cooled in the summer by perpetual ventilation, but by the same blasts is kept warm in winter. Their weather is not pleasing. Half the year is deluged with rain. From the autumnal to the vernal equinox, a dry day is hardly known, except when the showers are suspended by a tempest. Under such skies can be expected no great exuberance of vegetation. Their winter overtakes their summer, and their harvest lies upon the ground drenched with rain. The autumn struggles hard to produce some of our early fruits. I gathered gooseberries in September; but they were small, and the husk was thick. Their winter is seldom such as puts a full stop to the growth of plants, or re­ duces the cattle to live wholly on the surplusage of the summer. In the year seventy-­ one they had a severe season, remembered by the name of the Black Spring, from which the island has not yet recovered. The snow lay long upon the ground, a ca­ lamity hardly known before. Part of their cattle died for want, part were unseason­ ably sold to buy sustenance for the owners; and, what I have not read or heard of before, the kine28 that survived were so emaciated and dispirited, that they did not require the male at the usual time. Many of the roebucks perished. The soil, as in other countries, has its diversities. In some parts there is only a thin layer of earth spread upon a rock, which bears nothing but short brown heath, and perhaps is not generally capable of any better product. There are many bogs or mosses of greater or less extent, where the soil cannot be supposed to want depth, though it is too wet for the plow. But we did not observe in these any aquatick plants. The vallies and the mountains are alike darkened with heath. Some grass, however, grows here and there, and some happier spots of earth are capable of tillage.

27. Martin Macpherson (1743–1812), minister of Sleat. 28. Cows.



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Their agriculture is laborious, and perhaps rather feeble than unskilful. Their chief manure is sea-­weed, which, when they lay it to rot upon the field, gives them a better crop than those of the Highlands. They heap sea shells upon the dunghill, which in time moulder into a fertilising substance. When they find a vein of earth where they cannot use it, they dig it up, and add it to the mould29 of a more com­ modious place. Their corn grounds30 often lie in such intricacies among the craggs, that there is no room for the action of a team and plow. The soil is then turned up by manual labour, with an instrument called a crooked spade, of a form and weight which to me appeared very incommodious, and would perhaps be soon improved in a coun­ try where workmen could be easily found and easily paid. It has a narrow blade of iron fixed to a long and heavy piece of wood, which must have, about a foot and a half above the iron, a knee or flexure with the angle downwards. When the farmer encounters a stone which is the great impediment of his operations, he drives the blade under it, and bringing the knee or angle to the ground, has in the long handle a very forcible lever. According to the different mode of tillage, farms are distinguished into “long land” and “short land.” Long land is that which affords room for a plow, and short land is turned up by the spade. The grain which they commit to the furrows thus tediously formed, is either oats or barley. They do not sow barley without very copious manure, and then they expect from it ten for one, an increase equal to that of better countries; but the cul­ ture is so operose31 that they content themselves commonly with oats; and who can relate without compassion, that after all their diligence they are to expect only a triple increase? It is in vain to hope for plenty, when a third part of the harvest must be reserved for seed. When their grain is arrived at the state which they must consider as ripeness, they do not cut, but pull the barley: to the oats they apply the sickle. Wheel carriages they have none, but make a frame of timber, which is drawn by one horse with the two points behind pressing on the ground. On this they sometimes drag home their sheaves, but often convey them home in a kind of open panier, or frame of sticks upon the horse’s back. Of that which is obtained with so much difficulty, nothing surely ought to be wasted; yet their method of clearing their oats from the husk is by parching them in the straw. Thus with the genuine improvidence of savages, they destroy that fodder for want of which their cattle may perish. From this practice they have two petty con­ 29. Topsoil. 30. “Corn grounds”: Fields for growing any sort of grain. 31. Laborious.

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veniencies. They dry the grain so that it is easily reduced to meal, and they escape the theft of the thresher. The taste contracted from the fire by the oats, as by every other scorched substance, use must long ago have made grateful. The oats that are not parched must be dried in a kiln. The barns of Sky I never saw. That which Macleod of Raasay had erected near his house was so contrived, because the harvest is seldom brought home dry, as by perpetual perflation32 to prevent the mow from heating. Of their gardens I can judge only from their tables. I did not observe that the common greens were wanting, and suppose, that by choosing an advantageous ex­ position, they can raise all the more hardy esculent plants. Of vegetable fragrance or beauty they are not yet studious. Few vows are made to Flora in the Hebrides. They gather a little hay, but the grass is mown late; and is so often almost dry and again very wet, before it is housed, that it becomes a collection of withered stalks without taste or fragrance; it must be eaten by cattle that have nothing else, but by most English farmers would be thrown away. In the Islands I have not heard that any subterraneous treasures have been discovered, though where there are mountains, there are commonly minerals. One of the rocks in Col has a black vein, imagined to consist of the ore of lead; but it was never yet opened or essayed. In Sky a black mass was accidentally picked up, and brought into the house of the owner of the land, who found himself strongly inclined to think it a coal, but unhappily it did not burn in the chimney. Common ores would be here of no great value; for what requires to be separated by fire, must, if it were found, be carried away in its mineral state, here being no fewel for the smelting-­house or forge. Perhaps by diligent search in this world of stone, some valuable species of marble might be discovered. But neither philosophical curiosity, nor commercial industry, have yet fixed their abode here, where the importunity of immediate want supplied but for the day, and craving on the morrow, has left little room for excursive knowledge or the pleasing fancies of distant profit. They have lately found a manufacture considerably lucrative. Their rocks abound with kelp, a sea-­plant, of which the ashes are melted into glass. They burn kelp in great quantities, and then send it away in ships, which come regularly to pur­ chase them. This new source of riches has raised the rents of many maritime farms; but the tenants pay, like all other tenants, the additional rent with great unwilling­ ness; because they consider the profits of the kelp as the mere product of personal labour, to which the landlord contributes nothing. However, as any man may be said to give, what he gives the power of gaining, he has certainly as much right to profit from the price of kelp as of any thing else found or raised upon his ground. 32. Ventilation.



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This new trade has excited a long and eager litigation between Macdonald and Macleod, for a ledge of rocks, which, till the value of kelp was known, neither of them desired the reputation of possessing. The cattle of Sky are not so small as is commonly believed. Since they have sent their beeves in great numbers to southern marts, they have probably taken more care of their breed. At stated times the annual growth of cattle is driven to a fair, by a gen­ eral drover, and with the money, which he returns to the farmer, the rents are paid. The price regularly expected, is from two to three pounds a head; there was once one sold for five pounds. They go from the Islands very lean, and are not offered to the butcher, till they have been long fatted in English pastures. Of their black cattle, some are without horns, called by the Scots “humble” cows, as we call a bee an “humble” bee, that wants a sting.33 Whether this differ­ ence be specifick, or accidental, though we inquired with great diligence, we could not be informed. We are not very sure that the bull is ever without horns, though we have been told, that such bulls there are. What is produced by putting a horned and unhorned male and female together, no man has ever tried, that thought the result worthy of observation. Their horses are, like their cows, of a moderate size. I had no difficulty to mount myself commodiously by the favour of the gentlemen. I heard of very little cows in Barra, and very little horses in Rum, where perhaps no care is taken to pre­ vent that diminution of size, which must always happen, where the greater and the less copulate promiscuously, and the young animal is restrained from growth by penury of sustenance. The goat is the general inhabitant of the earth, complying with every difference of climate, and of soil. The goats of the Hebrides are like others: nor did I hear any thing of their sheep, to be particularly remarked. In the penury of these malignant regions, nothing is left that can be converted to food. The goats and the sheep are milked like the cows. A single meal34 of a goat is a quart, and of a sheep a pint. Such at least was the account, which I could extract from those of whom I am not sure that they ever had inquired. The milk of goats is much thinner than that of cows, and that of sheep is much thicker. Sheeps milk is never eaten before it is boiled: as it is thick, it must be very liberal of curd, and the people of St. Kilda form it into small cheeses. The stags of the mountains are less than those of our parks, or forests, perhaps not bigger than our fallow deer. Their flesh has no rankness, nor is inferiour in fla­ vour to our common venison. The roebuck I neither saw nor tasted. These are not 33. SJ errs here. Humble applied to bees (perhaps for their buzzing) does not mean lacking a sting. Humble (often hummel) applied to cattle does, however, mean lacking horns (see OED). 34. “The quantity of milk given by a cow, etc., at one milking” (OED, sense 4a).

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countries for a regular chase.35 The deer are not driven with horns and hounds. A sportsman, with his gun in his hand, watches the animal, and when he has wounded him, traces him by the blood. They have a race of brinded36 greyhounds, larger and stronger than those with which we course hares, and those are the only dogs used by them for the chase. Man is by the use of fire-­arms made so much an overmatch for other animals, that in all countries, where they are in use, the wild part of the creation sensibly di­ minishes. There will probably not be long, either stags or roebucks in the Islands. All the beasts of chase would have been lost long ago in countries well inhabited, had they not been preserved by laws for the pleasure of the rich. There are in Sky neither rats nor mice, but the weasel is so frequent, that he is heard in houses rattling behind chests or beds, as rats in England. They probably owe to his predominance that they have no other vermin; for since the great rat took possession of this part of the world,37 scarce a ship can touch at any port, but some of his race are left behind. They have within these few years begun to infest the Isle of Col, where being left by some trading vessel, they have increased for want of weasels to oppose them. The inhabitants of Sky, and of the other Islands, which I have seen, are com­ monly of the middle stature, with fewer among them very tall or very short, than are seen in England, or perhaps, as their numbers are small, the chances of any devia­ tion from the common measure are necessarily few. The tallest men that I saw are among those of higher rank. In regions of barrenness and scarcity, the human race is hindered in its growth by the same causes as other animals. The ladies have as much beauty here as in other places, but bloom and soft­ ness are not to be expected among the lower classes, whose faces are exposed to the rudeness of the climate, and whose features are sometimes contracted by want, and sometimes hardened by the blasts. Supreme beauty is seldom found in cottages or work-­shops, even where no real hardships are suffered. To expand the human face to its full perfection, it seems necessary that the mind should co-­operate by placid­ ness of content, or consciousness of superiority. Their strength is proportionate to their size, but they are accustomed to run upon rough ground, and therefore can with great agility skip over the bog, or clam­ ber the mountain. For a campaign in the wastes of America,38 soldiers better quali­ fied could not have been found. Having little work to do, they are not willing, nor 35. The occupation or sport of hunting. 36. “Streaked; tabby; marked with branches” (Dictionary). 37. The attack of the brown or Norway rat on England beginning in 1729 is described by Thomas Pennant in British Zoology, Vol. I (1768), 100. 38. Many Scots fought beside the British in Canada and northern colonial America during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63).



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perhaps able to endure a long continuance of manual labour, and are therefore con­ sidered as habitually idle. Having never been supplied with those accommodations, which life exten­ sively diversified with trades affords, they supply their wants by very insufficient shifts, and endure many inconveniences, which a little attention would easily relieve. I have seen a horse carrying home the harvest on a crate. Under his tail was a stick for a crupper, held at the two ends by twists of straw. Hemp will grow in the islands, and therefore ropes may be had. If they wanted hemp, they might make better cord­ age of rushes, or perhaps of nettles, than of straw. Their method of life neither secures them perpetual health, nor exposes them to any particular diseases. There are physicians in the Islands, who, I believe, all practise chirurgery, and all compound their own medicines. It is generally supposed, that life is longer in places where there are few oppor­ tunities of luxury; but I found no instance here of extraordinary longevity. A cottager grows old over his oaten cakes, like a citizen at a turtle feast.39 He is indeed seldom incommoded by corpulence. Poverty preserves him from sinking under the burden of himself, but he escapes no other injury of time. Instances of long life are often related, which those who hear them are more willing to credit than examine. To be told that any man has attained a hundred years, gives hope and comfort to him who stands trembling on the brink of his own climacterick.40 Length of life is distributed impartially to very different modes of life in very different climates; and the mountains have no greater examples of age and health than the low lands, where I was introduced to two ladies of high quality; one of whom, in her ninety-­fourth year, presided at her table with the full exercise of all her powers; and the other has attained her eighty-­fourth, without any diminution of her vivacity, and with little reason to accuse time of depredations on her beauty. In the Islands, as in most other places, the inhabitants are of different rank, and one does not encroach here upon another. Where there is no commerce nor manu­ facture, he that is born poor can scarcely become rich; and if none are able to buy estates, he that is born to land cannot annihilate his family by selling it. This was once the state of these countries. Perhaps there is no example, till within a century and half, of any family whose estate was alienated otherwise than by violence or for­ feiture. Since money has been brought amongst them, they have found, like others, the art of spending more than they receive; and I saw with grief the chief of a very

39. Turtle was an affordable luxury in the eighteenth century. Citizen: “An ordinary (city- or town-­ dwelling) person as opposed to a member of the landed nobility or gentry on one hand or an artisan, labourer, etc., on the other” (OED, sense A1c). 40. A year of physical crisis, especially the “great climacteric,” which was said to occur at age sixty-­three; Johnson had just turned sixty-­four.

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ancient clan, whose island was condemned by law to be sold for the satisfaction of his creditors. The name of highest dignity is laird, of which there are in the extensive Isle of Sky only three, Macdonald, Macleod, and Mackinnon. The laird is the original owner of the land, whose natural power must be very great, where no man lives but by agriculture; and where the produce of the land is not conveyed through the laby­ rinths of traffick, but passes directly from the hand that gathers it to the mouth that eats it. The laird has all those in his power that live upon his farms. Kings can, for the most part, only exalt or degrade. The laird at pleasure can feed or starve, can give bread, or withhold it. This inherent power was yet strengthened by the kindness of consanguinity, and the reverence of patriarchal authority. The laird was the father of the clan, and his tenants commonly bore his name. And to these principles of original command was added, for many ages, an exclusive right of legal jurisdiction. This multifarious, and extensive obligation operated with force scarcely cred­ ible. Every duty, moral or political, was absorbed in affection and adherence to the chief. Not many years have passed since the clans knew no law but the laird’s will. He told them to whom they should be friends or enemies, what king they should obey, and what religion they should profess. When the Scots first rose in arms against the succession of the house of Han­ over, Lovat, the chief of the Frasers,41 was in exile for a rape. The Frasers were very numerous, and very zealous against the government. A pardon was sent to Lovat. He came to the English camp, and the clan immediately deserted to him. Next in dignity to the laird is the tacksman; a large taker or lease-­holder of land, of which he keeps part, as a domain, in his own hand, and lets part to under ten­ ants. The tacksman is necessarily a man capable of securing to the laird the whole rent, and is commonly a collateral relation. These “tacks,” or subordinate posses­ sions, were long considered as hereditary, and the occupant was distinguished by the name of the place at which he resided. He held a middle station, by which the highest and the lowest orders were connected. He paid rent and reverence to the laird, and received them from the tenants. This tenure still subsists, with its original operation, but not with the primitive stability. Since the islanders, no longer content to live, have learned the desire of growing rich, an ancient dependent is in danger of giving way to a higher bidder, at the expence of domestick dignity and heredi­ tary power. The stranger, whose money buys him preference, considers himself as paying for all that he has, and is indifferent about the laird’s honour or safety. The commodiousness of money is indeed great; but there are some advantages which 41. Simon Fraser, eleventh Lord Lovat (1667?–­1747), fled to France to evade charges of rape; he returned secretly in 1714 and in 1715 gained a pardon by enlisting his clan on the side of King George in the Jacobite up­ rising of that year.



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money cannot buy, and which therefore no wise man will by the love of money be tempted to forego. I have found in the hither parts of Scotland, men not defective in judgment or general experience, who consider the tacksman as a useless burden of the ground, as a drone who lives upon the product of an estate, without the right of property, or the merit of labour, and who impoverishes at once the landlord and the tenant. The land, say they, is let to the tacksman at six-­pence an acre, and by him to the tenant at ten-­pence. Let the owner be the immediate landlord to all the tenants; if he sets42 the ground at eight-­pence, he will increase his revenue by a fourth part,43 and the tenant’s burthen will be diminished by a fifth. Those who pursue this train of reasoning, seem not sufficiently to inquire whither it will lead them, nor to know that it will equally shew the propriety of sup­ pressing all wholesale trade, of shutting up the shops of every man who sells what he does not make, and of extruding all whose agency and profit intervene between the manufacturer and the consumer. They may, by stretching their understandings a little wider, comprehend, that all those who by undertaking large quantities of manufacture, and affording employment to many labourers, make themselves con­ sidered as benefactors to the publick, have only been robbing their workmen with one hand, and their customers with the other. If Crowley44 had sold only what he could make, and all his smiths had wrought their own iron with their own ham­ mers, he would have lived on less, and they would have sold their work for more. The salaries of superintendents and clerks would have been partly saved, and partly shared, and nails been sometimes cheaper by a farthing in a hundred. But then if the smith could not have found an immediate purchaser, he must have deserted his anvil; if there had by accident at any time been more sellers than buyers, the work­ men must have reduced their profit to nothing, by underselling one another; and as no great stock could have been in any hand, no sudden demand of large quantities could have been answered, and the builder must have stood still till the nailer could supply him. According to these schemes, universal plenty is to begin and end in universal misery. Hope and emulation will be utterly extinguished; and as all must obey the call of immediate necessity, nothing that requires extensive views, or provides for distant consequences, will ever be performed. To the southern inhabitants of Scotland, the state of the mountains and the islands is equally unknown with that of Borneo or Sumatra: Of both they have only heard a little, and guess the rest. They are strangers to the language and the manners, 42. Set: “To offer for a price” (Dictionary, sense 22). 43. An error: it should be a third part—a two-­pence increase over six pence. 44. Sir Ambrose Crowley (1658–1713), a wealthy iron magnate, distantly related to Johnson by marriage.

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to the advantages and wants of the people, whose life they would model, and whose evils they would remedy. Nothing is less difficult than to procure one convenience by the forfeiture of another. A soldier may expedite his march by throwing away his arms. To banish the tacksman is easy, to make a country plentiful by diminishing the people, is an ex­ peditious mode of husbandry; but that abundance, which there is nobody to enjoy, contributes little to human happiness. As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of intelligence must direct the man of labour. If the tacksmen be taken away, the Hebrides must in their present state be given up to grossness and ignorance; the tenant, for want of instruction, will be unskilful, and for want of admonition will be negligent. The laird in these wide estates, which often consist of islands remote from one another, cannot extend his personal influence to all his tenants; and the steward having no dignity annexed to his character, can have little authority among men taught to pay reverence only to birth, and who regard the tacksman as their hereditary superior; nor can the steward have equal zeal for the prosperity of an estate profitable only to the laird, with the tacksman, who has the laird’s income involved in his own. The only gentlemen in the Islands are the lairds, the tacksmen, and the minis­ ters, who frequently improve their livings by becoming farmers. If the tacksmen be banished, who will be left to impart knowledge, or impress civility? The laird must always be at a distance from the greater part of his lands; and if he resides at all upon them, must drag his days in solitude, having no longer either a friend or a compan­ ion; he will therefore depart to some more comfortable residence, and leave the ten­ ants to the wisdom and mercy of a factor.45 Of tenants there are different orders, as they have greater or less stock. Land is sometimes leased to a small fellowship, who live in a cluster of huts, called a Tenants Town, and are bound jointly and separately for the payment of their rent. These, I believe, employ in the care of their cattle, and the labour of tillage, a kind of tenants yet lower; who having a hut, with grass for a certain number of cows and sheep, pay their rent by a stipulated quantity of labour. The condition of domestick servants, or the price of occasional labour, I do not know with certainty. I was told that the maids have sheep, and are allowed to spin for their own clothing; perhaps they have no pecuniary wages, or none but in very wealthy families. The state of life, which has hitherto been purely pastoral, begins now to be a little variegated with commerce; but novelties enter by degrees, and till one mode has fully prevailed over the other, no settled notion can be formed. Such is the system of insular subordination, which, having little variety, can­ not afford much delight in the view, nor long detain the mind in contemplation. 45. A buyer employed by a person or a company.



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The inhabitants were for a long time perhaps not unhappy; but their content was a muddy mixture of pride and ignorance, an indifference for pleasures which they did not know, a blind veneration for their chiefs, and a strong conviction of their own importance. Their pride has been crushed by the heavy hand of a vindictive conqueror, whose severities have been followed by laws, which, though they cannot be called cruel, have produced much discontent, because they operate upon the surface of life, and make every eye bear witness to subjection. To be compelled to a new dress has always been found painful.46 Their chiefs being now deprived of their jurisdiction,47 have already lost much of their influence; and as they gradually degenerate from patriarchal rulers to rapa­ cious landlords, they will divest themselves of the little that remains. That dignity which they derived from an opinion of their military importance, the law, which disarmed them, has abated. An old gentleman, delighting himself with the recollection of better days, related, that forty years ago, a chieftain walked out attended by ten or twelve followers, with their arms rattling. That animating rattle48 has now ceased. The chief has lost his formidable retinue; and the High­ lander walks his heath unarmed and defenceless, with the peaceable submission of a French peasant or English cottager. Their ignorance grows every day less, but their knowledge is yet of little other use than to shew them their wants. They are now in the period of education, and feel the uneasiness of discipline, without yet perceiving the benefit of instruction. The last law,49 by which the Highlanders are deprived of their arms, has oper­ ated with efficacy beyond expectation. Of former statutes made with the same de­ sign, the execution had been feeble, and the effect inconsiderable. Concealment was undoubtedly practised, and perhaps often with connivance. There was tenderness, or partiality, on one side, and obstinacy on the other. But the law, which followed the victory of Culloden,50 found the whole nation dejected and intimidated; infor­ mations were given without danger, and without fear, and the arms were collected with such rigour, that every house was despoiled of its defence. To disarm part of the Highlands, could give no reasonable occasion of com­ plaint. Every government must be allowed the power of taking away the weapon that is lifted against it. But the loyal clans murmured, with some appearance of justice, that after having defended the King, they were forbidden for the future to defend 46. With the Dress Act of 1746, the British banned the use of kilts and tartans among the Scots. 47. See An Act for Taking away and Abolishing the Hereditable Jurisdictions in Scotland, Edinburgh, 1747. 48. Emended from “rabble” by Fleeman, Journey. 49. An Act for the more effectual Disarming the Highlands in Scotland . . . and for restraining the Use of the Highland Dress (Edinburgh, 1746), enlarged in a second act of 1748, repealed in 1782 (Fleeman, Journey). 50. This battle, in which the British put an end to the Scottish uprising, took place on 16 April 1746.

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themselves; and that the sword should be forfeited, which had been legally em­ ployed. Their case is undoubtedly hard, but in political regulations, good cannot be complete, it can only be predominant. Whether by disarming a people thus broken into several tribes, and thus re­ mote from the seat of power, more good than evil has been produced, may de­ serve inquiry. The supreme power in every community has the right of debarring every individual, and every subordinate society from self-­defence, only because the supreme power is able to defend them; and therefore where the governor cannot act, he must trust the subject to act for himself. These islands might be wasted with fire and sword before their sovereign would know their distress. A gang of robbers, such as has been lately found confederating themselves in the Highlands, might lay a wide region under contribution. The crew of a petty privateer might land on the largest and most wealthy of the islands, and riot without control in cruelty and waste. It was observed by one of the chiefs of Sky, that fifty armed men might, with­ out resistance, ravage the country. Laws that place the subjects in such a state, con­ travene the first principles of the compact of authority: they exact obedience, and yield no protection. It affords a generous and manly pleasure to conceive a little nation gather­ ing its fruits and tending its herds with fearless confidence, though it lies open on every side to invasion, where, in contempt of walls and trenches, every man sleeps securely with his sword beside him; where all on the first approach of hostility come together at the call to battle, as at a summons to a festal show; and committing their cattle to the care of those whom age or nature has disabled, engage the enemy with that competition for hazard and for glory, which operate in men that fight under the eye of those, whose dislike or kindness they have always considered as the greatest evil or the greatest good. This was, in the beginning of the present century, the state of the Highlands. Every man was a soldier, who partook of national confidence, and interested him­ self in national honour. To lose this spirit, is to lose what no small advantage will compensate. It may likewise deserve to be inquired, whether a great nation ought to be totally commercial? whether amidst the uncertainty of human affairs, too much at­ tention to one mode of happiness may not endanger others? whether the pride of riches must not sometimes have recourse to the protection of courage? and whether, if it be necessary to preserve in some part of the empire the military spirit, it can sub­ sist more commodiously in any place, than in remote and unprofitable provinces, where it can commonly do little harm, and whence it may be called forth at any sud­ den exigence? It must however be confessed, that a man, who places honour only in success­ ful violence, is a very troublesome and pernicious animal in time of peace; and that



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the martial character cannot prevail in a whole people, but by the diminution of all other virtues. He that is accustomed to resolve all right into conquest, will have very little tenderness or equity. All the friendship in such a life can be only a confederacy of invasion, or alliance of defence. The strong must flourish by force, and the weak subsist by stratagem. Till the Highlanders lost their ferocity, with their arms, they suffered from each other all that malignity could dictate, or precipitance could act. Every provoca­ tion was revenged with blood, and no man that ventured into a numerous company, by whatever occasion brought together, was sure of returning without a wound. If they are now exposed to foreign hostilities, they may talk of the danger, but can sel­ dom feel it. If they are no longer martial, they are no longer quarrelsome. Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestick animosities allow no cessation. The abolition of the local jurisdictions, which had for so many ages been exer­ cised by the chiefs, has likewise its evil and its good. The feudal constitution natu­ rally diffused itself into long ramifications of subordinate authority. To this gen­ eral temper of the government was added the peculiar form of the country, broken by mountains into many subdivisions scarcely accessible but to the natives, and guarded by passes, or perplexed with intricacies, through which national justice could not find its way. The power of deciding controversies, and of punishing offences, as some such power there must always be, was intrusted to the lairds of the country, to those whom the people considered as their natural judges. It cannot be supposed that a rugged proprietor of the rocks, unprincipled and unenlightened, was a nice resolver of entangled claims, or very exact in proportioning punishment to offences. But the more he indulged his own will, the more he held his vassals in dependance. Pru­ dence and innocence, without the favour of the chief, conferred no security; and crimes involved no danger, when the judge was resolute to acquit. When the chiefs were men of knowledge and virtue, the convenience of a do­ mestick judicature was great. No long journies were necessary, nor artificial delays could be practised; the character, the alliances, and interests of the litigants were known to the court, and all false pretences were easily detected. The sentence, when it was past, could not be evaded; the power of the laird superseded formalities, and justice could not be defeated by interest or stratagem. I doubt not but that since the regular judges have made their circuits through the whole country, right has been every where more wisely, and more equally dis­ tributed; the complaint is, that litigation is grown troublesome, and that the magis­ trates are too few, and therefore often too remote for general convenience. Many of the smaller islands have no legal officer within them. I once asked, if

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a crime should be committed, by what authority the offender could be seized? and was told, that the laird would exert his right; a right which he must now usurp, but which surely necessity must vindicate, and which is therefore yet exercised in lower degrees, by some of the proprietors, when legal processes cannot be obtained. In all greater questions, however, there is now happily an end to all fear or hope from malice or from favour. The roads are secure in those places through which, forty years ago, no traveller could pass without a convoy. All trials of right by the sword are forgotten, and the mean are in as little danger from the powerful as in other places. No scheme of policy has, in any country, yet brought the rich and poor on equal terms into courts of judicature. Perhaps experience, improving on experi­ ence, may in time effect it. Those who have long enjoyed dignity and power, ought not to lose it without some equivalent. There was paid to the chiefs by the publick, in exchange for their privileges, perhaps a sum greater than most of them had ever possessed, which ex­ cited a thirst for riches, of which it shewed them the use. When the power of birth and station ceases, no hope remains but from the prevalence of money. Power and wealth supply the place of each other. Power confers the ability of gratifying our desire without the consent of others. Wealth enables us to obtain the consent of others to our gratification. Power, simply considered, whatever it confers on one, must take from another. Wealth enables its owner to give to others, by taking only from himself. Power pleases the violent and proud: wealth delights the placid and the timorous. Youth therefore flies at power, and age grovels after riches. The chiefs, divested of their prerogatives, necessarily turned their thoughts to the improvement of their revenues, and expect more rent, as they have less homage. The tenant, who is far from perceiving that his condition is made better in the same proportion, as that of his landlord is made worse, does not immediately see why his industry is to be taxed more heavily than before. He refuses to pay the demand, and is ejected; the ground is then let to a stranger, who perhaps brings a larger stock, but who, taking the land at its full price, treats with the laird upon equal terms, and considers him not as a chief, but as a trafficker in land. Thus the estate perhaps is improved, but the clan is broken. It seems to be the general opinion, that the rents have been raised with too much eagerness. Some regard must be paid to prejudice. Those who have hitherto paid but little, will not suddenly be persuaded to pay much, though they can afford it. As ground is gradually improved, and the value of money decreases, the rent may be raised without any diminution of the farmer’s profits: yet it is necessary in these countries, where the ejection of a tenant is a greater evil, than in more populous places, to consider not merely what the land will produce, but with what ability the inhabitant can cultivate it. A certain stock can allow but a certain payment; for if the land be doubled, and the stock remains the same, the tenant becomes no richer.



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The proprietors of the Highlands might perhaps often increase their income, by subdividing the farms, and allotting to every occupier only so many acres as he can profitably employ, but that they want people. There seems now, whatever be the cause, to be through a great part of the High­ lands a general discontent. That adherence, which was lately professed by every man to the chief of his name, has now little prevalence; and he that cannot live as he de­ sires at home, listens to the tale of fortunate islands, and happy regions, where every man may have land of his own, and eat the product of his labour without a superior. Those who have obtained grants of American lands, have, as is well known, in­ vited settlers from all quarters of the globe; and among other places, where oppres­ sion might produce a wish for new habitations, their emissaries would not fail to try their persuasions in the Isles of Scotland, where at the time when the clans were newly disunited from their chiefs, and exasperated by unprecedented exactions, it is no wonder that they prevailed. Whether the mischiefs of emigration were immediately perceived, may be justly questioned. They who went first, were probably such as could best be spared; but the accounts sent by the earliest adventurers, whether true or false, inclined many to follow them; and whole neighbourhoods formed parties for removal; so that departure from their native country is no longer exile. He that goes thus accompa­ nied, carries with him all that makes life pleasant. He sits down in a better climate, surrounded by his kindred and his friends: they carry with them their language, their opinions, their popular songs, and hereditary merriment: they change nothing but the place of their abode; and of that change they perceive the benefit. This is the real effect of emigration, if those that go away together settle on the same spot, and preserve their ancient union. But some relate that these adventurous visitants of unknown regions, after a voyage passed in dreams of plenty and felicity, are dispersed at last upon a sylvan wilderness, where their first years must be spent in toil, to clear the ground which is afterwards to be tilled, and that the whole effect of their undertaking is only more fatigue and equal scarcity. Both accounts may be suspected. Those who are gone will endeavour by every art to draw others after them; for as their numbers are greater, they will provide better for themselves. When Nova Scotia was first peopled, I remember a letter, published under the character of a New Planter, who related how much the climate put him in mind of Italy.51 Such intelligence the Hebridians probably receive from their transmarine correspondents. But with equal temptations of interest, and per­ haps with no greater niceness of veracity, the owners of the islands spread stories of American hardships to keep their people content at home. Some method to stop this epidemick desire of wandering, which spreads its 51. The letter appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine for October 1749 (xix.472).

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contagion from valley to valley, deserves to be sought with great diligence. In more fruitful countries, the removal of one only makes room for the succession of another: but in the Hebrides, the loss of an inhabitant leaves a lasting vacuity; for nobody born in any other parts of the world will choose this country for his residence; and an island once depopulated will remain a desert, as long as the present facility of travel gives every one, who is discontented and unsettled, the choice of his abode. Let it be inquired, whether the first intention of those who are fluttering on the wing, and collecting a flock that they may take their flight, be to attain good, or to avoid evil. If they are dissatisfied with that part of the globe, which their birth has allotted them, and resolve not to live without the pleasures of happier climates; if they long for bright suns, and calm skies, and flowery fields, and fragrant gardens, I know not by what eloquence they can be persuaded, or by what offers they can be hired to stay. But if they are driven from their native country by positive evils, and disgusted by ill-­treatment, real or imaginary, it were fit to remove their grievances, and quiet their resentment; since, if they have been hitherto undutiful subjects, they will not much mend their principles by American conversation.52 To allure them into the army, it was thought proper to indulge them in the continuance of their national dress. If this concession could have any effect, it might easily be made. That dissimilitude of appearance, which was supposed to keep them distinct from the rest of the nation, might disincline them from coalescing with the Pensylvanians, or people of Connecticut. If the restitution of their arms will recon­ cile them to their country, let them have again those weapons, which will not be more mischievous at home than in the Colonies. That they may not fly from the in­ crease of rent, I know not whether the general good does not require that the land­ lords be, for a time, restrained in their demands, and kept quiet by pensions pro­ portionate to their loss. To hinder insurrection, by driving away the people, and to govern peaceably, by having no subjects, is an expedient that argues no great profundity of politicks. To soften the obdurate, to convince the mistaken, to mollify the resentful, are worthy of a statesman; but it affords a legislator little self-­applause to consider, that where there was formerly an insurrection, there is now a wilderness. [We omit here eight paragraphs in which SJ discusses the population of “northern regions” in Roman times.]

The traveller who comes hither from more opulent countries, to speculate upon the remains of pastoral life, will not much wonder that a common Highlander 52. Conversation: “The action of living or having one’s being in a place or among persons” (OED, sense 1).



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has no strong adherence to his native soil; for of animal enjoyments, or of physical good, he leaves nothing that he may not find again wheresoever he may be thrown. [We omit here fifteen paragraphs in which SJ discusses Highland dwellings and diet.]

The general conversation of the Islanders has nothing particular. I did not meet with the inquisitiveness of which I have read, and suspect the judgment to have been rashly made. A stranger of curiosity comes into a place where a stranger is seldom seen: he importunes the people with questions, of which they cannot guess the motive, and gazes with surprise on things which they, having had them always before their eyes, do not suspect of any thing wonderful. He appears to them like some being of another world, and then thinks it peculiar that they take their turn to inquire whence he comes, and whither he is going. The Islands were long unfurnished with instruction for youth, and none but the sons of gentlemen could have any literature. There are now parochial schools, to which the lord of every manor pays a certain stipend. Here the children are taught to read; but by the rule of their institution, they teach only English, so that the natives read a language which they may never use or understand. If a parish, which often happens, contains several islands, the school being but in one, cannot assist the rest. This is the state of Col, which, however, is more enlightened than some other places; for the deficiency is supplied by a young gentleman, who, for his own improvement, travels every year on foot over the Highlands to the session53 at Aberdeen; and at his return, during the vacation, teaches to read and write in his native island. In Sky there are two grammar schools, where boarders are taken to be regu­ larly educated. The price of board is from three pounds, to four pounds ten shillings a year, and that of instruction is half a crown54 a quarter. But the scholars are birds of passage, who live at school only in the summer; for in winter provisions cannot be made for any considerable number in one place. This periodical dispersion im­ presses strongly the scarcity of these countries. Having heard of no boarding-­school for ladies nearer than Inverness, I sup­ pose their education is generally domestick. The elder daughters of the higher fami­ lies are sent into the world, and may contribute by their acquisitions to the improve­ ment of the rest. Women must here study to be either pleasing or useful. Their deficiencies are seldom supplied by very liberal fortunes. A hundred pounds is a portion beyond the hope of any but the laird’s daughter. They do not indeed often give money with their daughters; the question is, How many cows a young lady will bring her husband. 53. The academic term. 54. Crown: A coin with the face value of five shillings.

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A rich maiden has from ten to forty; but two cows are a decent fortune for one who pretends to no distinction. The religion of the Islands is that of the Kirk of Scotland.55 The gentlemen with whom I conversed are all inclined to the English liturgy; but they are obliged to maintain the established minister, and the country is too poor to afford payment to another, who must live wholly on the contribution of his audience. They therefore all attend the worship of the Kirk, as often as a visit from their minister, or the practicability of travelling gives them opportunity; nor have they any reason to complain of insufficient pastors; for I saw not one in the Islands, whom I had reason to think either deficient in learning, or irregular in life; but found several with whom I could not converse without wishing, as my respect increased, that they had not been Presbyterians. [We omit here seven paragraphs in which SJ discusses some particular religious tenets and notes the general absence of political opinions among the Highlanders.]

The various kinds of superstition which prevailed here, as in all other regions of ignorance, are by the diligence of the ministers almost extirpated. Of Browny, mentioned by Martin,56 nothing has been heard for many years. Browny was a sturdy fairy; who, if he was fed, and kindly treated, would, as they said, do a great deal of work. They now pay him no wages, and are content to labour for themselves. In Troda, within these three-­and-­thirty years, milk was put every Saturday for Greogach, or “the old man with the long beard.” Whether Greogach was courted as kind, or dreaded as terrible, whether they meant, by giving him the milk, to obtain good, or avert evil, I was not informed. The minister is now living by whom the prac­ tice was abolished. They have still among them a great number of charms for the cure of differ­ ent diseases; they are all invocations, perhaps transmitted to them from the times of popery, which increasing knowledge will bring into disuse. They have opinions, which cannot be ranked with superstition, because they regard only natural effects. They expect better crops of grain, by sowing their seed in the moon’s increase. The moon has great influence in vulgar philosophy. In my mem­ ory it was a precept annually given in one of the English Almanacks, “to kill hogs when the moon was increasing, and the bacon would prove the better in boiling.”57 55. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland. 56. Martin Martin, A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (1703), p. 110. Martin’s book, which SJ read as a boy, sparked his desire to visit the Western Islands. 57. John Neve’s Almanac for 1653, sig. B2v.



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We should have had little claim to the praise of curiosity, if we had not endeav­ oured with particular attention to examine the question of the “second sight.” Of an opinion received for centuries by a whole nation, and supposed to be confirmed through its whole descent, by a series of successive facts, it is desirable that the truth should be established, or the fallacy detected. The “second sight” is an impression made either by the mind upon the eye, or by the eye upon the mind, by which things distant or future are perceived, and seen as if they were present. A man on a journey far from home falls from his horse, another, who is perhaps at work about the house, sees him bleeding on the ground, commonly with a landscape of the place where the accident befalls him. Another seer, driving home his cattle, or wandering in idleness, or musing in the sunshine, is suddenly surprised by the appearance of a bridal ceremony, or funeral procession, and counts the mourners or attendants, of whom, if he knows them, he relates the names, if he knows them not, he can describe the dresses. Things distant are seen at the instant when they happen. Of things future I know not that there is any rule for determining the time between the “sight” and the event. This receptive faculty, for power it cannot be called, is neither voluntary nor constant. The appearances have no dependence upon choice: they cannot be sum­ moned, detained, or recalled. The impression is sudden, and the effect often painful. By the term “second sight,” seems to be meant a mode of seeing, superadded to that which Nature generally bestows. In the Earse it is called taisch;58 which sig­ nifies likewise a spectre, or a vision. I know not, nor is it likely that the Highlanders ever examined, whether by taisch, used for “second sight,” they mean the power of seeing, or the thing seen. I do not find it to be true, as it is reported, that to the “second sight” noth­ ing is presented but phantoms of evil. Good seems to have the same proportion in those visionary scenes, as it obtains in real life: almost all remarkable events have evil for their basis; and are either miseries incurred, or miseries escaped. Our sense is so much stronger of what we suffer, than of what we enjoy, that the ideas of pain predominate in almost every mind. What is recollection but a revival of vexations, or history but a record of wars, treasons, and calamities? Death, which is consid­ ered as the greatest evil, happens to all. The greatest good, be it what it will, is the lot but of a part. That they should often see death is to be expected; because death is an event frequent and important. But they see likewise more pleasing incidents. A gentleman told me, that when he had once gone far from his own island, one of his labouring servants predicted his return, and described the livery of his attendant, which he 58. Properly taibhse.

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had never worn at home; and which had been, without any previous design, occa­ sionally given him. Our desire of information was keen, and our inquiry frequent. Mr. Boswell’s frankness and gaiety made every body communicative; and we heard many tales of these airy shows, with more or less evidence59 and distinctness. It is the common talk of the Lowland Scots, that the notion of the “second sight” is wearing away with other superstitions; and that its reality is no longer supposed, but by the grossest60 people. How far its prevalence ever extended, or what ground it has lost, I know not. The Islanders of all degrees, whether of rank or understanding, universally admit it, except the ministers, who universally deny it, and are suspected to deny it, in consequence of a system, against conviction. One of them honestly told me, that he came to Sky with a resolution not to believe it. Strong reasons for incredulity will readily occur. This faculty of seeing things out of sight is local, and commonly useless. It is a breach of the common order of things, without any visible reason or perceptible benefit. It is ascribed only to a people very little enlightened; and among them, for the most part, to the mean and the ignorant. To the confidence of these objections it may be replied, that by presuming to determine what is fit, and what is beneficial, they presuppose more knowledge of the universal system than man has attained; and therefore depend upon principles too complicated and extensive for our comprehension; and that there can be no security in the consequence, when the premises are not understood; that the “second sight” is only wonderful because it is rare, for, considered in itself, it involves no more dif­ ficulty than dreams, or perhaps than the regular exercise of the cogitative faculty; that a general opinion of communicative impulses, or visionary representations, has prevailed in all ages and all nations; that particular instances have been given, with such evidence, as neither Bacon nor Boyle has been able to resist;61 that sudden im­ pressions, which the event has verified, have been felt by more than own or publish them; that the “second sight” of the Hebrides implies only the local frequency of a power, which is nowhere totally unknown; and that where we are unable to decide by antecedent reason, we must be content to yield to the force of testimony. By pretension to “second sight,” no profit was ever sought or gained. It is an involuntary affection, in which neither hope nor fear are known to have any part.

59. “Clearness; indubitable certainty” (Dictionary, sense 1). 60. Gross: “Stupid; dull” (Dictionary, sense 6). 61. Early editions print “Bayle,” but recent scholarship shows that “Boyle” was intended. Francis Bacon (1600–1663) and Robert Boyle (1627–1691) were scientists whom SJ admired (see his Preface to his Dictionary, p. 416 above).



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Those who profess to feel it, do not boast of it as a privilege, nor are considered by others as advantageously distinguished. They have no temptation to feign; and their hearers have no motive to encourage the imposture. To talk with any of these seers is not easy. There is one living in Sky, with whom we would have gladly conversed; but he was very gross and ignorant, and knew no English. The proportion in these countries of the poor to the rich is such, that if we suppose the quality to be accidental, it can very rarely happen to a man of educa­ tion; and yet on such men it has sometimes fallen. There is now a “second sighted” gentleman in the Highlands, who complains of the terrors to which he is exposed. The foresight of the seers is not always prescience: they are impressed with images, of which the event only shews them the meaning. They tell what they have seen to others, who are at that time not more knowing than themselves, but may be­ come at last very adequate witnesses, by comparing the narrative with its verifica­ tion. To collect sufficient testimonies for the satisfaction of the publick, or of our­ selves, would have required more time than we could bestow. There is, against it, the seeming analogy of things confusedly seen, and little understood; and for it, the indistinct cry of national62 persuasion, which may be perhaps resolved at last into prejudice and tradition. I never could advance my curiosity to conviction; but came away at last only willing to believe.63 As there subsists no longer in the Islands much of that peculiar and discrimi­ native form of life, of which the idea had delighted our imagination, we were willing to listen to such accounts of past times as would be given us. But we soon found what memorials were to be expected from an illiterate people, whose whole time is a series of distress; where every morning is labouring with expedients for the eve­ ning; and where all mental pains or pleasure arose from the dread of winter, the ex­ pectation of spring, the caprices of their chiefs, and the motions of the neighbour­ ing clans; where there was neither shame from ignorance, nor pride in knowledge; neither curiosity to inquire, nor vanity to communicate. The chiefs indeed were exempt from urgent penury, and daily difficulties; and in their houses were preserved what accounts remained of past ages. But the chiefs were sometimes ignorant and careless, and sometimes kept busy by turbulence and contention; and one generation of ignorance effaces the whole series of unwritten history. Books are faithful repositories, which may be a while neglected or forgotten; but when they are opened again, will again impart their instruction: memory, once 62. National: “Public; general; not private; not particular” (Dictionary, sense 1). 63. SJ discusses an instance of second sight in his Life of Roscommon with equal unwillingness to con­ clude against it (see Yale, xxii.241–42).

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interrupted, is not to be recalled. Written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has past away, is again bright in its proper station. Tra­ dition is but a meteor, which, if once it falls, cannot be rekindled. It seems to be universally supposed, that much of the local history was pre­ served by the bards, of whom one is said to have been retained by every great family. After these bards were some of my first inquiries; and I received such answers as, for a while, made me please myself with my increase of knowledge; for I had not then learned how to estimate the narration of a Highlander. They said that a great family had a bard and a senachi,64 who were the poet and historian of the house; and an old gentleman told me that he remembered one of each. Here was a dawn of intelligence. Of men that had lived within memory, some certain knowledge might be attained. Though the office had ceased, its effects might continue; the poems might be found, though there was no poet. Another conversation indeed informed me, that the same man was both bard and senachi. This variation discouraged me; but as the practice might be different in different times, or at the same time in different families, there was yet no reason for supposing that I must necessarily sit down in total ignorance. Soon after I was told by a gentleman, who is generally acknowledged the great­ est master of Hebridian antiquities, that there had indeed once been both bards and senachies; and that senachi signified “the man of talk,” or of conversation; but that neither bard nor senachi had existed for some centuries. I have no reason to sup­ pose it exactly known at what time the custom ceased, nor did it probably cease in all houses at once. But whenever the practice of recitation was disused, the works, whether poetical or historical, perished with the authors; for in those times nothing had been written in the Earse language. Whether the “man of talk” was a historian, whose office was to tell truth, or a story-­teller, like those which were in the last century, and perhaps are now among the Irish, whose trade was only to amuse, it now would be vain to inquire. Most of the domestick offices were, I believe, hereditary; and probably the lau­ reat of a clan was always the son of the last laureat. The history of the race could no otherwise be communicated, or retained; but what genius could be expected in a poet by inheritance? The nation was wholly illiterate. Neither bards nor senachies could write or read; but if they were ignorant, there was no danger of detection; they were believed by those whose vanity they flattered. The recital of genealogies, which has been considered as very efficacious to the preservation of a true series of ancestry, was anciently made, when the heir of the 64. Properly seanachaidh.



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family came to manly age. This practice has never subsisted within time of memory, nor was much credit due to such rehearsers, who might obtrude fictitious pedigrees, either to please their masters, or to hide the deficiency of their own memories. Where the chiefs of the Highlands have found the histories of their descent is difficult to tell; for no Earse genealogy was ever written. In general this only is evi­ dent, that the principal house of a clan must be very ancient, and that those must have lived long in a place, of whom it is not known when they came thither. Thus hopeless are all attempts to find any traces of Highland learning. Nor are their primitive customs and ancient manner of life otherwise than very faintly and uncertainly remembered by the present race. [We omit here six paragraphs touching briefly on money, servants, weapons, and funerals in the Highlands.]

Of the Earse language, as I understand nothing, I cannot say more than I have been told. It is the rude speech of a barbarous people, who had few thoughts to ex­ press, and were content, as they conceived grossly, to be grossly understood. After what has been lately talked of Highland bards, and Highland genius,65 many will startle when they are told, that the Earse never was a written language; that there is not in the world an Earse manuscript a hundred years old; and that the sounds of the Highlanders were never expressed by letters, till some little books of piety were translated, and a metrical version of the Psalms was made by the Synod of Argyle.66 Whoever therefore now writes in this language, spells according to his own per­ ception of the sound, and his own idea of the power of the letters. The Welsh and the Irish are cultivated tongues. The Welsh, two hundred years ago, insulted their English neighbours for the instability of their orthography;67 while the Earse merely floated in the breath of the people, and could therefore receive little improvement. When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have undergone some labour in improv­ ing themselves, they set a proportionate value on their own thoughts, and wish to enforce them by efficacious expressions; speech becomes embodied and permanent; different modes and phrases are compared, and the best obtains an establishment. By degrees one age improves upon another. Exactness is first obtained, and after­ wards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man 65. James Macpherson (1736–96) claimed that his Fingal (1762) and Tamora (1763) were translations of the ancient Gaelic of Ossian. SJ did not believe him; see below, p. 503 and n. 69. For further details about the dispute, see Boswell, Life, ii.510–14. 66. The synod led to the production of religious texts in Scots Gaelic beginning in 1653. 67. SJ refers to the censure of English orthography by Sir John Price, Historiae Brytannicae Defensio (1573).

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leaves his eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be no polished lan­ guage without books. That the bards could not read more than the rest of their countrymen, it is rea­ sonable to suppose; because, if they had read, they could probably have written; and how high their compositions may reasonably be rated, an inquirer may best judge by considering what stores of imagery, what principles of ratiocination, what compre­ hension of knowledge, and what delicacy of elocution he has known any man attain who cannot read. The state of the bards was yet more hopeless. He that cannot read, may now converse with those that can; but the bard was a barbarian among barbari­ ans, who, knowing nothing himself, lived with others that knew no more. There has lately been in the Islands one of these illiterate poets, who hear­ ing the Bible read at church, is said to have turned the sacred history into verse. I heard part of a dialogue, composed by him, translated by a young lady in Mull, and thought it had more meaning than I expected from a man totally uneducated; but he had some opportunities of knowledge; he lived among a learned people. After all that has been done for the instruction of the Highlanders, the antipathy between their language and literature still continues; and no man that has learned only Earse is, at this time, able to read. The Earse has many dialects, and the words used in some islands are not always known in others. In literate nations, though the pronunciation, and sometimes the words of common speech may differ, as now in England, compared with the south of Scotland, yet there is a written diction, which pervades all dialects, and is under­ stood in every province. But where the whole language is colloquial, he that has only one part, never gets the rest, as he cannot get it but by change of residence. In an unwritten speech, nothing that is not very short is transmitted from one generation to another. Few have opportunities of hearing a long composition often enough to learn it, or have inclination to repeat it so often as is necessary to retain it; and what is once forgotten is lost for ever. I believe there cannot be recovered, in the whole Earse language, five hundred lines of which there is any evidence to prove them a hundred years old. Yet I hear that the father of Ossian boasts of two chests more of ancient poetry, which he suppresses, because they are too good for the English. He that goes into the Highlands with a mind naturally acquiescent, and a cre­ dulity eager for wonders, may come back with an opinion very different from mine; for the inhabitants knowing the ignorance of all strangers in their language and an­ tiquities, perhaps are not very scrupulous adherents to truth; yet I do not say that they deliberately speak studied falsehood, or have a settled purpose to deceive. They have inquired and considered little, and do not always feel their own ignorance. They are not much accustomed to be interrogated by others; and seem never to have



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thought upon interrogating themselves; so that if they do not know what they tell to be true, they likewise do not distinctly perceive it to be false. Mr. Boswell was very diligent in his inquiries; and the result of his investiga­ tions was, that the answer to the second question was commonly such as nullified the answer to the first. We were a while told, that they had an old translation of the scriptures; and told it till it would appear obstinacy to inquire again. Yet by continued accumulation of questions we found, that the translation meant, if any meaning there were, was nothing else than the Irish Bible.68 We heard of manuscripts that were, or that had been in the hands of some­ body’s father, or grandfather; but at last we had no reason to believe they were other than Irish. Martin mentions Irish, but never any Earse manuscripts, to be found in the Islands in his time. I suppose my opinion of the poems of Ossian is already discovered.69 I believe they never existed in any other form than that which we have seen. The editor, or author, never could shew the original; nor can it be shewn by any other; to revenge reasonable incredulity, by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence, with which the world is not yet acquainted; and stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt. It would be easy to shew it if he had it; but whence could it be had? It is too long to be remembered, and the language formerly had nothing written. He has doubtless inserted names that circulate in popular stories, and may have translated some wan­ dering ballads, if any can be found; and the names, and some of the images being recollected, make an inaccurate auditor imagine, by the help of Caledonian bigotry, that he has formerly heard the whole. I asked a very learned minister in Sky, who had used all arts to make me believe the genuineness of the book, whether at last he believed it himself ? but he would not answer. He wished me to be deceived, for the honour of his country; but would not directly and formally deceive me. Yet has this man’s testimony been publickly produced, as of one that held Fingal to be the work of Ossian. It is said, that some men of integrity profess to have heard parts of it, but they 68. A complete translation of the Old Testament into Irish Gaelic was prepared under the direction of William Bedell (1571–1642) but not published until 1685. 69. See p. 502, n. 65, above. This and the succeeding four paragraphs, especially after they appeared unaltered in the second edition, provoked Macpherson to write Johnson a letter attacking him with “the most opprobrious epithets.” Johnson responded in a letter of 20 January 1775: Mr. James Macpherson—I received your foolish and impudent note. Whatever insult is offered me I will do my best to repel, and what I cannot do for myself the law will do for me. I will not desist from detecting what I think a cheat, from any fear of the menaces of a Ruffian. You want me to retract. What shall I retract? I thought your book an imposture from the beginning, I think it upon yet surer reasons an imposture still. For this opinion I give the publick my reasons which I here dare you to refute.” (SJ Letters, ii.168–69 and n. 3).

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all heard them when they were boys; and it was never said that any of them could re­ cite six lines. They remember names, and perhaps some proverbial sentiments; and, having no distinct ideas, coin a resemblance without an original. The persuasion of the Scots, however, is far from universal; and in a question so capable of proof, why should doubt be suffered to continue? The editor has been heard to say, that part of the poem was received by him, in the Saxon character. He has then found, by some peculiar fortune, an unwritten language, written in a character which the natives probably never beheld. I have yet supposed no imposture but in the publisher,70 yet I am far from cer­ tainty, that some translations have not been lately made, that may now be obtruded71 as parts of the original work. Credulity on one part is a strong temptation to deceit on the other, especially to deceit of which no personal injury is the consequence, and which flatters the author with his own ingenuity. The Scots have something to plead for their easy reception of an improbable fiction: they are seduced by their fondness for their supposed ancestors. A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist, who does not love Scotland better than truth: he will always love it better than in­ quiry; and if falsehood flatters his vanity, will not be very diligent to detect it. Neither ought the English to be much influenced by Scotch authority; for of the past and present state of the whole Earse nation, the Lowlanders are at least as ignorant as ourselves. To be ignorant is painful; but it is dangerous to quiet our uneasiness by the delusive opiate of hasty persuasion. But this is the age in which those who could not read, have been supposed to write; in which the giants of antiquated romance have been exhibited as realities. If we know little of the ancient Highlanders, let us not fill the vacuity with Ossian. If we have not searched the Magellanick regions, let us however forbear to people them with Patagons.72 Having waited some days at Armidel, we were flattered at last with a wind that promised to convey us to Mull. We went on board a boat that was taking in kelp, and left the Isle of Sky behind us. We were doomed to experience, like others, the danger of trusting to the wind, which blew against us, in a short time, with such vio­ lence, that we, being no seasoned sailors, were willing to call it a tempest. I was sea-­ sick and lay down. Mr. Boswell kept the deck. The master knew not well whither to go; and our difficulties might perhaps have filled a very pathetick page, had not Mr. Maclean of Col, who, with every other qualification which insular life requires, is a very active and skilful mariner, piloted us safe into his own harbour. 70. SJ means Macpherson, not the bookseller or what is now called a publisher. 71. Forcibly introduced. 72. The southernmost part of South America, home to the Patagonians, an indigenous people of whom fabulous stories were told by early explorers.



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[We omit here twenty-­three pages in the Yale Edition, bringing SJ and JB through the isles of Col and on to Mull.]

INCH KENNETH In the morning we went again into the boat, and were landed on Inch Kenneth, an island about a mile long, and perhaps half a mile broad, remarkable for pleasant­ ness and fertility. It is verdant and grassy, and fit both for pasture and tillage; but it has no trees. Its only inhabitants were Sir Allan Maclean, and two young ladies, his daughters, with their servants. Romance does not often exhibit a scene that strikes the imagination more than this little desert in these depths of western obscurity, occupied not by a gross herds­ man, or amphibious fisherman, but by a gentleman and two ladies, of high birth, polished manners, and elegant conversation, who, in a habitation raised not very far above the ground, but furnished with unexpected neatness and convenience, prac­ tised all the kindness of hospitality, and refinement of courtesy. Sir Allan is the chieftain of the great clan of Maclean, which is said to claim the second place among the Highland families, yielding only to Macdonald. Though by the misconduct of his ancestors, most of the extensive territory, which would have descended to him, has been alienated, he still retains much of the dignity and au­ thority of his birth. When soldiers were lately wanting for the American war,73 ap­ plication was made to Sir Allan, and he nominated a hundred men for the service, who obeyed the summons, and bore arms under his command. He had then, for some time, resided with the young ladies in Inch Kenneth, where he lives not only with plenty, but with elegance, having conveyed to his cot­ tage a collection of books, and what else is necessary to make his hours pleasant. When we landed, we were met by Sir Allan and the ladies, accompanied by Miss Macquarry, who had passed some time with them, and now returned to Ulva74 with her father. We all walked together to the mansion, where we found one cottage for Sir Allan, and I think two more for the domesticks and the offices. We entered, and wanted little that palaces afford. Our room was neatly floored, and well lighted; and our dinner, which was dressed in one of the other huts, was plentiful and delicate. In the afternoon Sir Allan reminded us, that the day was Sunday, which he never suffered to pass without some religious distinction, and invited us to partake in his acts of domestick worship; which I hope neither Mr. Boswell nor myself will

73. The Seven Years’ War, often known in America as the French and Indian War. 74. SJ and JB arrived in Inch Kenneth from Ulva, an island off the coast of Mull.

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[We omit here twenty-­three pages in the Yale Edition, bringing SJ and JB through the isles of Col and on to Mull.]

INCH KENNETH In the morning we went again into the boat, and were landed on Inch Kenneth, an island about a mile long, and perhaps half a mile broad, remarkable for pleasant­ ness and fertility. It is verdant and grassy, and fit both for pasture and tillage; but it has no trees. Its only inhabitants were Sir Allan Maclean, and two young ladies, his daughters, with their servants. Romance does not often exhibit a scene that strikes the imagination more than this little desert in these depths of western obscurity, occupied not by a gross herds­ man, or amphibious fisherman, but by a gentleman and two ladies, of high birth, polished manners, and elegant conversation, who, in a habitation raised not very far above the ground, but furnished with unexpected neatness and convenience, prac­ tised all the kindness of hospitality, and refinement of courtesy. Sir Allan is the chieftain of the great clan of Maclean, which is said to claim the second place among the Highland families, yielding only to Macdonald. Though by the misconduct of his ancestors, most of the extensive territory, which would have descended to him, has been alienated, he still retains much of the dignity and au­ thority of his birth. When soldiers were lately wanting for the American war,73 ap­ plication was made to Sir Allan, and he nominated a hundred men for the service, who obeyed the summons, and bore arms under his command. He had then, for some time, resided with the young ladies in Inch Kenneth, where he lives not only with plenty, but with elegance, having conveyed to his cot­ tage a collection of books, and what else is necessary to make his hours pleasant. When we landed, we were met by Sir Allan and the ladies, accompanied by Miss Macquarry, who had passed some time with them, and now returned to Ulva74 with her father. We all walked together to the mansion, where we found one cottage for Sir Allan, and I think two more for the domesticks and the offices. We entered, and wanted little that palaces afford. Our room was neatly floored, and well lighted; and our dinner, which was dressed in one of the other huts, was plentiful and delicate. In the afternoon Sir Allan reminded us, that the day was Sunday, which he never suffered to pass without some religious distinction, and invited us to partake in his acts of domestick worship; which I hope neither Mr. Boswell nor myself will

73. The Seven Years’ War, often known in America as the French and Indian War. 74. SJ and JB arrived in Inch Kenneth from Ulva, an island off the coast of Mull.

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be suspected of a disposition to refuse. The elder of the ladies read the English ser­ vice. Inch Kenneth was once a seminary of ecclesiasticks, subordinate, I suppose, to Icolmkill. Sir Allan had a mind to trace the foundation of the college, but neither I nor Mr. Boswell, who “bends” a keener “eye on vacancy,”75 were able to perceive them. Our attention, however, was sufficiently engaged by a venerable chapel, which stands yet entire, except that the roof is gone. It is about sixty feet in length, and thirty in breadth. On one side of the altar is a bas relief of the blessed Virgin, and by it lies a little bell; which, though cracked, and without a clapper, has remained there for ages, guarded only by the venerableness of the place. The ground round the chapel is covered with grave-­stones of chiefs and ladies; and still continues to be a place of sepulture. Inch Kenneth is a proper prelude to Icolmkill. It was not without some mourn­ ful emotion that we contemplated the ruins of religious structures, and the monu­ ments of the dead. On the next day we took a more distinct view of the place, and went with the boat to see oysters in the bed, out of which the boat-­men forced up as many as were wanted. Even Inch Kenneth has a subordinate island, named Sandiland, I suppose, in contempt, where we landed, and found a rock, with a surface of perhaps four acres, of which one is naked stone, another spread with sand and shells, some of which I picked up for their glossy beauty, and two covered with a little earth and grass, on which Sir Allan has a few sheep. I doubt not but when there was a college at Inch Kenneth, there was a hermitage upon Sandiland. Having wandered over those extensive plains, we committed ourselves again to the winds and waters; and after a voyage of about ten minutes, in which we met with nothing very observable, were again safe upon dry ground. We told Sir Allan our desire of visiting Icolmkill, and entreated him to give us his protection, and his company. He thought proper to hesitate a little, but the ladies hinted, that as they knew he would not finally refuse, he would do better if he pre­ served the grace of ready compliance. He took their advice, and promised to carry us on the morrow in his boat. We passed the remaining part of the day in such amusements as were in our power. Sir Allan related the American campaign, and at evening one of the ladies played on her harpsichord, while Col [the young laird] and Mr. Boswell danced a Scottish reel with the other. We could have been easily persuaded to a longer stay upon Inch Kenneth, but 75. Hamlet, iii.iv.118.



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life will not be all passed in delight. The session at Edinburgh was approaching, from which Mr. Boswell could not be absent.76 In the morning our boat was ready: it was high and strong. Sir Allan victu­ alled it for the day, and provided able rowers. We now parted from the young Laird of Col, who had treated us with so much kindness, and concluded his favours by consigning us to Sir Allan. Here we had the last embrace of this amiable man, who, while these pages were preparing to attest his virtues, perished in the passage be­ tween Ulva and Inch Kenneth. Sir Allan, to whom the whole region was well known, told us of a very remark­ able cave, to which he would show us the way. We had been disappointed already by one cave, and were not much elevated by the expectation of another. It was yet better to see it, and we stopped at some rocks on the coast of Mull. The mouth is fortified by vast fragments of stone, over which we made our way, neither very nimbly, nor very securely. The place, however, well repaid our trouble. The bottom, as far as the flood rushes in, was encumbered with large pebbles, but as we advanced was spread over with smooth sand. The breadth is about forty-­five feet: the roof rises in an arch, almost regular, to a height which we could not mea­ sure; but I think it about thirty feet. This part of our curiosity was nearly frustrated; for though we went to see a cave, and knew that caves are dark, we forgot to carry tapers, and did not discover our omission till we were wakened by our wants. Sir Allan then sent one of the boat­ men into the country, who soon returned with one little candle. We were thus en­ abled to go forward, but could not venture far. Having passed inward from the sea to a great depth, we found on the right hand a narrow passage, perhaps not more than six feet wide, obstructed by great stones, over which we climbed and came into a second cave, in breadth twenty-­five feet. The air in this apartment was very warm, but not oppressive, nor loaded with vapours. Our light showed no tokens of a feculent or corrupted atmosphere. Here was a square stone, called, as we are told, Fingal’s Table. If we had been provided with torches, we should have proceeded in our search, though we had already gone as far as any former adventurer, except some who are reported never to have returned; and, measuring our way back, we found it more than a hundred and sixty yards, the eleventh part of a mile. Our measures were not critically exact, having been made with a walking pole, such as it is convenient to carry in these rocky countries, of which I guessed the length by standing against it. In this there could be no great errour, nor do I much doubt but the Highlander, whom we employed, reported the number right. More 76. Boswell, a lawyer, had to attend the court session that was to begin on 12 November.

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nicety however is better, and no man should travel unprovided with instruments for taking heights and distances. There is yet another cause of errour not always easily surmounted, though more dangerous to the veracity of itinerary narratives, than imperfect mensuration.77 An observer deeply impressed by any remarkable spectacle, does not suppose, that the traces will soon vanish from his mind, and having commonly no great conve­ nience for writing, defers the description to a time of more leisure, and better ac­ commodation. He who has not made the experiment, or who is not accustomed to require rig­ orous accuracy from himself, will scarcely believe how much a few hours take from certainty of knowledge, and distinctness of imagery; how the succession of objects will be broken, how separate parts will be confused, and how many particular fea­ tures and discriminations will be compressed and conglobated into one gross and general idea. To this dilatory notation must be imputed the false relations of travellers, where there is no imaginable motive to deceive. They trusted to memory, what can­ not be trusted safely but to the eye, and told by guess what a few hours before they had known with certainty. Thus it was that Wheeler and Spen described with irrec­ oncilable contrariety things which they surveyed together, and which both undoubt­ edly designed to show as they saw them.78 When we had satisfied our curiosity in the cave, so far as our penury of light permitted us, we clambered again to our boat, and proceeded along the coast of Mull to a headland, called Atun, remarkable for the columnar form of the rocks, which rise in a series of pilasters, with a degree of regularity, which Sir Allan thinks not less worthy of curiosity than the shore of Staffa.79 Not long after we came to another range of black rocks, which had the appear­ ance of broken pilasters, set one behind another to a great depth. This place was chosen by Sir Allan for our dinner. We were easily accommodated with seats, for the stones were of all heights, and refreshed ourselves and our boatmen, who could have no other rest till we were at Icolmkill. The evening was now approaching, and we were yet at a considerable distance from the end of our expedition. We could therefore stop no more to make remarks in the way, but set forward with some degree of eagerness. The day soon failed us, and the moon presented a very solemn and pleasing scene. The sky was clear, so that 77. Measurement. 78. Jacob Spon (1647–1685) published an account of his voyage with George Wheler (1651–1724) to the Ionian Sea in 1678 in French; Wheler followed with a revised account in English in 1682. 79. An island seen by SJ when on Ulva and made famous by Sir Joseph Banks’s account of it on his voy­ age to Iceland in 1772.



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the eye commanded a wide circle: the sea was neither still nor turbulent: the wind neither silent nor loud. We were never far from one coast or another, on which, if the weather had become violent, we could have found shelter, and therefore con­ templated at ease the region through which we glided in the tranquillity of the night, and saw now a rock and now an island grow gradually conspicuous and gradually obscure. I committed the fault which I have just been censuring, in neglecting, as we passed, to note the series of this placid navigation. We were very near an island, called Nun’s Island, perhaps from an ancient con­ vent. Here is said to have been dug the stone that was used in the buildings of Icolm­ kill. Whether it is now inhabited we could not stay to inquire. At last we came to Icolmkill, but found no convenience for landing. Our boat could not be forced very near the dry ground, and our Highlanders carried us over the water. We were now treading that illustrious island, which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish, if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona!80 We came too late to visit monuments: some care was necessary for ourselves. Whatever was in the island, Sir Allan could command, for the inhabitants were Mac­ leans; but having little they could not give us much. He went to the headman of the island, whom Fame, but Fame delights in amplifying, represents as worth no less than fifty pounds. He was perhaps proud enough of his guests, but ill prepared for our entertainment; however, he soon produced more provision than men not luxu­ rious require. Our lodging was next to be provided. We found a barn well stocked with hay, and made our beds as soft as we could. In the morning we rose and surveyed the place. The churches of the two con­ vents are both standing, though unroofed. They were built of unhewn stone, but solid, and not inelegant. I brought away rude measures of the buildings, such as I cannot much trust myself, inaccurately taken, and obscurely noted. Mr. Pennant’s 80. Iona!: We follow Fleeman, Journey, who chooses this over “Iona?,” which is the punctuation of the first edition and of Yale, ix.

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delineations,81 which are doubtless exact, have made my unskilful description less necessary. [We omit here ten paragraphs in which SJ describes the ruins of an episcopal church.]

A large space of ground about these consecrated edifices is covered with grave-­ stones, few of which have any inscription. He that surveys it, attended by an insular antiquary, may be told where the kings of many nations are buried, and if he loves to sooth his imagination with the thoughts that naturally rise in places where the great and the powerful lie mingled with the dust, let him listen in submissive silence; for if he asks any questions, his delight is at an end. Iona has long enjoyed, without any very credible attestation, the honour of being reputed the cemetery of the Scottish kings. It is not unlikely, that, when the opinion of local sanctity was prevalent, the chieftains of the isles, and perhaps some of the Norwegian or Irish princes were reposited in this venerable enclosure. But by whom the subterraneous vaults are peopled is now utterly unknown. The graves are very numerous, and some of them undoubtedly contain the remains of men, who did not expect to be so soon forgotten. [We omit here four pages in the Yale Edition in which SJ and JB take leave of Iona, return to Mull, and travel to Lochbuy Castle. SJ describes Hebridean castles in general.]

These castles afford another evidence that the fictions of romantick chivalry had for their basis the real manners of the feudal times, when every lord of a seignory lived in his hold lawless and unaccountable, with all the licentiousness and inso­ lence of uncontested superiority and unprincipled power. The traveller, whoever he might be, coming to the fortified habitation of a chieftain, would, probably, have been interrogated from the battlements, admitted with caution at the gate, intro­ duced to a petty monarch, fierce with habitual hostility, and vigilant with ignorant suspicion; who, according to his general temper, or accidental humour, would have seated a stranger as his guest at the table, or as a spy confined him in the dungeon. Lochbuy means the “Yellow Lake,” which is the name given to an inlet of the sea, upon which the castle of Mr. Maclean stands. The reason of the appellation we did not learn. We were now to leave the Hebrides, where we had spent some weeks with suf­ ficient amusement, and where we had amplified our thoughts with new scenes of nature, and new modes of life. More time would have given us a more distinct view, 81. See Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Scotland, and Voyage to the Hebrides (1774), p. 282.



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but it was necessary that Mr. Boswell should return before the courts of justice were opened; and it was not proper to live too long upon hospitality, however liberally imparted. Of these islands it must be confessed, that they have not many allurements, but to the mere lover of naked nature. The inhabitants are thin, provisions are scarce, and desolation and penury give little pleasure. The people collectively considered are not few, though their numbers are small in proportion to the space which they occupy. Mull is said to contain six thousand, and Sky fifteen thousand. Of the computation respecting Mull, I can give no ac­ count; but when I doubted the truth of the numbers attributed to Sky, one of the ministers exhibited such facts as conquered my incredulity. Of the proportion, which the product of any region bears to the people, an estimate is commonly made according to the pecuniary price of the necessaries of life; a principle of judgment which is never certain, because it supposes what is far from truth, that the value of money is always the same, and so measures an unknown quantity by an uncertain standard. It is competent enough when the markets of the same country, at different times, and those times not too distant, are to be compared; but of very little use for the purpose of making one nation acquainted with the state of another. Provisions, though plentiful, are sold in places of great pecuniary opu­ lence for nominal prices, to which, however scarce, where gold and silver are yet scarcer, they can never be raised. In the Western Islands there is so little internal commerce, that hardly any thing has a known or settled rate. The price of things brought in, or carried out, is to be considered as that of a foreign market; and even this there is some difficulty in dis­ covering, because their denominations of quantity are different from ours; and when there is ignorance on both sides, no appeal can be made to a common measure. This, however, is not the only impediment. The Scots, with a vigilance of jeal­ ousy which never goes to sleep, always suspect that an Englishman despises them for their poverty, and to convince him that they are not less rich than their neigh­ bours, are sure to tell him a price higher than the true. When Lesley,82 two hundred years ago, related so punctiliously, that a hundred hen eggs, new laid, were sold in the Islands for a peny, he supposed that no inference could possibly follow, but that eggs were in great abundance. Posterity has since grown wiser; and having learned, that nominal and real value may differ, they now tell no such stories, lest the for­ eigner should happen to collect, not that eggs are many, but that pence are few. Money and wealth have by the use of commercial language been so long con­ founded, that they are commonly supposed to be the same; and this prejudice has 82. John Lesley (1527–1596), Bishop of Ross, author of a book on Scottish life and its history (Rome, 1578).

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spread so widely in Scotland, that I know not whether I found man or woman, whom I interrogated concerning payments of money, that could surmount the illib­ eral desire of deceiving me, by representing every thing as dearer than it is. From Lochbuy we rode a very few miles to the side of Mull, which faces Scot­ land, where, having taken leave of our kind protector, Sir Allan, we embarked in a boat, in which the seat provided for our accommodation was a heap of rough brush-­ wood; and on the twenty-­second of October reposed at a tolerable inn on the main land.83 On the next day we began our journey southwards. The weather was tempes­ tuous. For half the day the ground was rough, and our horses were still small. Had they required much restraint, we might have been reduced to difficulties; for I think we had amongst us but one bridle. We fed the poor animals liberally, and they per­ formed their journey well. In the latter part of the day, we came to a firm and smooth road, made by the soldiers, on which we travelled with great security, busied with contemplating the scene about us. The night came on while we had yet a great part of the way to go, though not so dark, but that we could discern the cataracts which poured down the hills, on one side, and fell into one general channel that ran with great violence on the other. The wind was loud, the rain was heavy, and the whis­ tling of the blast, the fall of the shower, the rush of the cataracts, and the roar of the torrent, made a nobler chorus of the rough musick of nature than it had ever been my chance to hear before. The streams, which ran cross the way from the hills to the main current, were so frequent, that after a while I began to count them; and, in ten miles, reckoned fifty-­five, probably missing some, and having let some pass before they forced themselves upon my notice. At last we came to Inverary, where we found an inn, not only commodious, but magnificent.84 The difficulties of peregrination were now at an end. Mr. Boswell had the hon­ our of being known to the Duke of Argyle, by whom we were very kindly entertained at his splendid seat, and supplied with conveniences for surveying his spacious park and rising forests. After two days stay at Inverary we proceeded southward over Glencroe, a black and dreary region, now made easily passable by a military road, which rises from either end of the glen by an acclivity not dangerously steep, but sufficiently labori­ ous. In the middle, at the top of the hill, is a seat with this inscription, “Rest, and be thankful.” Stones were placed to mark the distances, which the inhabitants have taken away, resolved, they said, “to have no new miles.”85 83. They landed at Oban. 84. Inveraray Castle, the ancestral home of the Duke of Argyll, had been recently rebuilt and modernized. 85. “New miles” are English miles, which are about two hundred yards shorter than the old Scottish miles.



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In this rainy season the hills streamed with waterfalls, which, crossing the way, formed currents on the other side, that ran in contrary directions as they fell to the north or south of the summit. Being, by the favour of the Duke, well mounted, I went up and down the hill with great convenience. From Glencroe we passed through a pleasant country to the banks of Loch Lomond, and were received at the house of Sir James Colquhoun, who is owner of almost all the thirty islands of the Loch, which we went in a boat next morning to survey. The heaviness of the rain shortened our voyage, but we landed on one island planted with yew, and stocked with deer, and on another containing perhaps not more than half an acre, remarkable for the ruins of an old castle, on which the osprey builds her annual nest. Had Loch Lomond been in a happier climate, it would have been the boast of wealth and vanity to own one of the little spots which it incloses, and to have employed upon it all the arts of embellishment. But as it is, the islets, which court the gazer at a distance, disgust him at his approach, when he finds, in­ stead of soft lawns and shady thickets, nothing more than uncultivated ruggedness. Where the Loch discharges itself into a river, called the Leven, we passed a night with Mr. Smollet, a relation of Doctor Smollet, to whose memory he has raised an obelisk on the bank near the house in which he was born.86 The civility and re­ spect which we found at every place, it is ungrateful to omit, and tedious to repeat. Here we were met by a post-­chaise, that conveyed us to Glasgow. To describe a city so much frequented as Glasgow, is unnecessary. The pros­ perity of its commerce appears by the greatness of many private houses, and a gen­ eral appearance of wealth. It is the only episcopal city whose cathedral was left standing in the rage of Reformation. It is now divided into many separate places of worship, which, taken all together, compose a great pile, that had been some cen­ turies in building, but was never finished; for the change of religion intercepted its progress, before the cross isle was added, which seems essential to a Gothick cathe­ dral. The college has not had a sufficient share of the increasing magnificence of the place. The session was begun; for it commences on the tenth of October, and con­ tinues to the tenth of June, but the students appeared not numerous, being, I sup­ pose, not yet returned from their several homes. The division of the academical year into one session, and one recess, seems to me better accommodated to the present state of life, than that variegation of time by terms and vacations derived from dis­ tant centuries, in which it was probably convenient, and still continued in the En­ glish universities. So many solid months as the Scotch scheme of education joins together, allow and encourage a plan for each part of the year; but with us, he that 86. Tobias Smollett (1721–1771), the novelist, was buried at Livorno, Italy. The monument was raised by his brother James (d. 1775).

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has settled himself to study in the college is soon tempted into the country, and he that has adjusted his life in the country, is summoned back to his college. Yet when I have allowed to the universities of Scotland a more rational distri­ bution of time, I have given them, so far as my inquiries have informed me, all that they can claim. The students, for the most part, go thither boys, and depart before they are men; they carry with them little fundamental knowledge, and therefore the superstructure cannot be lofty. The grammar schools are not generally well supplied; for the character of a school-­master being there less honourable than in England, is seldom accepted by men who are capable to adorn it, and where the school has been deficient, the college can effect little. Men bred in the universities of Scotland cannot be expected to be often deco­ rated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge, between learning and ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is, I believe, very widely diffused among them, and which coun­ tenanced in general by a national combination so invidious, that their friends cannot defend it, and actuated in particulars by a spirit of enterprise, so vigorous, that their enemies are constrained to praise it, enables them to find, or to make their way to employment, riches, and distinction. From Glasgow we directed our course to Auchinleck, an estate devolved, through a long series of ancestors, to Mr. Boswell’s father, the present possessor. In our way we found several places remarkable enough in themselves, but already described by those who viewed them at more leisure, or with much more skill; and stopped two days at Mr. Campbell’s, a gentleman married to Mrs.87 Boswell’s sister. Auchinleck, which signifies a “stony field,” seems not now to have any particu­ lar claim to its denomination. It is a district generally level, and sufficiently fertile, but like all the western side of Scotland, incommoded by very frequent rain. It was, with the rest of the country, generally naked, till the present possessor finding, by the growth of some stately trees near his old castle, that the ground was favourable enough to timber, adorned it very diligently with annual plantations. Lord Auchinleck, who is one of the Judges of Scotland, and therefore not wholly at leisure for domestick business or pleasure, has yet found time to make im­ provements in his patrimony. He has built a house of hewn stone, very stately, and durable, and has advanced the value of his lands with great tenderness to his tenants. I was, however, less delighted with the elegance of the modern mansion, than with the sullen dignity of the old castle. I clambered with Mr. Boswell among the ruins, which afford striking images of ancient life. It is, like other castles, built upon a point of rock, and was, I believe, anciently surrounded with a moat. There is an­ 87. Emended by Fleeman, Journey, from “Mr.”; it is probably a printer’s error because SJ knew the con­ nection and stated it correctly in a letter to Mrs. Thrale (SJ Letters, ii.116).



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other rock near it, to which the drawbridge, when it was let down, is said to have reached. Here, in the ages of tumult and rapine, the laird was surprised and killed by the neighbouring chief, who perhaps might have extinguished the family, had he not in a few days been seized and hanged, together with his sons, by Douglas, who came with his forces to the relief of Auchinleck.88 At no great distance from the house runs a pleasing brook, by a red rock, out of which has been hewn a very agreeable and commodious summer-­house, at less ex­ pence, as Lord Auchinleck told me, than would have been required to build a room of the same dimensions. The rock seems to have no more dampness than any other wall. Such opportunities of variety it is judicious not to neglect. We now returned to Edinburgh, where I passed some days with men of learning,89 whose names want no advancement from my commemoration, or with women of elegance, which perhaps disclaims a pedant’s praise. The conversation of the Scots grows every day less unpleasing to the English; their peculiarities wear fast away; their dialect is likely to become in half a century provincial and rustick, even to themselves. The great, the learned, the ambitious, and the vain, all cultivate the English phrase, and the English pronunciation, and in splendid companies Scotch is not much heard, except now and then from an old lady. There is one subject of philosophical curiosity to be found in Edinburgh, which no other city has to shew; a college of the deaf and dumb, who are taught to speak, to read, to write, and to practice arithmetick, by a gentleman, whose name is Braidwood.90 The number which attends him is, I think, about twelve, which he brings together into a little school, and instructs according to their several degrees of proficiency. I do not mean to mention the instruction of the deaf as new. Having been first practised upon the son of a Constable of Spain, it was afterwards cultivated with much emulation in England, by Wallis and Holder,91 and was lately professed by Mr. Baker,92 who once flattered me with hopes of seeing his method published. How far any former teachers have succeeded, it is not easy to know; the improvement of Mr. Braidwood’s pupils is wonderful. They not only speak, write, and understand 88. “Richard Colville of Ochiltree slew Sir James Auchinleck in 1449, and was thereafter beheaded and his castle destroyed by William, 8th Earl of Douglas” (Fleeman, Journey). 89. These included the historian William Robertson (1721–1793), the critic Hugh Blair (1718–1800), and the scholar/judges John Maclaurin (1734–1796) and David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes (1726–1792). 90. Thomas Braidwood (1715–1806). 91. John Wallis (1616–1703), whose Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae (1653) SJ quotes often in his own Grammar, prefatory to his Dictionary; and William Holder (1616–98), whose Elements of Speech (1669) he also quotes both in his Grammar and in his Dictionary proper. 92. Henry Baker (1698–1774), son-­in-­law of Daniel Defoe.

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what is written, but if he that speaks looks towards them, and modifies his organs by distinct and full utterance, they know so well what is spoken, that it is an expres­ sion scarcely figurative to say, they hear with the eye. That any have attained to the power mentioned by Burnet,93 of feeling sounds, by laying a hand on the speaker’s mouth, I know not; but I have seen so much, that I can believe more; a single word, or a short sentence, I think, may possibly be so distinguished. It will readily be supposed by those that consider this subject, that Mr. Braid­ wood’s scholars spell accurately. Orthography is vitiated among such as learn first to speak, and then to write, by imperfect notions of the relation between letters and vocal utterance; but to those students every character is of equal importance; for let­ ters are to them not symbols of names, but of things; when they write they do not represent a sound, but delineate a form. This school I visited, and found some of the scholars waiting for their mas­ ter, whom they are said to receive at his entrance with smiling countenances and sparkling eyes, delighted with the hope of new ideas. One of the young ladies had her slate before her, on which I wrote a question consisting of three figures, to be multiplied by two figures. She looked upon it, and quivering her fingers in a man­ ner which I thought very pretty, but of which I know not whether it was art or play, multiplied the sum regularly in two lines, observing the decimal place; but did not add the two lines together, probably disdaining so easy an operation. I pointed at the place where the sum total should stand, and she noted it with such expedition as seemed to shew that she had it only to write. It was pleasing to see one of the most desperate of human calamities capable of so much help: whatever enlarges hope, will exalt courage; after having seen the deaf taught arithmetick, who would be afraid to cultivate the Hebrides? Such are the things which this journey has given me an opportunity of see­ ing, and such are the reflections which that sight has raised. Having passed my time almost wholly in cities, I may have been surprised by modes of life and appearances of nature, that are familiar to men of wider survey and more varied conversation. Novelty and ignorance must always be reciprocal, and I cannot but be conscious that my thoughts on national manners, are the thoughts of one who has seen but little.

93. Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715) in Some Letters, containing, An account of what seemed most remarkable in Switzerland, Italy, etc. (Rotterdam, 1686), tells of a girl in Geneva who, despite loss of hearing in her infancy, taught herself by “natural sagacity” lip-­reading and the rudiments of speech.



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The Lives of the Poets

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The collection of critical biographies that came to be known as The Lives of the Poets had its origins in 1777, when a consortium of booksellers engaged Johnson to write what he described at the time as “little Lives, and little Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets” (SJ Letters, iii.20). About fifty poets were to be included. By the time the project concluded in 1781, Johnson’s accounts of the lives and works of many of the poets had be­ come so lengthy and detailed that they were collected and published in their own volumes, separate from the poetic texts they were initially meant to introduce. (For a full explanation of the evolution of the project, see the introduction to The Lives of the Poets in Volume XXI of the Yale Edition.) The Lives are Johnson’s last major works and, along with his Dictionary and Shake­ speare edition, his most influential. They constitute a survey and assessment of the English poetic tradition from the mid-­seventeenth century to Johnson’s own time. That Johnson’s commentaries on most of the poets swelled far beyond their original scope is but one in­ dication that he relished the task. At this late stage of his celebrated career, the Lives gave Johnson the opportunity to review his own lifetime of reading, and to express his own per­ sonality and literary opinions with verve and confidence. The Lives, then, are both critical appraisals and expressions of Johnson’s mature literary sensibility. The Lives also gave Johnson the opportunity to work at length in his favorite genre, biography. As he wrote in Rambler 60, “no species of writing seems more worthy of culti­ vation than biography” (see p. 132 above). By the time he wrote that in 1750, he had already written a dozen biographies, and would write seven or eight more before starting on the Lives. His conception of the genre changed over time. His earliest biographies often re­ semble the panegyrics and eulogies out of which the genre grew; his later ones repudiate that tradition in favor of greater historical accuracy. The history Johnson emphasized in biography, however, was not political or intellec­ tual (though that very much interested him); he sought above all to “lead the thoughts into domestick privacies, and display the minute details of daily life” (see Rambler 60, p. 133 above). All writers were for Johnson human beings first, leading lives marked by both error and achievement—and that is where each of the Lives of the Poets begins: with an exami­ nation of the subject’s course of education, his relationships with his contemporaries, his

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daily habits and personal character. Only then, and in that context, does Johnson turn to an assessment of the poet’s works. The five Lives included below display Johnson’s talents as a biographer and critic at their finest: the lives of Richard Savage (1697–1743), Abraham Cowley (1618–1667), John Milton (1608–1674), Alexander Pope (1688–1744), and Thomas Gray (1716–1771). The earli­ est version of Johnson’s Life of Richard Savage was published in 1744 and revised occa­ sionally thereafter; even though Savage was not a poet of any special significance, Johnson wanted to include the biography of his friend in the Lives of the Poets. It has more elements of panegyric than the later lives, and is in many ways an apology for Savage; but it is also per­ haps Johnson’s most intimate biography—a psychological exploration that displays both the pathos and nobility of Savage’s complicated life. The other four were written as part of the Lives of the Poets project. Johnson wrote “Cowley” first, and said it was his favorite. In it, Johnson lays down the principles of truth-­ telling that he would follow in the other biographies, and he extends his critical treatment of Cowley to all poets of his ilk—the metaphysical poets, as they would ever after be called. “Milton” is the most controversial of the Lives; Johnson pointedly assailed his character and thought many of his works had been over-­praised, but he stood in awe of Paradise Lost, ranking it among the greatest “productions of the human mind” (see p. 720 below). Pope, the eighteenth century’s most important poet, was both richly celebrated and vigorously attacked throughout his career. While he did not admire every aspect of Pope’s personality and works, the depth and detail of Johnson’s commentary in “Pope” reveals a warm appre­ ciation for his achievement. “Gray” may be seen as a concise primer on Johnson’s poetic values. Johnson regards most of the poems by his near contemporary as disengaged aca­ demic exercises, but he lavishes praise on Gray’s Country Churchyard elegy—a poem with “images which find a mirrour in every mind,” full of “sentiments to which every bosom re­ turns an echo” (see p. 799 below). The texts of these five lives are presented in their entirety, except for a small abridge­ ment (indicated in the text) in “Pope.” The entire text of Johnson’s Lives of the Poets is avail­ able in Volumes XXI–­XXIII of the Yale Edition, and in the Yale Digital Edition (YaleJohnson .com).

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L I F E O F S AVAG E 1 It has been observed in all ages, that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendor of their rank, or the extent of their capacity, have placed upon the summits of human life, have not often given any just occasion to envy in those who look up to them from a lower station. Whether it be that apparent superiority incites great de­ signs, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages; or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of those whose eminence drew upon them an universal attention, have been more carefully recorded, because they were more generally observed, and have in reality been only more conspicuous than those of others, not more frequent, or more severe. That affluence and power, advantages extrinsic and adventitious,2 and there­ fore easily separable from those by whom they are possessed, should very often flat­ ter the mind with expectations of felicity which they cannot give, raises no aston­ ishment; but it seems rational to hope, that intellectual greatness should produce better effects; that minds qualified for great attainments should first endeavour their own benefit: and that they who are most able to teach others the way to happiness, should with most certainty follow it themselves. But this expectation, however plausible, has been very frequently disap­ pointed. The heroes of literary as well as civil history have been very often no less remarkable for what they have suffered, than for what they have atchieved; and vol­ umes have been written only to enumerate the miseries of the learned, and relate their unhappy lives, and untimely deaths. To these mournful narratives, I am about to add the life of Richard Savage, a man whose writings intitle him to an eminent rank in the classes of learning, and whose misfortunes claim a degree of compassion, not always due to the unhappy, as they were often the consequences of the crimes of others, rather than his own. 1. Johnson’s Life of Savage has an unusual textual history. SJ published An Account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage in 1744; he rewrote it in 1748, and he and others tinkered with his text in later editions. When he inserted Savage in his Lives of the Poets, SJ used one of these later editions (1775) as the basis for his text, thus removing many of the notes he wrote in An Account. The Yale Edition takes Johnson’s final version as its text, and we do the same, but we have continued the process of trimming Johnson’s notes for the sake of saving space. We have also, on rare occasions, silently preferred an earlier reading, where we thought it made plainer sense. We have also consulted the edition of Savage in Roger Lonsdale, The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (2016); the edition of the 1744 text by Clarence Tracy (Samuel Johnson: Life of Savage [1971]); and the edition by Nicholas Seager and Lance Wilcox (The Life of Mr. Richard Savage [2016]). 2. “That which advenes; accidental; supervenient; extrinsically added; not essentially inherent” (Dictionary).

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In the year 1697, Anne countess of Macclesfield,3 having lived for some time upon very uneasy terms with her husband, thought a public confession of adultery the most obvious and expeditious method of obtaining her liberty; and therefore de­ clared that the child, with which she was then great, was begotten by the Earl Riv­ ers.4 This, as may be easily imagined, made her husband no less desirous of a sepa­ ration than herself, and he prosecuted his design in the most effectual manner; for he applied not to the ecclesiastical courts for a divorce,5 but to the parliament for an act, by which his marriage might be dissolved, the nuptial contract totally annulled, and the children of his wife illegitimated. This act, after the usual deliberation, he obtained, though without the approbation of some, who considered marriage as an affair only cognizable6 by ecclesiastical judges; and next year on March 3d was sepa­ rated from his wife, whose fortune, which was very great, was repaid her; and who having, as well as her husband, the liberty of making another choice, was in a short time married to Colonel Bret.7 While the Earl of Macclesfield was prosecuting this affair, his wife was, on the 10th of January 1697–8, delivered of a son, and the Earl Rivers,8 by appearing to consider him as his own, left none any reason to doubt of the sincerity of her declaration; for he was his godfather,9 and gave him his own name, which was by his direction inserted in the register of St. Andrew’s parish in Holborn,10 but un­ fortunately left him to the care of his mother, whom, as she was now set free from her husband, he probably imagined likely to treat with great tenderness the child that had contributed to so pleasing an event. It is not indeed easy to discover what motives could be found to overbalance that natural affection of a parent, or what interest could be promoted by neglect or cruelty. The dread of shame or of poverty, by which some wretches have been incited to abandon or to murder their children, cannot be supposed to have affected a woman who had proclaimed her crimes and 3. Anne Brett (née Mason) (1667/8–1753). Her marriage to Charles Gerard, second Earl of Macclesfield, in 1683 at age fifteen lasted less than three years. Between the separation and the formal divorce in 1698, she had two children by Richard Savage, fourth Earl Rivers (1654–1712): Anne (c. 1695) and Richard (c. 1697), the son who probably died in childhood and whose identity the poet Richard Savage claimed. 4. Following Savage’s declarations and an earlier biography, SJ erred in thinking Anne made such a con­ fession (see Boswell, Life, i.171). Adultery on the part of the wife was one of the few grounds for divorce at this time. 5. The ecclesiastical court, usually held in Doctors’ Commons, governed divorce claims until 1857, but it was also possible for the wealthy to gain an annulment by an act of Parliament. 6. “Capable of being . . . judicially examined or tried” (OED, sense 2). 7. Henry Brett (1677/8–1714), Member of Parliament who was for some time a member of Addison’s circle and fancied himself part of the theatrical world. 8. Richard Savage, fourth Earl Rivers (c. 1654–1712). 9. The official male sponsor of a child at baptism. The child was baptized Richard Smith. 10. A district just west of the City of London, the heart of greater London.

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solicited reproach, and on whom the clemency of the legislature had undeservedly bestowed a fortune, which would have been very little diminished by the expences which the care of her child could have brought upon her. It was therefore not likely that she would be wicked without temptation, that she would look upon her son from his birth with a kind of resentment and abhorrence; and, instead of support­ ing, assisting, and defending him, delight to see him struggling with misery, or that she would take every opportunity of aggravating his misfortunes, and obstructing his resources, and with an implacable and restless cruelty continue her persecution from the first hour of his life to the last. But whatever were her motives, no sooner was her son born, than she discov­ ered11 a resolution of disowning him; and in a very short time removed him from her sight, by committing him to the care of a poor woman, whom she directed to educate him as her own, and injoined never to inform him of his true parents. Such was the beginning of the life of Richard Savage. Born with a legal claim to honour and to affluence, he was in two months illegitimated by the parliament,12 and disowned by his mother, doomed to poverty and obscurity, and launched upon the ocean of life, only that he might be swallowed by its quicksands, or dashed upon its rocks. His mother could not indeed infect others with the same cruelty. As it was impossible to avoid the inquiries which the curiosity or tenderness of her relations made after her child, she was obliged to give some account of the measures that she had taken; and her mother, the Lady Mason, whether in approbation of her design, or to prevent more criminal contrivances, engaged to transact with the nurse, to pay her for her care, and to superintend the education of the child.13 In this charitable office she was assisted by his godmother Mrs. Lloyd,14 who, while she lived, always looked upon him with that tenderness, which the barbarity of his mother made peculiarly necessary; but her death, which happened in his tenth year, was another of the misfortunes of his childhood; for though she kindly endeav­ oured to alleviate his loss by a legacy of three hundred pounds, yet, as he had none to prosecute his claim, to shelter him from oppression, or call in law to the assis­ tance of justice, her will was eluded by the executors, and no part of the money was ever paid. 11. Disclosed. 12. The bill of annulment in Parliament made Anne’s two children illegitimate. 13. As in earlier parts of the narrative, SJ is following Savage’s and others’ accounts that have not been borne out by historical research. Mrs. Brett steadily maintained that Savage was an imposter, and that is prob­ ably the case. 14. Richard Smith’s godmother was Dorothy Ousley, wife of the Earl Rivers’s agent. Savage did not refer to Mrs. Lloyd as his godmother.



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He was, however, not yet wholly abandoned. The Lady Mason still continued her care, and directed him to be placed at a small grammar-­school near St. Alban’s,15 where he was called by the name of his nurse, without the least intimation that he had a claim to any other. Here he was initiated in literature, and passed through several of the classes, with what rapidity or what applause cannot now be known. As he always spoke with respect of his master, it is probable that the mean rank, in which he then appeared, did not hinder his genius from being distinguished, or his industry from being re­ warded; and if in so low a state he obtained distinction and rewards, it is not likely that they were gained but by genius and industry. It is very reasonable to conjecture, that his application was equal to his abili­ ties, because his improvement was more than proportioned to the opportunities which he enjoyed; nor can it be doubted, that if his earliest productions had been preserved, like those of happier students, we might in some have found vigorous sallies of that sprightly humour, which distinguishes The Author to be Let,16 and in others strong touches of that ardent imagination, which painted the solemn scenes of The Wanderer.17 While he was thus cultivating his genius, his father the Earl Rivers was seized with a distemper, which in a short time put an end to his life. He had frequently inquired after his son, and had always been amused with fallacious and evasive an­ swers; but, being now in his own opinion on his death-­bed, he thought it his duty to provide for him among his other natural children, and therefore demanded a posi­ tive account of him, with an importunity not to be diverted or denied. His mother, who could no longer refuse an answer, determined at least to give such as should cut him off for ever from that happiness which competence affords, and therefore declared that he was dead; which is perhaps the first instance of a lye invented by a mother to deprive her son of a provision which was designed him by another, and which she could not expect herself, though he should lose it. This was therefore an act of wickedness which could not be defeated, because it could not be suspected; the earl did not imagine that there could exist in a human form a mother that would ruin her son without enriching herself, and therefore be­ stowed upon some other person six thousand pounds, which he had in his will be­ queathed to Savage. The same cruelty which incited his mother to intercept this provision which had been intended him, prompted her in a short time to another project, a project 15. St. Albans is in Hertfordshire, about twenty miles north of central London. 16. An Author to be Lett (1729), published under the name Iscariot Hackney, is a satire on writers for hire in Grub Street, London. 17. The Wanderer: A Vision (1729) is a long poem about despair and suicide.

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worthy of such a disposition. She endeavoured to rid herself from the danger of being at any time made known to him, by sending him secretly to the American plantations.18 By whose kindness this scheme was counteracted, or by what interposition she was induced to lay aside her design, I know not; it is not improbable that the Lady Mason might persuade or compel her to desist, or perhaps she could not easily find accomplices wicked enough to concur in so cruel an action; for it may be conceived, that those who had by a long gradation of guilt hardened their hearts against the sense of common wickedness, would yet be shocked at the design of a mother to expose her son to slavery and want, to expose him without interest, and without provocation; and Savage might on this occasion find protectors and advo­ cates among those who had long traded in crimes, and whom compassion had never touched before. Being hindered, by whatever means, from banishing him into another country, she formed soon after a scheme for burying him in poverty and obscurity in his own; and, that his station of life, if not the place of his residence, might keep him for ever at a distance from her, she ordered him to be placed with a shoemaker in Holborn, that, after the usual time of trial, he might become his apprentice.19 It is generally reported, that this project was for some time successful, and that Savage was employed at the awl longer than he was willing to confess; nor was it perhaps any great advantage to him, that an unexpected discovery determined him to quit his occupation. About this time his nurse, who had always treated him as her own son, died;20 and it was natural for him to take care of those effects, which by her death were, as he imagined, become his own; he therefore went to her house, opened her boxes, and examined her papers, among which he found some letters written to her by the Lady Mason, which informed him of his birth, and the reasons for which it was concealed.21 He was now no longer satisfied with the employment which had been allotted him, but thought he had a right to share the affluence of his mother; and therefore without scruple applied to her as her son, and made use of every art to awaken her tenderness, and attract her regard. But neither his letters, nor the interposition of 18. [SJ’s note] Savage’s Preface to his Miscellany [Miscellaneous Poems and Translations by Several Hands (1726), where Savage wrote about his early life]. 19. [SJ’s note] Preface to Savage’s Miscellanies. 20. If this is Savage’s account, the “nurse” must be Mrs. Lloyd because he never acknowledged another caretaker. 21. In a letter to the Plain Dealer for 30 November 1724, Savage refers to the “Original Letters,” and the editor, Aaron Hill (1685–1750), calls them “proofs” of Savage’s claims, but their existence was never corrobo­ rated.



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those friends which his merit or his distress procured him, made any impression upon her mind: She still resolved to neglect, though she could no longer disown him. It was to no purpose that he frequently solicited her to admit him to see her; she avoided him with the most vigilant precaution, and ordered him to be excluded from her house, by whomsoever he might be introduced, and what reason soever he might give for entering it. Savage was at the same time so touched with the discovery of his real mother, that it was his frequent practice to walk in the dark evenings22 for several hours be­ fore her door, in hopes of seeing her as she might come by accident to the window, or cross her apartment with a candle in her hand. But all his assiduity and tenderness were without effect, for he could neither soften her heart, nor open her hand, and was reduced to the utmost miseries of want, while he was endeavouring to awaken the affection of a mother: He was there­ fore obliged to seek some other means of support; and, having no profession, be­ came by necessity an author. At this time the attention of all the literary world was engrossed by the Ban­ gorian controversy,23 which filled the press with pamphlets, and the coffee-­houses with disputants. Of this subject, as most popular, he made choice for his first at­ tempt, and without any other knowledge of the question, than he had casually col­ lected from conversation, published a poem against the bishop.24 What was the success or merit of this performance, I know not; it was prob­ ably lost among the innumerable pamphlets to which that dispute gave occasion. Mr. Savage was himself in a little time ashamed of it, and endeavoured to suppress it, by destroying all the copies that he could collect. He then attempted a more gainful kind of writing,25 and in his eighteenth year offered to the stage a comedy borrowed from a Spanish plot, which was refused by the players, and was therefore given by him to Mr. Bullock, who, having more inter­ est, made some slight alterations, and brought it upon the stage, under the title of Woman’s a Riddle,26 but allowed the unhappy author no part of the profit.

22. [SJ’s note] See the Plain Dealer [26 June 1724, which SJ paraphrases]. 23. In 1717 Benjamin Hoadly, the Whig Bishop of Bangor, espoused the “heretical” view that the sin­ cerity of religious belief mattered more than any specific church doctrines or ceremonies. His highly controver­ sial views set off a crisis in the Church of England, leading to a suspension of the Convocation, the ecclesiastical branch of Parliament. 24. The Convocation: or, A Battle of Pamphlets (1717). 25. [SJ’s note] Jacob’s Lives of Dramatic Poets [The Poetical Register: or the Lives of the English Dramatick Poets, 2 vols. (1719), i.298]. 26. [SJ’s note] This play [by Christopher Bullock] was printed first in 8vo [4to, 1717]; and afterwards in 12mo, the fifth edition.

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Not discouraged however at his repulse, he wrote two years afterwards Love in a Veil, another comedy, borrowed likewise from the Spanish, but with little better success than before; for though it was received and acted, yet it appeared so late in the year, that the author obtained no other advantage from it, than the acquain­ tance of Sir Richard Steele, and Mr. Wilks; by whom he was pitied, caressed, and relieved.27 Sir Richard Steele, having declared in his favour with all the ardour of benevo­ lence which constituted his character, promoted his interest with the utmost zeal, related his misfortunes, applauded his merit, took all the opportunities of recom­ mending him, and asserted, that “the inhumanity of his mother had given him a right to find every good man his father.”28 Nor was Mr. Savage admitted to his acquaintance only, but to his confidence, of which he sometimes related an instance too extraordinary to be omitted, as it af­ fords a very just idea of his patron’s character. He was once desired by Sir Richard, with an air of the utmost importance, to come very early to his house the next morning. Mr. Savage came as he had prom­ ised, found the chariot at the door, and Sir Richard waiting for him, and ready to go out. What was intended, and whither they were to go, Savage could not conjecture, and was not willing to enquire; but immediately seated himself with Sir Richard; the coachman was ordered to drive, and they hurried with the utmost expedition to Hyde-­Park Corner, where they stopped at a petty tavern, and retired to a pri­ vate room. Sir Richard then informed him, that he intended to publish a pamphlet, and that he had desired him to come thither that he might write for him. They soon sat down to the work. Sir Richard dictated, and Savage wrote, till the dinner that had been ordered was put upon the table. Savage was surprized at the meanness of the entertainment, and after some hesitation ventured to ask for wine, which Sir Richard, not without reluctance, ordered to be brought. They then finished their dinner, and proceeded in their pamphlet, which they concluded in the afternoon. Mr. Savage then imagined his task over, and expected that Sir Richard would call for the reckoning, and return home; but his expectations deceived him, for Sir Richard told him, that he was without money, and that the pamphlet must be sold before the dinner could be paid for; and Savage was therefore obliged to go and offer their new production to sale for two guineas, which with some difficulty he obtained. Sir Richard then returned home, having retired that day only to avoid his creditors, and composed the pamphlet only to discharge his reckoning. 27. The play was produced at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane on 17 June 1718, near the end of the “sea­ son” in high society London. Robert Wilks (c. 1665–1732) was one of the theater managers; Steele (1672–1729) was its politically appointed governor. 28. [SJ’s note] Plain Dealer [30 November 1724].



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Mr. Savage related another fact equally uncommon, which, though it has no relation to his life, ought to be preserved. Sir Richard Steele having one day invited to his house a great number of persons of the first quality, they were surprized at the number of liveries29 which surrounded the table; and after dinner, when wine and mirth had set them free from the observation of rigid ceremony, one of them enquired of Sir Richard, how such an expensive train of domestics could be con­ sistent with his fortune. Sir Richard very frankly confessed, that they were fellows of whom he would very willingly be rid. And being then asked, why he did not dis­ charge them, declared that they were bailiffs who had introduced themselves with an execution,30 and whom, since he could not send them away, he had thought it convenient to embellish with liveries, that they might do him credit while they staid. His friends were diverted with the expedient, and, by paying the debt, dis­ charged their attendance, having obliged Sir Richard to promise that they should never again find him graced with a retinue of the same kind. Under such a tutor, Mr. Savage was not likely to learn prudence or frugality; and perhaps many of the misfortunes, which the want of those virtues brought upon him in the following parts of his life, might be justly imputed to so un-­improving an example. Nor did the kindness of Sir Richard end in common favours. He proposed to have established him in some settled scheme of life, and to have contracted a kind of alliance with him, by marrying him to a natural daughter, on whom he intended to bestow a thousand pounds. But though he was always lavish of future bounties, he conducted his affairs in such a manner, that he was very seldom able to keep his promises, or execute his own intentions; and, as he was never able to raise the sum which he had offered, the marriage was delayed. In the mean time he was officiously informed, that Mr. Savage had ridiculed him; by which he was so much exasper­ ated, that he withdrew the allowance which he had paid him, and never afterwards admitted him to his house. It is not indeed unlikely that Savage might, by his imprudence, expose himself to the malice of a tale-­bearer; for his patron had many follies, which as his discern­ ment easily discovered, his imagination might sometimes incite him to mention too ludicrously. A little knowledge of the world is sufficient to discover that such weak­ ness is very common, and that there are few who do not sometimes, in the wanton­ ness of thoughtless mirth, or the heat of transient resentment, speak of their friends and benefactors with levity and contempt, though in their cooler moments they want neither sense of their kindness, or reverence for their virtue. The fault therefore of Mr. Savage was rather negligence than ingratitude; but Sir Richard must likewise 29. Uniformed servants. 30. Court order.

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be acquitted of severity, for who is there that can patiently bear contempt from one whom he has relieved and supported, whose establishment he has laboured, and whose interest he has promoted? He was now again abandoned to fortune, without any other friend than Mr. Wilks; a man, who, whatever were his abilities or skill as an actor, deserves at least to be remembered for his virtues,31 which are not often to be found in the world, and perhaps less often in his profession than in others. To be humane, generous, and can­ did, is a very high degree of merit in any case; but those qualities deserve still greater praise, when they are found in that condition, which makes almost every other man, for whatever reason, contemptuous, insolent, petulant, selfish, and b­ rutal. As Mr. Wilks was one of those to whom calamity seldom complained without relief, he naturally took an unfortunate wit into his protection, and not only assisted him in any casual distresses, but continued an equal and steady kindness to the time of his death. By his interposition Mr. Savage once obtained from his mother32 fifty pounds, and a promise of one hundred and fifty more; but it was the fate of this unhappy man, that few promises of any advantage to him were performed. His mother was in­ fected among others with the general madness of the South Sea traffic;33 and, having been disappointed in her expectations, refused to pay what perhaps nothing but the prospect of sudden affluence prompted her to promise. Being thus obliged to depend upon the friendship of Mr. Wilks, he was conse­ quently an assiduous frequenter of the theatres; and in a short time the amusements of the stage took such possession of his mind, that he never was absent from a play in several years. This constant attendance naturally procured him the acquaintance of the play­ 31. [SJ’s note] As it is a loss to mankind when any good action is forgotten, I shall insert another instance of Mr. Wilks’s generosity, very little known. Mr. Smith, a gentleman educated at Dublin, being hindered by an impediment in his pronunciation from engaging in orders, for which his friends designed him, left his own country, and came to London in quest of employment, but found his solicitations fruitless, and his necessities every day more pressing. In this distress he wrote a tragedy, and offered it to the players, by whom it was re­ jected. Thus were his last hopes defeated, and he had no other prospect than of the most deplorable poverty. But Mr. Wilks thought his performance, though not perfect, at least worthy of some reward, and therefore offered him a benefit [a performance of his play for his own benefit]. This favour he improved with so much diligence, that the house afforded him a considerable sum, with which he went to Leyden, applied himself to the study of physic; and prosecuted his design with so much diligence and success, that, when Dr. Boerhaave [see SJ’s Life of Hermann Boerhaave, Yale, xix.19] was desired by the Czarina to recommend proper persons to introduce into Russia the practice and study of physic, Dr. Smith was one of those whom he selected. He had a considerable pension settled on him at his arrival, and was one of the chief physicians at the Russian court. 32. [SJ’s note] This I write upon the credit of the author of his life, which was published [anonymously in] 1727. 33. After rising for many years, stock in the overvalued South Sea Company crashed precipitously in 1720.



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ers, and, among others, of Mrs. Oldfield,34 who was so much pleased with his con­ versation, and touched with his misfortunes, that she allowed him a settled pension of fifty pounds a year, which was during her life regularly paid. That this act of generosity may receive its due praise, and that the good actions of Mrs. Oldfield may not be sullied by her general character, it is proper to mention what Mr. Savage often declared in the strongest terms, that he never saw her alone, or in any other place than behind the scenes. At her death he endeavoured to shew his gratitude in the most decent manner, by wearing mourning as for a mother; but did not celebrate her in elegies, because he knew that too great profusion of praise would only have revived those faults which his natural equity did not allow him to think less, because they were committed by one who favoured him; but of which, though his virtue would not endeavour to pal­ liate them, his gratitude would not suffer him to prolong the memory, or diffuse the censure. In his Wanderer, he has indeed taken an opportunity of mentioning her, but celebrates her not for her virtue, but her beauty, an excellence which none ever de­ nied her: this is the only encomium with which he has rewarded her liberality, and perhaps he has even in this been too lavish of his praise.35 He seems to have thought, that never to mention his benefactress would have an appearance of ingratitude, though to have dedicated any particular performance to her memory would have only betrayed an officious partiality, that, without exalting her character, would have depressed his own. He had sometimes, by the kindness of Mr. Wilks, the advantage of a benefit, on which occasions he often received uncommon marks of regard and compassion; and was once told by the Duke of Dorset,36 that it was just to consider him as an injured nobleman, and that in his opinion the nobility ought to think themselves obliged, without solicitation, to take every opportunity of supporting him by their counte­ nance and patronage. But he had generally the mortification to hear that the whole interest of his mother was employed to frustrate his applications, and that she never left any expedient untried, by which he might be cut off from the possibility of sup­ porting life. The same disposition she endeavoured to diffuse among all those over whom nature or fortune gave her any influence, and indeed succeeded too well in her design; but could not always propagate her effrontery with her cruelty, for some

34. Anne Oldfield (1683–1730), the partner at this time of Charles Churchill (c. 1678–1745), a nephew of the Duke of Marlborough. 35. The Wanderer, v.55–62, where Savage describes Oldfield as “fair Ophelia” who “throws kind lustre o’er th’ enliven’d green.” 36. Lionel Cranfield Sackville, first Duke of Dorset (1688–1765).

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of those, whom she incited against him, were ashamed of their own conduct, and boasted of that relief which they never gave him. In this censure I do not indiscriminately involve all his relations; for he has mentioned with gratitude the humanity of one lady, whose name I am now unable to recollect, and to whom therefore I cannot pay the praises which she deserves for having acted well in opposition to influence, precept, and example. The punishment which our laws inflict upon those parents who murder their infants is well known, nor has its justice ever been contested; but if they deserve death, who destroy a child in its birth, what pains can be severe enough for her who forbears to destroy him only to inflict sharper miseries upon him; who prolongs his life only to make him miserable; and who exposes him, without care and with­ out pity, to the malice of oppression, the caprices of chance, and the temptations of poverty; who rejoices to see him overwhelmed with calamities; and, when his own industry, or the charity of others, has enabled him to rise for a short time above his miseries, plunges him again into his former distress? The kindness of his friends not affording him any constant supply, and the prospect of improving his fortune by enlarging his acquaintance, necessarily lead­ ing him to places of expence, he found it necessary37 to endeavour once more at dra­ matic poetry, for which he was now better qualified by a more extensive knowledge, and longer observation. But having been unsuccessful in comedy, though rather for want of opportunities than genius, he resolved now to try whether he should not be more fortunate in exhibiting a tragedy. The story which he chose for the subject, was that of Sir Thomas Overbury,38 a story well adapted to the stage, though perhaps not far enough removed from the present age, to admit properly the fictions necessary to complete the plan: for the mind, which naturally loves truth, is always most offended with the violation of those truths of which we are most certain; and we of course conceive those facts most certain, which approach nearest to our own time. Out of this story he formed a tragedy, which, if the circumstances in which he wrote it be considered, will afford at once an uncommon proof of strength of genius, and evenness of mind, of a serenity not to be ruffled, and an imagination not to be suppressed. During a considerable part of the time, in which he was employed upon this performance, he was without lodging, and often without meat; nor had he any other conveniences for study than the fields or the street allowed him; there he used to 37. [SJ’s note] In 1724. 38. Overbury (1581–1613), a courtier and poet knighted by James I, became entangled in interpersonal intrigue and was eventually imprisoned and murdered.



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walk and form his speeches, and afterwards step into a shop, beg for a few moments the use of the pen and ink, and write down what he had composed upon paper, which he had picked up by accident. If the performance of a writer thus distressed is not perfect, its faults ought surely to be imputed to a cause very different from want of genius, and must rather excite pity than provoke censure. But when under these discouragements the tragedy was finished, there yet re­ mained the labour of introducing it on the stage, an undertaking, which, to an in­ genuous mind, was in a very high degree vexatious and disgusting; for, having little interest or reputation, he was obliged to submit himself wholly to the players, and admit, with whatever reluctance, the emendations of Mr. Cibber,39 which he always considered as the disgrace of his performance. He had indeed in Mr. Hill another critic of a very different class, from whose friendship he received great assistance on many occasions, and whom he never men­ tioned but with the utmost tenderness and regard.40 He had been for some time dis­ tinguished by him with very particular kindness, and on this occasion it was natu­ ral to apply to him as an author of an established character. He therefore sent this tragedy to him, with a short copy of verses, in which he desired his correction. Mr. Hill, whose humanity and politeness are generally known, readily complied with his request; but as he is remarkable for singularity of sentiment, and bold experiments in language, Mr. Savage did not think his play much improved by his innovation, and had even at that time the courage to reject several passages which he could not approve; and, what is still more laudable, Mr. Hill had the generosity not to resent the neglect of his alterations, but wrote the prologue and epilogue, in which he touches on the circumstances of the author with great tenderness. After all these obstructions and compliances, he was only able to bring his play upon the stage in the summer, when the chief actors had retired, and the rest were in possession of the house for their own advantage. Among these, Mr. Sav­ age was admitted to play the part of Sir Thomas Overbury, by which he gained no great reputation, the theatre being a province for which nature seemed not to have designed him; for neither his voice, look, nor gesture, were such as were expected on the stage; and he was so much ashamed of having been reduced to appear as a player, that he always blotted out his name from the list, when a copy of his tragedy was to be shown to his friends. In the publication of his performance he was more successful, for the rays of genius that glimmered in it, that glimmered through all the mists which poverty and 39. Colley Cibber (1671–1757), playwright and one of the managers of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. 40. Aaron Hill, dramatist, poet, and critic (see n. 21 above).

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Cibber had been able to spread over it, procured him the notice and esteem of many persons eminent for their rank, their virtue, and their wit. Of this play, acted, printed, and dedicated, the accumulated profits arose to an hundred pounds, which he thought at that time a very large sum, having been never master of so much before. In the dedication, for which he received ten guineas, there is nothing remark­ able. The preface contains a very liberal encomium on the blooming excellencies of Mr. Theophilus Cibber,41 which Mr. Savage could not in the latter part of his life see his friends about to read without snatching the play out of their hands. The gen­ erosity of Mr. Hill did not end on this occasion; for afterwards, when Mr. Savage’s necessities returned, he encouraged a subscription to a miscellany of poems42 in a very extraordinary manner, by publishing his story in the Plain Dealer,43 with some affecting lines, which he asserts to have been written by Mr. Savage upon the treat­ ment received by him from his mother, but of which he was himself the author, as Mr. Savage afterwards declared. These lines, and the paper in which they were in­ serted, had a very powerful effect upon all but his mother, whom, by making her cruelty more public, they only hardened in her aversion. Mr. Hill not only promoted the subscription to the Miscellany, but furnished likewise the greatest part of the poems of which it is composed, and particularly The Happy Man, which he published as a specimen. The subscriptions of those whom these papers should influence to patronize merit in distress, without any other solicitation, were directed to be left at Button’s coffee-­house;44 and Mr. Savage going thither a few days afterwards, without ex­ pectation of any effect from his proposal, found to his surprize seventy guineas,45 which had been sent to him in consequence of the compassion excited by Mr. Hill’s pathetic46 representation. To this Miscellany he wrote a preface, in which he gives an account of his mother’s cruelty in a very uncommon strain of humour, and with a gaiety of imagi­ nation, which the success of his subscription probably produced. 41. Theophilus Cibber (1703–1758), like his father Colley, an actor and playwright. 42. Miscellaneous Poems and Translations. By Several Hands. Published by Richard Savage, Son of the Late Earl Rivers (1726). 43. [SJ’s note] The Plain Dealer was a periodical paper, written by Mr. [Aaron] Hill and Mr. [William] Bond, whom Mr. Savage called the two contending powers of light and darkness. They wrote by turns each six essays; and the character of the work was observed regularly to rise in Mr. Hill’s weeks, and fall in Mr. Bond’s. 44. Buttons, on Russell Street in Covent Garden, was the resort of literary lights, including Addison and Steele. 45. [SJ’s note] The names of those who so generously contributed to his relief, having been mentioned in a former account, ought not to be omitted here. [SJ lists sixteen of them.] 46. Sympathetic; raising pity.



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The dedication is addressed to the Lady Mary Wortley Montague,47 whom he flatters without reserve, and, to confess the truth, with very little art.48 The same ob­ servation may be extended to all his Dedications: his compliments are constrained and violent, heaped together without the grace of order, or the decency of introduc­ tion: he seems to have written his panegyrics for the perusal only of his patrons, and to have imagined that he had no other task than to pamper them with praises how­ ever gross, and that flattery would make its way to the heart, without the assistance of elegance or invention. Soon afterwards, the death of the king furnished a general subject for a poeti­ cal contest, in which Mr. Savage engaged, and is allowed to have carried the prize of honour from his competitors; but I know not whether he gained by his performance any other advantage than the increase of his reputation; though it must certainly have been with farther views that he prevailed upon himself to attempt a species of writing, of which all the topics had been long before exhausted, and which was made at once difficult by the multitudes that had failed in it, and those that had suc­ ceeded.49 He was now advancing in reputation, and though frequently involved in very distressful perplexities, appeared however to be gaining upon mankind, when both his fame and his life were endangered by an event, of which it is not yet determined, whether it ought to be mentioned as a crime or a calamity. On the 20th of November 1727, Mr. Savage came from Richmond,50 where he then lodged, that he might pursue his studies with less interruption, with an intent to discharge another lodging which he had in Westminster; and accidentally meet­ ing two gentlemen his acquaintances, whose names were Merchant and Gregory, he went in with them to a neighbouring coffee-­house, and sat drinking till it was late, it being in no time of Mr. Savage’s life any part of his character to be the first of the company that desired to separate. He would willingly have gone to bed in the same house, but there was not room for the whole company, and therefore they agreed to ramble about the streets, and divert themselves with such amusements as should offer themselves till morning. In their walk they happened unluckily to discover a light in Robinson’s coffee-­ house, near Charing-­cross,51 and therefore went in. Merchant, with some rudeness, demanded a room, and was told that there was a good fire in the next parlour, which the company were about to leave, being then paying their reckoning. Merchant, not 47. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), poet, diarist, and travel writer. 48. [SJ’s note] This the following extract from it will prove. [SJ quotes one and a half paragraphs of the dedication (Miscellany, pp. iv–­v).] 49. A Poem, Sacred to the Glorious Memory of our Late Most Gracious Sovereign Lord King George (1727). 50. Richmond, now part of greater London, was then a separate town. 51. Charing Cross is in Westminster, near Trafalgar Square.

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satisfied with this answer, rushed into the room, and was followed by his compan­ ions. He then petulantly placed himself between the company and the fire, and soon after kicked down the table. This produced a quarrel, swords were drawn on both sides, and one Mr. James Sinclair was killed. Savage, having wounded likewise a maid that held him, forced his way with Merchant out of the house; but being in­ timidated and confused, without resolution either to fly or stay, they were taken in a back-­court by one of the company and some soldiers, whom he had called to his assistance. Being secured and guarded that night, they were in the morning carried be­ fore three justices, who committed them to the Gatehouse,52 from whence, upon the death of Mr. Sinclair, which happened the same day, they were removed in the night to Newgate,53 where they were however treated with some distinction, exempted from the ignominy of chains, and confined, not among the common criminals, but in the press-­yard.54 When the day of trial came, the court was crouded in a very unusual manner, and the public appeared to interest itself as in a cause of general concern. The wit­ nesses against Mr. Savage and his friends were, the woman who kept the house, which was a house of ill fame, and her maid, the men who were in the room with Mr. Sinclair, and a woman of the town, who had been drinking with them, and with whom one of them had been seen in bed. They swore in general, that Merchant gave the provocation, which Savage and Gregory drew their swords to justify; that Savage drew first, and that he stabbed Sinclair when he was not in a posture of defence, or while Gregory commanded his sword; that after he had given the thrust he turned pale, and would have retired, but that the maid clung round him, and one of the company endeavoured to detain him, from whom he broke, by cutting the maid on the head, but was afterwards taken in a court. There was some difference in their depositions; one did not see Savage give the wound, another saw it given when Sinclair held his point towards the ground; and the woman of the town asserted, that she did not see Sinclair’s sword at all: this dif­ ference however was very far from amounting to inconsistency; but it was sufficient to shew, that the hurry of the dispute was such, that it was not easy to discover the truth with relation to particular circumstances, and that therefore some deductions were to be made from the credibility of the testimonies. Sinclair had declared several times before his death, that he received his wound from Savage, nor did Savage at his trial deny the fact, but endeavoured partly to ex­ tenuate it, by urging the suddenness of the whole action, and the impossibility of 52. A prison near Westminster Abbey. 53. A larger prison in the City of London. 54. The area of the prison from whence prisoners were taken to the gallows.



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any ill design, or premeditated malice, and partly to justify it by the necessity of self-­ defence, and the hazard of his own life, if he had lost that opportunity of giving the thrust: he observed, that neither reason nor law obliged a man to wait for the blow which was threatened, and which, if he should suffer it, he might never be able to re­ turn; that it was always allowable to prevent an assault, and to preserve life by taking away that of the adversary, by whom it was endangered. With regard to the violence with which he endeavoured to escape, he declared, that it was not his design to fly from justice, or decline a trial, but to avoid the expences55 and severities of a prison; and that he intended to have appeared at the bar without compulsion. This defence, which took up more than an hour, was heard by the multitude that thronged the court with the most attentive and respectful silence: those who thought he ought not to be acquitted, owned that applause could not be refused him; and those who before pitied his misfortunes, now reverenced his abilities. The witnesses which appeared against him were proved to be persons of char­ acters which did not entitle them to much credit; a common strumpet, a woman by whom strumpets were entertained, and a man by whom they were supported; and the character of Savage was by several persons of distinction asserted to be that of a modest inoffensive man, not inclined to broils,56 or to insolence, and who had, to that time, been only known for his misfortunes and his wit. Had his audience been his judges, he had undoubtedly been acquitted; but Mr. Page, who was then upon the bench,57 treated him with his usual insolence and severity, and when he had summed up the evidence, endeavoured to exasperate58 the jury, as Mr. Savage used to relate it, with this eloquent harangue: Gentlemen of the jury, you are to consider that Mr. Savage is a very great man, a much greater man than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he wears very fine clothes, much finer clothes than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he has abundance of money in his pocket, much more money than you or I, gentlemen of the jury: but, gentlemen of the jury, is it not a very hard case, gentlemen of the jury, that Mr. Savage should therefore kill you or me, gentlemen of the jury?

Mr. Savage hearing his defence thus misrepresented, and the men who were to decide his fate incited against him by invidious comparisons, resolutely asserted, 55. It was then necessary for prisoners to pay a fee to their jailers during incarceration. 56. Quarrels, noisy disturbances. 57. Sir Francis Page (1660/61?–­1741), known as “the hanging judge.” 58. “to render (laws) more severe” (OED, sense 1).

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that his cause was not candidly explained, and began to recapitulate what he had before said with regard to his condition, and the necessity of endeavouring to es­ cape the expences of imprisonment; but the judge having ordered him to be silent, and repeated his orders without effect, commanded that he should be taken from the bar by force. The jury then heard the opinion of the judge, that good characters were of no weight against positive evidence, though they might turn the scale where it was doubtful; and that though, when two men attack each other, the death of either is only manslaughter; but where one is the aggressor, as in the case before them, and, in pursuance of his first attack, kills the other, the law supposes the action, however sudden, to be malicious. They then deliberated upon their verdict, and determined that Mr. Savage and Mr. Gregory were guilty of murder, and Mr. Merchant, who had no sword, only of manslaughter. Thus ended this memorable trial, which lasted eight hours. Mr. Savage and Mr. Gregory were conducted back to prison, where they were more closely confined, and loaded with irons of fifty pounds weight: four days afterwards they were sent back to the court to receive sentence; on which occasion Mr. Savage made, as far as it could be retained in memory, the following speech. It is now, my Lord, too late to offer any thing by way of defence or vindi­ cation; nor can we expect from your Lordships, in this court, but the sen­ tence which the law requires you, as judges, to pronounce against men of our calamitous condition.—But we are also persuaded, that as mere men, and out of this seat of rigorous justice, you are susceptive of the tender pas­ sions, and too humane, not to commiserate the unhappy situation of those, whom the law sometimes perhaps—exacts—from you to pronounce upon. No doubt you distinguish between offences, which arise out of premedita­ tion, and a disposition habituated to vice or immorality, and transgressions, which are the unhappy and unforeseen effects of casual absence of reason, and sudden impulse of passion: we therefore hope you will contribute all you can to an extension of that mercy, which the gentlemen of the jury have been pleased to shew Mr. Merchant, who (allowing facts as sworn against us by the evidence) has led us into this our calamity. I hope this will not be con­ strued, as if we meant to reflect upon that gentleman, or remove any thing from us upon him, or that we repine the more at our fate, because he has no participation of it: No, my Lord! For my part, I declare nothing could more soften my grief, than to be without any companion in so great a misfortune.59 59. [SJ’s note] Mr. Savage’s Life [an anonymous biography published in 1727, pp. 23–24].



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Mr. Savage had now no hopes of life, but from the mercy of the crown, which was very earnestly solicited by his friends, and which, with whatever difficulty the story may obtain belief, was obstructed only by his mother. To prejudice the queen against him, she made use of an incident, which was omitted in the order of time, that it might be mentioned together with the purpose which it was made to serve. Mr. Savage, when he had discovered his birth, had an in­ cessant desire to speak to his mother, who always avoided him in public, and refused him admission into her house. One evening walking, as it was his custom, in the street that she inhabited, he saw the door of her house by accident open; he entered it, and, finding no person in the passage to hinder him, went up stairs to salute her. She discovered him before he could enter her chamber, alarmed the family with the most distressful outcries, and when she had by her screams gathered them about her, ordered them to drive out of the house that villain, who had forced himself in upon her, and endeavoured to murder her. Savage, who had attempted with the most submissive tenderness to soften her rage, hearing her utter so detestable an accusation, thought it prudent to retire; and, I believe, never attempted afterwards to speak to her. But, shocked as he was with her falshood and her cruelty, he imagined that she intended no other use of her lye, than to set herself free from his embraces and solici­ tations, and was very far from suspecting that she would treasure it in her memory, as an instrument of future wickedness, or that she would endeavour for this fictitious assault to deprive him of his life. But when the queen was solicited for his pardon, and informed of the severe treatment which he had suffered from his judge, she answered, that, however un­ justifiable might be the manner of his trial, or whatever extenuation the action for which he was condemned might admit, she could not think that man a proper ob­ ject of the king’s mercy, who had been capable of entering his mother’s house in the night, with an intent to murder her. By whom this atrocious calumny had been transmitted to the queen; whether she that invented had the front60 to relate it; whether she found any one weak enough to credit it, or corrupt enough to concur with her in her hateful design, I know not: but methods had been taken to persuade the queen so strongly of the truth of it, that she for a long time refused to hear any of those who petitioned for his life. Thus had Savage perished by the evidence of a bawd, a strumpet, and his mother, had not justice and compassion procured him an advocate of rank too great to be rejected unheard, and of virtue too eminent to be heard without being be­ lieved. His merit and his calamities happened to reach the ear of the Countess of 60. “Effrontery; impudence” (OED, sense 4).

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Hertford,61 who engaged in his support with all the tenderness that is excited by pity, and all the zeal which is kindled by generosity, and, demanding an audience of the queen, laid before her the whole series of his mother’s cruelty, exposed the improbability of an accusation by which he was charged with an intent to commit a murder that could produce no advantage, and soon convinced her how little his former conduct could deserve to be mentioned as a reason for extraordinary severity. The interposition of this lady was so successful, that he was soon after admitted to bail, and, on the 9th of March 1728, pleaded the king’s pardon. It is natural to enquire upon what motives his mother could persecute him in a manner so outrageous and implacable; for what reason she could employ all the arts of malice, and all the snares of calumny, to take away the life of her own son, of a son who never injured her, who was never supported by her expence, nor obstructed any prospect of pleasure or advantage; why she should endeavour to destroy him by a lye—a lye which could not gain credit, but must vanish of itself at the first moment of examination, and of which only this can be said to make it probable, that it may be observed from her conduct, that the most execrable crimes are sometimes com­ mitted without apparent temptation. This mother is still alive,62 and may perhaps even yet, though her malice was so often defeated, enjoy the pleasure of reflecting, that the life, which she often en­ deavoured to destroy, was at least shortened by her maternal offices; that though she could not transport her son to the plantations, bury him in the shop of a mechanic, or hasten the hand of the public executioner, she has yet had the satisfaction of im­ bittering all his hours, and forcing him into exigencies that hurried on his death. It is by no means necessary to aggravate the enormity of this woman’s conduct, by placing it in opposition to that of the Countess of Hertford; no one can fail to observe how much more amiable it is to relieve, than to oppress, and to rescue inno­ cence from destruction, than to destroy without an injury. Mr. Savage, during his imprisonment, his trial, and the time in which he lay under sentence of death, behaved with great firmness and equality of mind, and confirmed by his fortitude the esteem of those who before admired him for his abili­ ties. The peculiar circumstances of his life were made more generally known by a short account,63 which was then published, and of which several thousands were in a few weeks dispersed over the nation; and the compassion of mankind operated so powerfully in his favour, that he was enabled, by frequent presents, not only to sup­ 61. Frances Seymour (née Thynne), later Duchess of Somerset (1699–1754), patron and poet. 62. Mrs. Brett died in 1753. SJ wrote her obituary (see Yale, xix.242–43). 63. [SJ’s note] Written by Mr. [Charles] Beckingham [1699–1731] and another gentleman [published anonymously].



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port himself, but to assist Mr. Gregory in prison; and, when he was pardoned and released, he found the number of his friends not lessened. The nature of the act for which he had been tried was in itself doubtful; of the evidences which appeared against him, the character of the man was not unexcep­ tionable, that of the women notoriously infamous: she, whose testimony chiefly in­ fluenced the jury to condemn him, afterwards retracted her assertions. He always himself denied that he was drunk, as had been generally reported. Mr. Gregory, who is now Collector of Antigua,64 is said to declare him far less criminal than he was imagined, even by some who favoured him: and Page himself afterwards confessed, that he had treated him with uncommon rigour. When all these particulars are rated together, perhaps the memory of Savage may not be much sullied by his trial. Some time after he had obtained his liberty, he met in the street the woman that had sworn with so much malignity against him. She informed him, that she was in distress, and, with a degree of confidence not easily attainable, desired him to relieve her. He, instead of insulting her misery, and taking pleasure in the calami­ ties of one who had brought his life into danger, reproved her gently for her per­ jury; and, changing the only guinea that he had, divided it equally between her and himself. This is an action which in some ages would have made a saint, and perhaps in others a hero, and which, without any hyperbolical encomiums, must be allowed to be an instance of uncommon generosity, an act of complicated virtue; by which he at once relieved the poor, corrected the vicious, and forgave an enemy; by which he at once remitted the strongest provocations, and exercised the most ardent charity. Compassion was indeed the distinguishing quality of Savage; he never ap­ peared inclined to take advantage of weakness, to attack the defenceless, or to press upon the falling: whoever was distressed was certain at least of his good wishes; and when he could give no assistance to extricate them from misfortunes, he endeav­ oured to sooth them by sympathy and tenderness. But when his heart was not softened by the sight of misery, he was sometimes obstinate in his resentment, and did not quickly lose the remembrance of an injury. He always continued to speak with anger of the insolence and partiality of Page, and a short time before his death revenged it by a satire.65 It is natural to enquire in what terms Mr. Savage spoke of this fatal action, when the danger was over, and he was under no necessity of using any art to set his conduct in the fairest light. He was not willing to dwell upon it; and if he tran­

64. The customs officer in Antigua (West Indies), then a British colony. 65. [SJ’s note] Printed in the late collection [printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine for September 1741 as “A Character,” p. 494].

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siently mentioned it, appeared neither to consider himself as a murderer, nor as a man wholly free from the guilt of blood.66 How much and how long he regretted it, appeared in a poem which he published many years afterwards.67 On occasion of a copy of verses, in which the failings of good men were recounted, and in which the author had endeavoured to illustrate his position, that “the best may sometimes deviate from virtue,” by an instance of murder committed by Savage in the heat of wine, Savage remarked, that it was no very just representation of a good man, to sup­ pose him liable to drunkenness, and disposed in his riots to cut throats. He was now indeed at liberty, but was, as before, without any other support than accidental favours and uncertain patronage afforded him; sources by which he was sometimes very liberally supplied, and which at other times were suddenly stopped; so that he spent his life between want and plenty; or, what was yet worse, between beggary and extravagance; for as whatever he received was the gift of chance, which might as well favour him at one time as another, he was tempted to squander what he had, because he always hoped to be immediately supplied. Another cause of his profusion was the absurd kindness of his friends, who at once rewarded and enjoyed his abilities, by treating him at taverns, and habituated him to pleasures which he could not afford to enjoy, and which he was not able to deny himself, though he purchased the luxury of a single night by the anguish of cold and hunger for a week. The experience of these inconveniences determined him to endeavour after some settled income, which, having long found submission and intreaties fruitless, he attempted to extort from his mother by rougher methods. He had now, as he ac­ knowledged, lost that tenderness for her, which the whole series of her cruelty had not been able wholly to repress, till he found, by the efforts which she made for his destruction, that she was not content with refusing to assist him, and being neutral in his struggles with poverty, but was as ready to snatch every opportunity of adding to his misfortunes, and that she was to be considered as an enemy implacably ma­ licious, whom nothing but his blood could satisfy. He therefore threatened to har­ rass her with lampoons, and to publish a copious narrative of her conduct, unless she consented to purchase an exemption from infamy, by allowing him a pension. This expedient proved successful. Whether shame still survived, though virtue was extinct, or whether her relations had more delicacy than herself, and imagined that some of the darts which satire might point at her would glance upon them; Lord Tyrconnel,68 whatever were his motives, upon his promise to lay aside his design of

66. [SJ’s note] In one of his letters he stiles it “a fatal quarrel, but too-­well known.” 67. The Bastard, first published on 18 April 1728, only eight weeks afterwards. 68. John Brownlow, first Viscount Tyrconnel (1690–1754), was nephew to Mrs. Brett.



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exposing the cruelty of his mother, received him into his family, treated him as his equal, and engaged to allow him a pension of two hundred pounds a year. This was the golden part of Mr. Savage’s life; and for some time he had no reason to complain of fortune; his appearance was splendid, his expences large, and his acquaintance extensive. He was courted by all who endeavoured to be thought men of genius, and caressed by all who valued themselves upon a refined taste. To admire Mr. Savage, was a proof of discernment, and to be acquainted with him, was a title to poetical reputation. His presence was sufficient to make any place of public entertainment popular; and his approbation and example constituted the fashion. So powerful is genius, when it is invested with the glitter of affluence! Men willingly pay to fortune that regard which they owe to merit, and are pleased when they have an opportunity at once of gratifying their vanity, and practising their duty. This interval of prosperity furnished him with opportunities of enlarging his knowledge of human nature, by contemplating life from its highest gradations to its lowest; and, had he afterwards applied to dramatic poetry, he would perhaps not have had many superiors; for as he never suffered any scene to pass before his eyes without notice, he had treasured in his mind all the different combinations of passions, and the innumerable mixtures of vice and virtue, which distinguish one character from another; and, as his conception was strong, his expressions were clear, he easily re­ ceived impressions from objects, and very forcibly transmitted them to others. Of his exact observations on human life he has left a proof, which would do honour to the greatest names, in a small pamphlet, called, The Author to be Let,69 where he introduces Iscariot Hackney, a prostitute scribbler, giving an account of his birth, his education, his disposition and morals, habits of life, and maxims of conduct. In the introduction are related many secret histories of the petty writers of that time, but sometimes mixed with ungenerous reflections on their birth, their circumstances, or those of their relations; nor can it be denied, that some passages are such as Iscariot Hackney might himself have produced. He was accused likewise of living in an appearance of friendship with some whom he satirised, and of making use of the confidence which he gained by a seem­ ing kindness to discover failings and expose them: it must be confessed, that Mr. Savage’s esteem was no very certain possession, and that he would lampoon at one time those whom he had praised at another. It may be alleged, that the same man may change his principles, and that, he who was once deservedly commended, may be afterwards satirised with equal jus­ 69. An Author To be Let. Being a Proposal humbly addressed to the Consideration of the Knights, Esquires, Gentlemen and other wonderful and weighty Members of the Solid and Ancient Society of the Bathos. By their Associate and Well-­Wisher, Iscariot Hackney (1729).

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tice, or that the poet was dazzled with the appearance of virtue, and found the man whom he had celebrated, when he had an opportunity of examining him more nar­ rowly, unworthy of the panegyric which he had too hastily bestowed; and that as a false satire ought to be recanted, for the sake of him whose reputation may be in­ jured, false praise ought likewise to be obviated, lest the distinction between vice and virtue should be lost, lest a bad man should be trusted upon the credit of his encomi­ ast, or lest others should endeavour to obtain the like praises by the same means. But though these excuses may be often plausible, and sometimes just, they are very seldom satisfactory to mankind; and the writer, who is not constant to his sub­ ject, quickly sinks into contempt, his satire loses its force, and his panegyric its value, and he is only considered at one time as a flatterer, and as a calumniator at another. To avoid these imputations, it is only necessary to follow the rules of virtue, and to preserve an unvaried regard to truth. For though it is undoubtedly possible, that a man, however cautious, may be sometimes deceived by an artful appearance of virtue, or by false evidences of guilt, such errors will not be frequent; and it will be allowed, that the name of an author would never have been made contemptible, had no man ever said what he did not think, or misled others but when he was him­ self deceived. If The Author to be Let was first published in a single pamphlet, and afterwards inserted in a collection of pieces relating to the Dunciad, which were addressed by Mr. Savage to the Earl of Middlesex,70 in a dedication which he was prevailed upon to sign, though he did not write it, and in which there are some positions, that the true author would perhaps not have published under his own name,71 and on which Mr. Savage afterwards reflected with no great satisfaction; the enumeration of the bad effects of the uncontroled freedom of the press, and the assertion that the “liberties taken by the writers of journals with their superiors were exorbitant and unjustifiable,”72 very ill became men, who have themselves not always shewn the exactest regard to the laws of subordination in their writings, and who have often satirized those that at least thought themselves their superiors, as they were eminent for their hereditary rank, and employed in the highest offices of the kingdom. But this is only an instance of that partiality which almost every man indulges with re­ gard to himself; the liberty of the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants; as the power of the crown is always thought too great by those who 70. A Collection of Pieces of Verse and Prose which have been published on Occasion of the Dunciad. Dedicated to the Right Honourable the Earl of Middlesex by Mr. Savage (1732). 71. SJ suggests Alexander Pope was the true author of the dedication. SJ wrote at least twenty-­two dedi­ cations but none under his own name. 72. Here and elsewhere in the paragraph SJ paraphrases Pope’s dedication.



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suffer by its influence, and too little by those in whose favour it is exerted; and a standing army is generally accounted necessary by those who command, and dan­ gerous and oppressive by those who support it.73 Mr. Savage was likewise very far from believing, that the letters74 annexed to each species of bad poets in the Bathos, were, as he was directed to assert, “set down at random”; for when he was charged by one of his friends with putting his name to such an improbability, he had no other answer to make, than that “he did not think of it,” and his friend had too much tenderness to reply, that next to the crime of writ­ ing contrary to what he thought, was that of writing without thinking. After having remarked what is false in this dedication,75 it is proper that I observe the impartiality which I recommend, by declaring what Mr. Savage as­ serted, that the account of the circumstances which attended the publication of the Dunciad, however strange and improbable, was exactly true. The publication of this piece at this time raised Mr. Savage a great number of enemies among those that were attacked by Mr. Pope, with whom he was consid­ ered as a kind of confederate, and whom he was suspected of supplying with private intelligence and secret incidents: so that the ignominy of an informer was added to the terror of a satirist. That he was not altogether free from literary hypocrisy, and that he sometimes spoke one thing, and wrote another, cannot be denied; because he himself con­ fessed, that, when he lived in great familiarity with Dennis, he wrote an epigram against him.76 Mr. Savage however set all the malice of all the pigmy writers at defiance, and thought the friendship of Mr. Pope cheaply purchased by being exposed to their censure and their hatred; nor had he any reason to repent of the preference, for he found Mr. Pope a steady and unalienable friend almost to the end of his life. About this time, notwithstanding his avowed neutrality with regard to party, 73. Whether or not there should be a standing army was hotly contested at this time (see Yale, xi.72 ff.). 74. Initials of names. 75. In the first edition, SJ printed the entire dedication in a footnote. 76. [SJ’s note] This epigram was, I believe, never published. [It was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine and elsewhere, though in a different version.] Should Dennis publish you had stabb’d your brother, Lampoon’d your monarch, or debauch’d your mother; Say, what revenge on Dennis can be had, Too dull for laughter, for reply too mad? On one so poor you cannot take the law, On one so old your sword you scorn to draw. Uncag’d then, let the harmless monster rage, Secure in dulness, madness, want, and age. [Gentleman’s Magazine, i ( July 1731), 306]

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he published a panegyric on Sir Robert Walpole,77 for which he was rewarded by him with twenty guineas; a sum not very large, if either the excellence of the perfor­ mance, or the affluence of the patron, be considered; but greater than he afterwards obtained from a person of yet higher rank, and more desirous in appearance of being distinguished as a patron of literature.78 As he was very far from approving the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole, and in conversation mentioned him sometimes with acrimony, and generally with con­ tempt; as he was one of those who were always zealous in their assertions of the jus­ tice of the late opposition, jealous of the rights of the people, and alarmed by the long-­continued triumph of the court; it was natural to ask him what could induce him to employ his poetry in praise of that man who was, in his opinion, an enemy to liberty, and an oppressor of his country? He alledged, that he was then depen­ dent upon the Lord Tyrconnel, who was an implicit follower of the ministry, and that being enjoined by him, not without menaces, to write in praise of his leader,79 he had not resolution sufficient to sacrifice the pleasure of affluence to that of integ­ rity.80 On this, and on many other occasions, he was ready to lament the misery of living at the tables of other men, which was his fate from the beginning to the end of his life; for I know not whether he ever had, for three months together, a settled habitation, in which he could claim a right of residence. To this unhappy state it is just to impute much of the inconstancy of his con­ duct; for though a readiness to comply with the inclination of others was no part of his natural character, yet he was sometimes obliged to relax his obstinacy, and sub­ mit his own judgment, and even his virtue, to the government of those by whom he was supported: so that, if his miseries were sometimes the consequences of his faults, he ought not yet to be wholly excluded from compassion, because his faults were very often the effects of his misfortunes. In this gay period81 of his life, while he was surrounded by affluence and plea­ sure, he published The Wanderer, a moral poem, of which the design is comprised in these lines: I fly all public care, all venal strife, To try the still, compar’d with active life; 77. Religion and Liberty: An Epistle to the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (1732). Walpole (1676–1745) was the de facto prime minister in Parliament for decades. 78. James Brydges, first Duke of Chandos (1674–1744). 79. “One at the head of any party or faction; as, the detestable [Thomas] Wharton [1648–1715] was the leader of the whigs” (Dictionary, sense 4). 80. For SJ’s consistent criticism of dedicatory excess, see “Dryden,” Yale, XXI.398, 426–27, 434. 81. [SJ’s note] 1729.



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To prove, by these the sons of men may owe The fruits of bliss to bursting clouds of woe; That ev’n calamity, by thought refin’d, Inspirits and adorns the thinking mind.82

And more distinctly in the following passage: By woe, the soul to daring action swells; By woe, in plaintless patience it excels; From patience, prudent clear experience springs, And traces knowledge thro’ the course of things! Thence hope is form’d, thence fortitude, success, Renown:—whate’er men covet and caress.83

This performance was always considered by himself as his master-­piece; and Mr. Pope, when he asked his opinion of it, told him, that he read it once over, and was not displeased with it, that it gave him more pleasure at the second perusal, and delighted him still more at the third. It has been generally objected to The Wanderer, that the disposition of the parts is irregular; that the design is obscure, and the plan perplexed; that the images, how­ ever beautiful, succeed each other without order; and that the whole performance is not so much a regular fabric, as a heap of shining materials thrown together by acci­ dent, which strikes rather with the solemn magnificence of a stupendous ruin, than the elegant grandeur of a finished pile. This criticism is universal, and therefore it is reasonable to believe it at least in a great degree just; but Mr. Savage was always of a contrary opinion, and thought his drift could only be missed by negligence or stupidity, and that the whole plan was regular, and the parts distinct. It was never denied to abound with strong representations of nature, and just observations upon life; and it may easily be observed, that most of his pictures have an evident tendency to illustrate his first great position, “that good is the conse­ quence of evil.” The sun that burns up the mountains, fructifies the vales; the deluge that rushes down the broken rocks with dreadful impetuosity, is separated into purl­ ing brooks; and the rage of the hurricane purifies the air. Even in this poem he has not been able to forbear one touch upon the cruelty of his mother, which, though remarkably delicate and tender, is a proof how deep an impression it had upon his mind. 82. The Wanderer, i.13–18, which actually begins “She flies.” 83. The Wanderer, ii.245–50.

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This must be at least acknowledged, which ought to be thought equivalent to many other excellencies, that this poem can promote no other purposes than those of virtue, and that it is written with a very strong sense of the efficacy of religion. But my province is rather to give the history of Mr. Savage’s performances, than to display their beauties, or to obviate the criticisms which they have occa­ sioned; and therefore I shall not dwell upon the particular passages which deserve applause: I shall neither show the excellence of his descriptions, nor expatiate on the terrific84 portrait of suicide, nor point out the artful touches, by which he has distin­ guished the intellectual features of the rebels, who suffer death in his last canto. It is, however, proper to observe, that Mr. Savage always declared the characters wholly fictitious, and without the least allusion to any real persons or actions. From a poem so diligently laboured, and so successfully finished, it might be reasonably expected that he should have gained considerable advantage; nor can it, without some degree of indignation and concern, be told, that he sold the copy for ten guineas,85 of which he afterwards returned two, that the two last sheets of the work might be reprinted, of which he had in his absence intrusted the correction to a friend, who was too indolent to perform it with accuracy. A superstitious regard to the correction of his sheets was one of Mr. Savage’s peculiarities: he often altered, revised, recurred to his first reading or punctuation, and again adopted the alteration; he was dubious and irresolute without end, as on a question of the last importance, and at last was seldom satisfied: the intrusion or omission of a comma was sufficient to discompose him, and he would lament an error of a single letter as a heavy calamity. In one of his letters relating to an impres­ sion of some verses, he remarks, that he had, with regard to the correction of the proof, “a spell upon him”; and indeed the anxiety, with which he dwelt upon the minutest and most trifling niceties, deserved no other name than that of fascination. That he sold so valuable a performance for so small a price was not to be imputed either to necessity, by which the learned and ingenious are often obliged to submit to very hard conditions; or to avarice, by which the booksellers are fre­ quently incited to oppress that genius by which they are supported; but to that in­ temperate desire of pleasure, and habitual slavery to his passions, which involved him in many perplexities; he happened at that time to be engaged in the pursuit of some trifling gratification, and, being without money for the present occasion, sold his poem to the first bidder, and perhaps for the first price that was proposed, and would probably have been content with less, if less had been offered him. This poem was addressed to the Lord Tyrconnel, not only in the first lines, but 84. “Dreadful: causing terror” (Dictionary). 85. The same amount SJ received from Edward Cave for London (1738), but The Wanderer is nearly ten times the length of London.



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in a formal dedication filled with the highest strains of panegyric, and the warmest professions of gratitude, but by no means remarkable for delicacy of connection or elegance of stile. These praises in a short time he found himself inclined to retract, being dis­ carded by the man on whom he had bestowed them, and whom he then immediately discovered not to have deserved them. Of this quarrel, which every day made more bitter, Lord Tyrconnel and Mr. Savage assigned very different reasons, which might perhaps all in reality concur, though they were not all convenient to be alledged by either party. Lord Tyrconnel affirmed, that it was the constant practice of Mr. Sav­ age to enter a tavern with any company that proposed it, drink the most expensive wines with great profusion, and when the reckoning was demanded, to be without money: If, as it often happened, his company were willing to defray his part, the af­ fair ended, without any ill consequences; but, if they were refractory, and expected that the wine should be paid for by him that drank it, his method of composition86 was, to take them with him to his own apartment, assume the government of the house, and order the butler in an imperious manner to set the best wine in the cel­ lar before his company, who often drank till they forgot the respect due to the house in which they were entertained, indulged themselves in the utmost extravagance of merriment, practised the most licentious frolicks, and committed all the outrages of drunkenness. Nor was this the only charge which Lord Tyrconnel brought against him: Having given him a collection of valuable books, stamped with his own arms, he had the mortification to see them in a short time exposed to sale upon the stalls, it being usual with Mr. Savage, when he wanted a small sum, to take his books to the pawnbroker. Whoever was acquainted with Mr. Savage easily credited both these accusa­ tions: for, having been obliged from his first entrance into the world to subsist upon expedients, affluence was not able to exalt him above them; and so much was he de­ lighted with wine and conversation, and so long had he been accustomed to live by chance, that he would at any time go to the tavern without scruple, and trust for his reckoning to the liberality of his company, and frequently of company to whom he was very little known. This conduct indeed very seldom drew upon him those in­ conveniences that might be feared by any other person; for his conversation was so entertaining, and his address so pleasing, that few thought the pleasure which they received from him dearly purchased, by paying for his wine. It was his peculiar hap­ piness, that he scarcely ever found a stranger, whom he did not leave a friend; but it must likewise be added, that he had not often a friend long, without obliging him to become a stranger. 86. “The settling of a debt” (OED, sense 12).

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Mr. Savage, on the other hand, declared, that Lord Tyrconnel87 quarrelled with him, because he would subtract from his own luxury and extravagance what he had promised to allow him, and that his resentment was only a plea for the viola­ tion of a promise: He asserted, that he had done nothing that ought to exclude him from that subsistence which he thought not so much a favour, as a debt, since it was offered him upon conditions, which he had never broken; and that his only fault was, that he could not be supported with nothing. He acknowledged, that Lord Tyrconnel often exhorted him to regulate his method of life, and not to spend all his nights in taverns; and that he appeared very desirous, that he would pass those hours with him, which he so freely bestowed upon others. This demand Mr. Savage considered as a censure of his conduct, which he could never patiently bear; and which, in the latter and cooler part of his life, was so offensive to him, that he declared it as his resolution, “to spurn that friend who should presume to dictate to him”; and it is not likely, that in his earlier years he re­ ceived admonitions with more calmness. He was likewise inclined to resent such expectations, as tending to infringe his liberty, of which he was very jealous, when it was necessary to the gratification of his passions; and declared, that the request was still more unreasonable, as the company to which he was to have been confined was insupportably disagreeable. This assertion affords another instance of that inconsistency of his writings with his conversation, which was so often to be observed. He forgot how lavishly he had, in his dedication to The Wanderer, extolled the delicacy and penetration, the humanity and generosity, the candour and politeness, of the man, whom, when he no longer loved him, he declared to be a wretch without understanding, without good-­nature, and without justice; of whose name he thought himself obliged to leave no trace in any future edition of his writings; and accordingly blotted it out of that copy of The Wanderer which was in his hands. During his continuance with the Lord Tyrconnel, he wrote The Triumph of Health and Mirth, on the recovery of Lady Tyrconnel from a languishing illness. This performance is remarkable, not only for the gaiety of the ideas, and the melody of the numbers, but for the agreeable fiction upon which it is formed. Mirth, over­ whelmed with sorrow for the sickness of her favourite, takes a flight in quest of her sister Health, whom she finds reclined upon the brow of a lofty mountain, amidst the fragrance of perpetual spring, with the breezes of the morning sporting about her. Being solicited by her sister Mirth, she readily promises her assistance, flies away in a cloud, and impregnates the waters of Bath with new virtues, by which the sickness of Belinda is relieved. 87. [SJ’s note] His expression in one of his letters was, “that L. T—l had involved his estate, and there­ fore poorly sought an occasion to quarrel with him.”



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As the reputation of his abilities, the particular circumstances of his birth and life, the splendour of his appearance, and the distinction which was for some time paid him by Lord Tyrconnel, intitled him to familiarity with persons of higher rank, than those to whose conversation he had been before admitted, he did not fail to gratify that curiosity, which induced him to take a nearer view of those whom their birth, their employments, or their fortunes, necessarily place at a distance from the greatest part of mankind, and to examine whether their merit was magnified or di­ minished by the medium through which it was contemplated; whether the splen­ dour with which they dazzled their admirers was inherent in themselves, or only re­ flected on them by the objects that surrounded them; and whether great men were selected for high stations, or high stations made great men. For this purpose, he took all opportunities of conversing familiarly with those who were most conspicuous at that time for their power or their influence; he watched their looser moments, and examined their domestic behaviour with that acuteness which nature had given him, and which the uncommon variety of his life had contributed to increase, and that inquisitiveness which must always be pro­ duced in a vigorous mind, by an absolute freedom from all pressing or domestic engagements. His discernment was quick, and therefore he soon found in every person, and in every affair, something that deserved attention; he was supported by others, without any care for himself, and was therefore at leisure to pursue his observations. More circumstances to constitute a critic on human life could not easily con­ cur; nor indeed could any man, who assumed from accidental advantages more praise than he could justly claim from his real merit, admit an acquaintance more dangerous than that of Savage; of whom likewise it must be confessed, that abili­ ties really exalted above the common level, or virtue refined from passion, or proof against corruption, could not easily find an abler judge, or a warmer advocate. What was the result of Mr. Savage’s enquiry, though he was not much accus­ tomed to conceal his discoveries, it may not be entirely safe to relate, because the persons whose characters he criticised are powerful; and power and resentment are seldom strangers; nor would it perhaps be wholly just, because what he asserted in conversation might, though true in general, be heightened by some momentary ardour of imagination, and, as it can be delivered only from memory, may be im­ perfectly represented; so that the picture at first aggravated, and then unskilfully copied, may be justly suspected to retain no great resemblance of the original. It may however be observed, that he did not appear to have formed very ele­ vated ideas of those to whom the administration of affairs, or the conduct of parties, has been intrusted; who have been considered as the advocates of the crown, or the guardians of the people; and who have obtained the most implicit confidence,

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and the loudest applauses. Of one particular person,88 who has been at one time so popular as to be generally esteemed, and at another so formidable as to be univer­ sally detested, he observed, that his acquisitions had been small, or that his capacity was narrow, and that the whole range of his mind was from obscenity to politics, and from politics to obscenity. But the opportunity of indulging his speculations on great characters was now at an end. He was banished from the table of Lord Tyrconnel, and turned again adrift upon the world, without prospect of finding quickly any other harbour. As prudence was not one of the virtues by which he was distinguished, he had made no provision against a misfortune like this. And though it is not to be imagined, but that the separation must for some time have been preceded by coldness, peevishness, or neglect, though it was undoubtedly the consequence of accumulated provocations on both sides; yet every one that knew Savage will readily believe, that to him it was sudden as a stroke of thunder; that, though he might have transiently suspected it, he had never suffered any thought so unpleasing to sink into his mind, but that he had driven it away by amusements, or dreams of future felicity and affluence, and had never taken any measures by which he might prevent a precipitation from plenty to indigence. This quarrel and separation, and the difficulties to which Mr. Savage was ex­ posed by them, were soon known both to his friends and enemies; nor was it long before he perceived, from the behaviour of both, how much is added to the lustre of genius by the ornaments of wealth. His condition did not appear to excite much compassion; for he had not always been careful to use the advantages he enjoyed with that moderation which ought to have been with more than usual caution preserved by him, who knew, if he had reflected, that he was only a dependant on the bounty of another, whom he could expect to support him no longer than he endeavoured to preserve his favour by complying with his inclinations, and whom he nevertheless set at defiance, and was continually irritating by negligence or encroachments. Examples need not be sought at any great distance to prove, that superiority of fortune has a natural tendency to kindle pride, and that pride seldom fails to exert itself in contempt and insult; and if this is often the effect of hereditary wealth, and of honours enjoyed only by the merit of others, it is some extenuation of any in­ decent triumphs to which this unhappy man may have been betrayed, that his pros­ perity was heightened by the force of novelty, and made more intoxicating by a sense of the misery in which he had so long languished, and perhaps of the insults which he had formerly borne, and which he might now think himself entitled to revenge. It 88. Robert Walpole.



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is too common for those who have unjustly suffered pain, to inflict it likewise in their turn with the same injustice, and to imagine that they have a right to treat others as they have themselves been treated. That Mr. Savage was too much elevated by any good fortune, is generally known; and some passages of his Introduction to The Author to be Let sufficiently shew, that he did not wholly refrain from such satire as he afterwards thought very unjust, when he was exposed to it himself; for, when he was afterwards ridiculed in the character of a distressed poet, he very easily discovered, that distress was not a proper subject for merriment, or topic of invective. He was then able to discern, that, if misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-­fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced. And the humanity of that man can deserve no panegyric, who is capable of reproaching a criminal in the hands of the executioner. But these reflections, though they readily occurred to him in the first and last parts of his life, were, I am afraid, for a long time forgotten; at least they were, like many other maxims, treasured up in his mind, rather for shew than use, and oper­ ated very little upon his conduct, however elegantly he might sometimes explain, or however forcibly he might inculcate, them. His degradation therefore from the condition which he had enjoyed with such wanton thoughtlessness, was considered by many as an occasion of triumph. Those who had before paid their court to him without success, soon returned the contempt which they had suffered; and they who had received favours from him, for of such favours as he could bestow he was very liberal, did not always remember them. So much more certain are the effects of resentment than of gratitude: it is not only to many more pleasing to recollect those faults which place others below them, than those virtues by which they are themselves comparatively depressed; but it is like­ wise more easy to neglect, than to recompense; and though there are few who will practise a laborious virtue, there will never be wanting multitudes that will indulge an easy vice. Savage however was very little disturbed at the marks of contempt which his ill-­fortune brought upon him, from those whom he never esteemed, and with whom he never considered himself as leveled by any calamities; and though it was not with­ out some uneasiness that he saw some, whose friendship he valued, change their behaviour; he yet observed their coldness without much emotion, considered them as the slaves of fortune and the worshipers of prosperity, and was more inclined to despise them, than to lament himself. It does not appear, that, after this return of his wants, he found mankind equally favourable to him, as at his first appearance in the world. His story, though in reality not less melancholy, was less affecting, because it was no longer new; it

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therefore procured him no new friends; and those that had formerly relieved him thought they might now consign him to others. He was now likewise considered by many rather as criminal, than as unhappy; for the friends of Lord Tyrconnel, and of his mother, were sufficiently industrious to publish his weaknesses, which were indeed very numerous; and nothing was forgotten, that might make him either hate­ ful or ridiculous. It cannot but be imagined, that such representations of his faults must make great numbers less sensible of his distress; many, who had only an opportunity to hear one part, made no scruple to propagate the account which they received; many assisted their circulation from malice or revenge; and perhaps many pretended to credit them, that they might with a better grace withdraw their regard, or withhold their assistance. Savage however was not one of those, who suffered himself to be injured with­ out resistance, nor was less diligent in exposing the faults of Lord Tyrconnel, over whom he obtained at least this advantage, that he drove him first to the practice of outrage and violence;89 for he was so much provoked by the wit and virulence of Savage, that he came with a number of attendants, that did no honour to his courage, to beat him at a coffee-­house. But it happened that he had left the place a few min­ utes, and his lordship had, without danger, the pleasure of boasting how he would have treated him. Mr. Savage went next day to repay his visit at his own house; but was prevailed on, by his domestics, to retire without insisting upon seeing him. Lord Tyrconnel was accused by Mr. Savage of some actions, which scarcely any provocations will be thought sufficient to justify; such as seizing what he had in his lodgings, and other instances of wanton cruelty, by which he increased the dis­ tress of Savage, without any advantage to himself. These mutual accusations were retorted on both sides, for many years, with the utmost degree of virulence and rage; and time seemed rather to augment than diminish their resentment. That the anger of Mr. Savage should be kept alive is not strange, because he felt every day the consequences of the quarrel; but it might rea­ sonably have been hoped, that Lord Tyrconnel might have relented, and at length have forgot those provocations, which, however they might have once inflamed him, had not in reality much hurt him. The spirit of Mr. Savage indeed never suffered him to solicit a reconciliation; he returned reproach for reproach, and insult for insult; his superiority of wit sup­ plied the disadvantages of his fortune, and enabled him to form a party, and preju­ dice great numbers in his favour. But though this might be some gratification of his vanity, it afforded very little 89. For an example of Savage’s diligence, see his letter to Tyrconnel beginning “Right Honourable brute, and booby,” and ending “I defy and despise you” (Boswell, Life, i.161n).



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relief to his necessities; and he was very frequently reduced to uncommon hard­ ships, of which, however, he never made any mean or importunate complaints, being formed rather to bear misery with fortitude, than enjoy prosperity with moderation. He now thought himself again at liberty to expose the cruelty of his mother, and therefore, I believe, about this time, published The Bastard, a poem remarkable for the vivacious sallies of thought in the beginning, where he makes a pompous enumeration of the imaginary advantages of base birth; and the pathetic sentiments at the end, where he recounts the real calamities which he suffered by the crime of his parents.90 The vigour and spirit of the verses, the peculiar circumstances of the author, the novelty of the subject, and the notoriety of the story to which the allusions are made, procured this performance a very favourable reception; great numbers were immediately dispersed, and editions were multiplied with unusual rapidity. One circumstance attended the publication, which Savage used to relate with great satisfaction. His mother, to whom the poem was with “due reverence” in­ scribed, happened then to be at Bath, where she could not conveniently retire from censure, or conceal herself from observation; and no sooner did the reputation of the poem begin to spread, than she heard it repeated in all places of concourse, nor could she enter the assembly-­rooms, or cross the walks, without being saluted with some lines from The Bastard. This was perhaps the first time that ever she discovered a sense of shame, and on this occasion the power of wit was very conspicuous; the wretch who had, with­ out scruple, proclaimed herself an adulteress,91 and who had first endeavoured to starve her son, then to transport him, and afterwards to hang him, was not able to bear the representation of her own conduct; but fled from reproach, though she felt no pain from guilt, and left Bath with the utmost haste, to shelter herself among the crowds of London. Thus Savage had the satisfaction of finding, that, though he could not reform his mother, he could punish her, and that he did not always suffer alone. The pleasure which he received from this increase of his poetical reputation, was sufficient for some time to overbalance the miseries of want, which this per­ formance did not much alleviate; for it was sold for a very trivial sum to a book­ seller, who, though the success was so uncommon that five impressions92 were sold, of which many were undoubtedly very numerous, had not generosity sufficient to admit the unhappy writer to any part of the profit. The sale of this poem was always mentioned by Savage with the utmost eleva­ 90. The Bastard, a Poem, Inscrib’d with all due reverence to Mrs. Brett, once Countess of Macclesfield (1728). 91. Boswell found that Mrs. Brett made no such confession (Boswell, Life, i.171–72). 92. Separate printings.

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tion of heart, and referred to by him as an incontestable proof of a general acknowl­ edgment of his abilities. It was indeed the only production of which he could justly boast a general reception. But though he did not lose the opportunity which success gave him, of set­ ting a high rate on his abilities, but paid due deference to the suffrages of mankind when they were given in his favour, he did not suffer his esteem of himself to depend upon others, nor found any thing sacred in the voice of the people when they were inclined to censure him; he then readily shewed the folly of expecting that the pub­ lic should judge right, observed how slowly poetical merit had often forced its way into the world; he contented himself with the applause of men of judgement, and was somewhat disposed to exclude all those from the character of men of judgement who did not applaud him. But he was at other times more favourable to mankind than to think them blind to the beauties of his works, and imputed the slowness of their sale to other causes; either they were published at a time when the town was empty, or when the atten­ tion of the public was engrossed by some struggle in the parliament, or some other object of general concern; or they were by the neglect of the publisher not diligently dispersed, or by his avarice not advertised with sufficient frequency. Address, or in­ dustry, or liberality, was always wanting; and the blame was laid rather on any per­ son than the author. By arts like these, arts which every man practises in some degree, and to which too much of the little tranquillity of life is to be ascribed, Savage was always able to live at peace with himself. Had he indeed only made use of these expedients to alle­ viate the loss or want of fortune or reputation, or any other advantages, which it is not in man’s power to bestow upon himself, they might have been justly mentioned as instances of a philosophical mind, and very properly proposed to the imitation of multitudes, who, for want of diverting their imaginations with the same dexterity, languish under afflictions which might be easily removed. It were doubtless to be wished, that truth and reason were universally preva­ lent; that every thing were esteemed according to its real value; and that men would secure themselves from being disappointed in their endeavours after happiness, by placing it only in virtue, which is always to be obtained; but if adventitious and for­ eign pleasures must be pursued, it would be perhaps of some benefit, since that pur­ suit must frequently be fruitless, if the practice of Savage could be taught, that folly might be an antidote to folly, and one fallacy be obviated by another. But the danger of this pleasing intoxication must not be concealed; nor indeed can any one, after having observed the life of Savage, need to be cautioned against it. By imputing none of his miseries to himself, he continued to act upon the same prin­ ciples, and to follow the same path; was never made wiser by his sufferings, nor pre­ served by one misfortune from falling into another. He proceeded throughout his life



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to tread the same steps on the same circle; always applauding his past conduct, or at least forgetting it, to amuse himself with phantoms of happiness, which were dancing before him; and willingly turned his eyes from the light of reason, when it would have discovered the illusion, and shewn him, what he never wished to see, his real state. He is even accused, after having lulled his imagination with those ideal opiates, of having tried the same experiment upon his conscience; and, having accustomed himself to impute all deviations from the right to foreign causes, it is certain that he was upon every occasion too easily reconciled to himself, and that he appeared very little to regret those practices which had impaired his reputation. The reigning error of his life was, that he mistook the love for the practice of virtue, and was indeed not so much a good man, as the friend of goodness. This at least must be allowed him, that he always preserved a strong sense of the dignity, the beauty, and the necessity, of virtue, and that he never contributed deliberately to spread corruption amongst mankind; his actions, which were gen­ erally precipitate, were often blameable; but his writings, being the productions of study, uniformly tended to the exaltation of the mind, and the propagation of morality and piety. These writings may improve mankind, when his failings shall be forgotten; and therefore he must be considered, upon the whole, as a benefactor to the world; nor can his personal example do any hurt, since, whoever hears of his faults, will hear of the miseries which they brought upon him, and which would deserve less pity, had not his condition been such as made his faults pardonable. He may be considered as a child exposed to all the temptations of indigence, at an age when resolution was not yet strengthened by conviction, nor virtue confirmed by habit; a circumstance which in his Bastard he laments in a very affecting manner:      ——No Mother’s care Shielded my infant innocence with prayer: No Father’s guardian-­hand my youth maintain’d, Call’d forth my virtues, or from vice restrain’d.93

The Bastard, however it might provoke or mortify his mother, could not be expected to melt her to compassion, so that he was still under the same want of the necessities of life; and he therefore exerted all the interest which his wit, or his birth, or his misfortunes, could procure, to obtain, upon the death of Eusden, the place of poet laureat,94 and prosecuted his application with so much diligence, that the king publickly declared it his intention to bestow it upon him; but such was the fate of 93. The Bastard, ll. 89–92. 94. Laurence Eusden (1688–1730) was succeeded by Colley Cibber (1671–1757).

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Savage, that even the king, when he intended his advantage, was disappointed in his schemes; for the lord chamberlain, who has the disposal of the laurel, as one of the appendages of his office, either did not know the king’s design, or did not approve it, or thought the nomination of the laureat an encroachment upon his rights, and therefore bestowed the laurel upon Colly Cibber. Mr. Savage, thus disappointed, took a resolution of applying to the queen, that, having once given him life, she would enable him to support it, and therefore published a short poem on her birth-­day, to which he gave the odd title of Volunteer Laureat.95 The event of this essay he has himself related in the following letter, which he prefixed to the poem, when he afterwards reprinted it in The Gentleman’s Magazine, from whence I have copied it intire,96 as this was one of the few attempts in which Mr. Savage succeeded. Mr. Urban, In your magazine for February you published the last Volunteer Laureat, written on a very melancholy occasion, the death of the royal patroness of arts and literature in general, and of the author of that poem in particular: I now send you the first that Mr. Savage wrote under that title.—This gentle­ man, notwithstanding a very considerable interest, being, on the death of Mr. Eusden, disappointed of the laureat’s place, wrote the before-­mentioned poem; which was no sooner published, but the late queen sent to a bookseller for it: the author had not at that time a friend either to get him introduced, or his poem presented at court; yet such was the unspeakable goodness of that princess, that, notwithstanding this act of ceremony was wanting, in a few days after publication, Mr. Savage received a bank-­bill of fifty pounds, and a gracious message from her Majesty, by the Lord North and Guilford, to this effect; “That her Majesty was highly pleased with the verses; that she took particularly kind his lines there relating to the king; that he had permission to write annually on the same subject; and that he should yearly receive the like present, till something better (which was her Majesty’s intention) could be done for him.” After this, he was permitted to present one of his annual poems to her Majesty, had the honour of kissing her hand, and met with the most gracious reception. Your’s, &c.97

95. The Volunteer Laureat. A Poem Most humbly Address’d to her Majesty On Her Birth-­Day (1732). Savage produced a poem with the same title for the six succeeding years. 96. In early editions of Savage, SJ printed the poem in full from the Gentleman’s Magazine of April 1738. 97. Thomas Birch (1705–1766), who helped promote both SJ and Savage, wrote this letter on Savage’s behalf.



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Such was the performance, and such its reception; a reception which, though by no means unkind, was yet not in the highest degree generous: to chain down the genius of a writer to an annual panegyric, shewed in the queen too much desire of hearing her own praises, and a greater regard to herself than to him on whom her bounty was conferred. It was a kind of avaricious generosity, by which flattery was rather purchased than genius rewarded. Mrs. Oldfield had formerly given him the same allowance with much more heroic intention; she had no other view than to enable him to prosecute his studies, and to set himself above the want of assistance, and was contented with doing good without stipulating for encomiums. Mr. Savage however was not at liberty to make exceptions, but was ravished with the favours which he had received, and probably yet more with those which he was promised; he considered himself now as a favourite of the queen, and did not doubt but a few annual poems would establish him in some profitable employment. He therefore assumed the title of Volunteer Laureat, not without some repre­ hensions from Cibber, who informed him, that the title of Laureat was a mark of honour conferred by the king, from whom all honour is derived, and which there­ fore no man has a right to bestow upon himself; and added, that he might, with equal propriety, stile himself a Volunteer Lord, or Volunteer Baronet. It cannot be denied that the remark was just; but Savage did not think any title, which was con­ ferred upon Mr. Cibber, so honourable as that the usurpation of it could be imputed to him as an instance of very exorbitant vanity, and therefore continued to write under the same title, and received every year the same reward. He did not appear to consider these encomiums as tests of his abilities, or as any thing more than annual hints to the queen of her promise, or acts of ceremony, by the performance of which he was intitled to his pension, and therefore did not labour them with great diligence, or print more than fifty each year, except that for some of the last years he regularly inserted them in The Gentleman’s Magazine, by which they were dispersed over the kingdom. Of some of them he had himself so low an opinion, that he intended to omit them in the collection of poems, for which he printed proposals, and solicited sub­ scriptions; nor can it seem strange, that, being confined to the same subject, he should be at some times indolent, and at others unsuccessful; that he should some­ times delay a disagreeable task, till it was too late to perform it well; or that he should sometimes repeat the same sentiment on the same occasion, or at others be misled by an attempt after novelty to forced conceptions and far-­fetched images. He wrote indeed with a double intention, which supplied him with some variety; for his business was to praise the queen for the favours which he had re­ ceived, and to complain to her of the delay of those which she had promised: in some of his pieces, therefore, gratitude is predominant, and in some discontent; in

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some he represents himself as happy in her patronage, and in others as disconsolate to find himself neglected. Her promise, like other promises made to this unfortunate man, was never performed, though he took sufficient care that it should not be forgotten. The publi­ cation of his Volunteer Laureat procured him no other reward than a regular remit­ tance of fifty pounds. He was not so depressed by his disappointments as to neglect any opportunity that was offered of advancing his interest. When the Princess Anne was married, he wrote a poem98 upon her departure, only, as he declared, “because it was expected from him,” and he was not willing to bar his own prospects by any appearance of neglect. He never mentioned any advantage gained by this poem, or any regard that was paid to it; and therefore it is likely that it was considered at court as an act of duty to which he was obliged by his dependence, and which it was therefore not necessary to reward by any new favour: or perhaps the queen really intended his advancement, and therefore thought it superfluous to lavish presents upon a man whom she in­ tended to establish for life. About this time not only his hopes were in danger of being frustrated, but his pension likewise of being obstructed, by an accidental calumny. The writer of The Daily Courant, a paper then published under the direction of the ministry, charged him with a crime, which, though not very great in itself, would have been remarkably invidious in him, and might very justly have incensed the queen against him. He was accused by name of influencing elections against the court, by appearing at the head of a Tory mob; nor did the accuser fail to aggravate his crime, by representing it as the effect of the most atrocious ingratitude, and a kind of rebellion against the queen, who had first preserved him from an infamous death, and afterwards distin­ guished him by her favour, and supported him by her charity. The charge, as it was open and confident, was likewise by good fortune very particular. The place of the transaction was mentioned, and the whole series of the rioter’s conduct related.99 This exactness made Mr. Savage’s vindication easy; for he never had in his life seen the place which was declared to be the scene of his wickedness, nor ever had been present in any town when its representatives were chosen. This answer he therefore made haste to publish, with all the circumstances necessary to make it credible; and very reasonably demanded, that the accusation should be retracted in the same

98. [SJ’s note] Printed in the late collection [The Genius of Liberty. A Poem. Occasion’d by the Departure of the Prince and Princess of Orange, written in the Year 1734]. 99. The writer addressed his letter “To the Author of any Publick Paper” and claimed Savage was being arraigned for “a riot at a late Election in Flintshire,” Wales (Daily Courant, 2 May 1735); the accuser confused Savage with a Richard Surridge, who was in due course himself acquitted.



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paper, that he might no longer suffer the imputation of sedition and ingratitude. This demand was likewise pressed by him in a private letter to the author of the paper, who either trusting to the protection of those whose defence he had undertaken, or having entertained some personal malice against Mr. Savage, or fearing, lest, by re­ tracting so confident an assertion, he should impair the credit of his paper, refused to give him that satisfaction. Mr. Savage therefore thought it necessary, to his own vindication, to prosecute him in the King’s Bench;100 but as he did not find any ill effects from the accusation, having sufficiently cleared his innocence, he thought any farther procedure would have the appearance of revenge, and therefore willingly dropped it. He saw soon afterwards a process commenced in the same court against him­ self, on an information in which he was accused of writing and publishing an ob­ scene pamphlet. It was always Mr. Savage’s desire to be distinguished; and, when any contro­ versy became popular, he never wanted some reason for engaging in it with great ardour, and appearing at the head of the party which he had chosen. As he was never celebrated for his prudence, he had no sooner taken his side, and informed himself of the chief topicks of the dispute, than he took all opportunities of asserting and propagating his principles, without much regard to his own interest, or any other visible design than that of drawing upon himself the attention of mankind. The dispute between the Bishop of London and the Chancellor is well known to have been for some time the chief topic of political conversation;101 and therefore Mr. Savage, in pursuance of his character, endeavoured to become conspicuous among the controvertists with which every coffee-­house was filled on that occasion. He was an indefatigable opposer of all the claims of ecclesiastical power, though he did not know on what they were founded; and was therefore no friend to the Bishop of London. But he had another reason for appearing as a warm advocate for Dr. Rundle; for he was the friend of Mr. Foster and Mr. Thomson,102 who were the friends of Mr. Savage. Thus remote was his interest in the question, which however, as he imagined, concerned him so nearly, that it was not sufficient to harangue and dispute, but nec­ essary likewise to write upon it. He therefore engaged with great ardour in a new poem, called by him, The Progress of a Divine;103 in which he conducts a profligate priest by all the gradations 100. The court of law by which the writer of the letter said Savage was being arraigned. 101. Edmund Gibson (1669–1748), Bishop of London, and Charles Talbot (1685–1737), the Lord Chan­ cellor, fell out over Talbot’s recommendation of Thomas Rundle, a Low Church divine, to the bishopric of Gloucester. Gibson successfully blocked the appointment. 102. James Foster (1697–1753), a Baptist minister, and James Thomson (1700–1748), the poet. 103. The Progress of a Divine, A Satire (1735).

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of wickedness from a poor curacy in the country, to the highest preferments of the church, and describes with that humour which was natural to him, and that knowl­ edge which was extended to all the diversities of human life, his behaviour in every station; and insinuates, that this priest, thus accomplished, found at last a patron in the Bishop of London. When he was asked by one of his friends, on what pretence he could charge the bishop with such an action, he had no more to say, than that he had only inverted the accusation, and that he thought it reasonable to believe, that he, who obstructed the rise of a good man without reason, would for bad reasons promote the exalta­ tion of the villain. The clergy were universally provoked by this satire; and Savage, who, as was his constant practice, had set his name to his performance, was censured in The Weekly Miscellany104 with severity, which he did not seem inclined to forget. But a return of invective was not thought a sufficient punishment. The Court of King’s Bench was therefore moved against him, and he was obliged to return an answer to a charge of obscenity. It was urged, in his defence, that obscenity was criminal when it was intended to promote the practice of vice; but that Mr. Savage had only introduced obscene ideas, with the view of exposing them to detestation, and of amending the age, by shewing the deformity of wickedness. This plea was admitted; and Sir Philip Yorke,105 who then presided in that court, dismissed the in­ formation with encomiums upon the purity and excellence of Mr. Savage’s writings. The prosecution, however, answered in some measure the purpose of those by whom it was set on foot; for Mr. Savage was so far intimidated by it, that, when the edition of his poem was sold, he did not venture to reprint it; so that it was in a short time forgotten, or forgotten by all but those whom it offended. It is said, that some endeavours were used to incense the queen against him: but he found advocates to obviate at least part of their effect; for though he was never advanced, he still continued to receive his pension. This poem drew more infamy upon him than any incident of his life; and, as his conduct cannot be vindicated, it is proper to secure his memory from reproach, 104. [SJ’s note] A short satire was likewise published in the same paper, in which were the following lines: . . . Well might you think he spent his future years In prayer, and fasting, and repentant tears. —But, O vain hope!— the truly Savage cries, “Priests, and their slavish doctrines, I despise . . .” Weekly Miscellany [5 April 1735]. An answer was published in The Gentleman’s Magazine [May 1735, p. 268]. . . . [See Yale, xxii.917–18, for the full text of this note.] 105. Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwicke (1690–1764), later Lord Chancellor, patron to Thomas Birch and father of Philip, the second Earl (1720–1790), Birch’s most active correspondent.



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by informing those whom he made his enemies, that he never intended to repeat the provocation; and that, though, whenever he thought he had any reason to complain of the clergy, he used to threaten them with a new edition of The Progress of a Divine, it was his calm and settled resolution to suppress it for ever. He once intended to have made a better reparation for the folly or injustice with which he might be charged, by writing another poem, called, The Progress of a Freethinker, whom he intended to lead through all the stages of vice and folly, to convert him from virtue to wickedness, and from religion to infidelity, by all the modish sophistry used for that purpose; and at last to dismiss him by his own hand into the other world. That he did not execute this design is a real loss to mankind, for he was too well acquainted with all the scenes of debauchery to have failed in his representations of them, and too zealous for virtue not to have represented them in such a manner as should expose them either to ridicule or detestation. But this plan was, like others, formed and laid aside, till the vigour of his imagi­ nation was spent, and the effervescence of invention had subsided; but soon gave way to some other design, which pleased by its novelty for a while, and then was neglected like the former. He was still in his usual exigencies, having no certain support but the pen­ sion allowed him by the queen, which, though it might have kept an exact oecono­ mist106 from want, was very far from being sufficient for Mr. Savage, who had never been accustomed to dismiss any of his appetites without the gratification which they solicited, and whom nothing but want of money withheld from partaking of every pleasure that fell within his view. His conduct with regard to his pension was very particular.107 No sooner had he changed the bill, than he vanished from the sight of all his acquaintances, and lay for some time out of the reach of all the enquiries that friendship or curiosity could make after him; at length he appeared again pennyless as before, but never informed even those whom he seemed to regard most, where he had been, nor was his retreat ever discovered. This was his constant practice during the whole time that he received the pen­ sion from the queen: He regularly disappeared and returned. He indeed affirmed, that he retired to study, and that the money supported him in solitude for many months; but his friends declared, that the short time in which it was spent suffi­ ciently confuted his own account of his conduct. His politeness and his wit still raised him friends, who were desirous of setting 106. A thrifty person. 107. Singular; odd.

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him at length free from that indigence by which he had been hitherto oppressed; and therefore solicited Sir Robert Walpole in his favour with so much earnestness, that they obtained a promise of the next place that should become vacant, not exceeding two hundred pounds a year. This promise was made with an uncommon declaration, “that it was not the promise of a minister to a petitioner, but of a friend to his friend.” Mr. Savage now concluded himself set at ease for ever, and, as he observes in a poem written on that incident of his life,108 trusted and was trusted; but soon found that his confidence was ill-­grounded, and this friendly promise was not inviolable. He spent a long time in solicitations, and at last despaired and desisted. He did not indeed deny that he had given the minister some reason to believe that he should not strengthen his own interest by advancing him, for he had taken care to distinguish himself in coffee-­houses as an advocate for the ministry of the last years of Queen Anne, and was always ready to justify the conduct, and exalt the character of Lord Bolingbroke,109 whom he mentions with great regard in an epistle upon authors, which he wrote about that time, but was too wise to publish, and of which only some fragments have appeared, inserted by him in the Magazine after his retirement.110 To despair was not, however, the character of Savage; when one patronage failed, he had recourse to another. The prince111 was now extremely popular, and had very liberally rewarded the merit of some writers, whom Mr. Savage did not think superior to himself, and therefore he resolved to address a poem to him. For this purpose he made choice of a subject, which could regard only persons of the highest rank and highest affluence, and which was therefore proper for a poem intended to procure the patronage of a prince; and having retired for some time to Richmond, that he might prosecute his design in full tranquillity, without the temp­ tations of pleasure, or the solicitations of creditors, by which his meditations were in equal danger of being disconcerted, he produced a poem On Public Spirit, with regard to Public Works.112 The plan of this poem is very extensive, and comprises a multitude of topicks, each of which might furnish matter sufficient for a long performance, and of which some have already employed more eminent writers; but as he was perhaps not fully acquainted with the whole extent of his own design, and was writing to obtain a 108. The Poet’s Dependence on a Statesman (Gentleman’s Magazine, vi [April 1736], 225). 109. Henry St. John, first Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751), was secretary of state in the Tory ministry of Queen Anne (1710–1714); in retirement he was a fierce “patriot,” an opponent of Walpole. 110. “On False Historians: A Satire,” Gentleman’s Magazine, xi (1741), 491–92. 111. Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales (1707–1751). 112. Of Public Spirit in Regard to Public Works. A Poem. To his Royal Highness Frederick, Prince of Wales (1737) is a revised version of A Poem on the Birthday of the Prince of Wales (1736).



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supply of wants too pressing to admit of long or accurate enquiries, he passes neg­ ligently over many public works, which, even in his own opinion, deserved to be more elaborately treated. But though he may sometimes disappoint his reader by transient touches upon these subjects, which have often been considered, and therefore naturally raise ex­ pectations, he must be allowed amply to compensate his omissions, by expatiat­ ing, in the conclusion of his work, upon a kind of beneficence not yet celebrated by any eminent poet, though it now appears more susceptible of embellishments, more adapted to exalt the ideas, and affect the passions, than many of those which have hitherto been thought most worthy of the ornaments of verse. The settlement of colonies in uninhabited countries, the establishment of those in security, whose misfortunes have made their own country no longer pleasing or safe, the acquisi­ tion of property without injury to any, the appropriation of the waste and luxuri­ ant bounties of nature, and the enjoyment of those gifts which heaven has scattered upon regions uncultivated and unoccupied, cannot be considered without giving rise to a great number of pleasing ideas, and bewildering the imagination in de­ lightful prospects; and, therefore, whatever speculations they may produce in those who have confined themselves to political studies, naturally fixed the attention, and excited the applause, of a poet. The politician, when he considers men driven into other countries for shelter, and obliged to retire to forests and deserts, and pass their lives and fix their posterity in the remotest corners of the world, to avoid those hard­ ships which they suffer or fear in their native place, may very properly enquire, why the legislature does not provide a remedy for these miseries, rather than encourage an escape from them. He may conclude, that the flight of every honest man is a loss to the community; that those who are unhappy without guilt ought to be relieved; and the life, which is over-­burthened by accidental calamities, set at ease by the care of the public; and that those, who have by misconduct forfeited their claim to favour, ought rather to be made useful to the society which they have injured, than be driven from it. But the poet is employed in a more pleasing undertaking than that of pro­ posing laws, which, however just or expedient, will never be made, or endeavouring to reduce to rational schemes of government societies which were formed by chance, and are conducted by the private passions of those who preside in them. He guides the unhappy fugitive from want and persecution, to plenty, quiet, and security, and seats him in scenes of peaceful solitude, and undisturbed repose. Savage has not forgotten, amidst the pleasing sentiments which this prospect of retirement suggested to him, to censure those crimes which have been generally committed by the discoverers of new regions, and to expose the enormous wicked­ ness of making war upon barbarous nations because they cannot resist, and of in­ vading countries because they are fruitful; of extending navigation only to propagate vice, and of visiting distant lands only to lay them waste. He has asserted the natural

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equality of mankind, and endeavoured to suppress that pride which inclines men to imagine that right is the consequence of power.113 His description of the various miseries which force men to seek for refuge in distant countries, affords another instance of his proficiency in the important and extensive study of human life; and the tenderness with which he recounts them, another proof of his humanity and benevolence. It is observable, that the close of this poem discovers a change which experi­ ence had made in Mr. Savage’s opinions. In a poem written by him in his youth, and published in his Miscellanies, he declares his contempt of the contracted views and narrow prospects of the middle state of life, and declares his resolution either to tower like the cedar, or be trampled like the shrub;114 but in this poem, though addressed to a prince, he mentions this state of life as comprising those who ought most to attract reward, those who merit most the confidence of power, and the famil­ iarity of greatness; and, accidentally mentioning this passage to one of his friends, declared, that in his opinion all the virtue of mankind was comprehended in that state. In describing villas and gardens, he did not omit to condemn that absurd cus­ tom which prevails among the English, of permitting servants to receive money from strangers for the entertainment that they receive, and therefore inserted in his poem these lines; But what the flowering pride of gardens rare, However royal, or however fair, If gates, which to access should still give way, Ope but, like Peter’s paradise, for pay? If perquisited varlets frequent stand, And each new walk must a new tax demand? What foreign eye but with contempt surveys? What Muse shall from oblivion snatch their praise?115

But before the publication of his performance he recollected, that the queen allowed her garden and cave at Richmond to be shewn for money, and that she so openly countenanced the practice, that she had bestowed the privilege of shewing them as a place of profit on a man, whose merit she valued herself upon rewarding, though she gave him only the liberty of disgracing his country. He therefore thought, with more prudence than was often exerted by him, that 113. Cf. “An Introduction to the Political State of Great Britain. 1756” (p. 315 above). 114. “The Picture. To Mr. Dyer, when in the Country” (1726; composed 1724), ll. 23–28. 115. Of Publick Spirit (second version), ll. 79–86.



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the publication of these lines might be officiously represented as an insult upon the queen, to whom he owed his life and his subsistence; and that the propriety of his observation would be no security against the censures which the unseasonableness of it might draw upon him; he therefore suppressed the passage in the first edition, but after the queen’s death thought the same caution no longer necessary, and re­ stored it to the proper place. The poem was therefore published without any political faults, and inscribed to the Prince; but Mr. Savage, having no friend upon whom he could prevail to present it to him, had no other method of attracting his observation than the publi­ cation of frequent advertisements, and therefore received no reward from his patron, however generous on other occasions. This disappointment he never mentioned without indignation, being by some means or other confident that the prince was not ignorant of his address to him; and insinuated, that, if any advances in popularity could have been made by distinguish­ ing him, he had not written without notice, or without reward. He was once inclined to have presented his poem in person, and sent to the printer for a copy with that design; but either his opinion changed, or his resolution deserted him, and he continued to resent neglect without attempting to force him­ self into regard. Nor was the public much more favourable than his patron, for only seventy-­ two were sold, though the performance was much commended by some whose judgement in that kind of writing is generally allowed. But Savage easily reconciled himself to mankind without imputing any defect to his work, by observing that his poem was unluckily published two days after the prorogation of the parliament, and by consequence at a time when all those who could be expected to regard it were in the hurry of preparing for their departure, or engaged in taking leave of others upon their dismission from public affairs. It must be however allowed, in justification of the public, that this performance is not the most excellent of Mr. Savage’s works; and that, though it cannot be de­ nied to contain many striking sentiments, majestic lines, and just observations, it is in general not sufficiently polished in the language, or enlivened in the imagery, or digested in the plan. Thus his poem contributed nothing to the alleviation of his poverty, which was such as very few could have supported with equal patience; but to which it must like­ wise be confessed, that few would have been exposed who received punctually fifty pounds a year; a salary which though by no means equal to the demands of vanity and luxury, is yet found sufficient to support families above want, and was undoubt­ edly more than the necessities of life require. But no sooner had he received his pension, than he withdrew to his darling pri­ vacy, from which he returned in a short time to his former distress, and for some part

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of the year generally lived by chance, eating only when he was invited to the tables of his acquaintances, from which the meanness of his dress often excluded him, when the politeness and variety of his conversation would have been thought a sufficient recompence for his entertainment. He lodged as much by accident as he dined, and passed the night sometimes in mean houses, which are set open at night to any casual wanderers, sometimes in cellars among the riot and filth of the meanest and most profligate of the rabble; and sometimes, when he had not money to support even the expences of these re­ ceptacles, walked about the streets till he was weary, and lay down in the summer upon a bulk,116 or in the winter, with his associates in poverty, among the ashes of a glass-­house.117 In this manner were passed those days and those nights which nature had en­ abled him to have employed in elevated speculations, useful studies, or pleasing conversation. On a bulk, in a cellar, or in a glass-­house among thieves and beggars, was to be found the author of The Wanderer, the man of exalted sentiments, exten­ sive views, and curious observations; the man whose remarks on life might have assisted the statesman, whose ideas of virtue might have enlightened the moralist, whose eloquence might have influenced senates, and whose delicacy might have polished courts. It cannot but be imagined that such necessities might sometimes force him upon disreputable practices; and it is probable that these lines in The Wanderer were occasioned by his reflections on his own conduct: Though misery leads to happiness, and truth, Unequal to the load, this languid youth, (O, let none censure, if, untried by grief, If, amidst woe, untempted by relief,) He stoop’d reluctant to low arts of shame, Which then, ev’n then he scorn’d, and blush’d to name.118

Whoever was acquainted with him was certain to be solicited for small sums, which the frequency of the request made in time considerable, and he was therefore quickly shunned by those who were become familiar enough to be trusted with his necessities; but his rambling manner of life, and constant appearance at houses of public resort, always procured him a new succession of friends, whose kindness had 116. “A Part of a building jutting out” (Dictionary). 117. See SJ’s obituary for Coleborn Hancock, “master of the great glass shop in Cockspur Street Char­ ing Cross” (Yale, xix.488). 118. The Wanderer, iii.265–66, 269–72.



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not been exhausted by repeated requests, so that he was seldom absolutely without resources, but had in his utmost exigences this comfort, that he always imagined himself sure of speedy relief. It was observed, that he always asked favours of this kind without the least sub­ mission or apparent consciousness of dependence, and that he did not seem to look upon a compliance with his request as an obligation that deserved any extraordinary acknowledgments; but a refusal was resented by him as an affront, or complained of as an injury; nor did he readily reconcile himself to those who either denied to lend, or gave him afterwards any intimation that they expected to be repaid. He was sometimes so far compassionated by those who knew both his merit and distresses, that they received him into their families, but they soon discovered him to be a very incommodious inmate; for, being always accustomed to an irregular manner of life, he could not confine himself to any stated hours, or pay any regard to the rules of a family, but would prolong his conversation till midnight, without considering that business might require his friend’s application in the morning; and, when he had persuaded himself to retire to bed, was not, without equal difficulty, called up to dinner; it was therefore impossible to pay him any distinction without the entire subversion of all œconomy,119 a kind of establishment which, wherever he went, he always appeared ambitious to overthrow. It must therefore be acknowledged, in justification of mankind, that it was not always by the negligence or coldness of his friends that Savage was distressed, but because it was in reality very difficult to preserve him long in a state of ease. To supply him with money was a hopeless attempt, for no sooner did he see himself master of a sum sufficient to set him free from care for a day, than he became profuse and luxurious. When once he had entered a tavern, or engaged in a scheme of plea­ sure, he never retired till want of money obliged him to some new expedient. If he was entertained in a family, nothing was any longer to be regarded there but amuse­ ments and jollity; wherever Savage entered, he immediately expected that order and business should fly before him, that all should thenceforward be left to hazard, and that no dull principle of domestic management should be opposed to his inclination, or intrude upon his gaiety. His distresses, however afflictive, never dejected him; in his lowest state he wanted not spirit to assert the natural dignity of wit, and was always ready to repress that insolence which superiority of fortune incited, and to trample on that reputa­ tion which rose upon any other basis than that of merit: he never admitted any gross familiarities, or submitted to be treated otherwise than as an equal. Once, when he was without lodging, meat, or cloaths, one of his friends, a man not indeed remark­ able for moderation in his prosperity, left a message, that he desired to see him about 119. “The management of a family; the government of a houshold” (Dictionary).

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nine in the morning. Savage knew that his intention was to assist him; but was very much disgusted that he should presume to prescribe the hour of his attendance, and, I believe, refused to visit him, and rejected his kindness. The same invincible temper, whether firmness or obstinacy, appeared in his conduct to the Lord Tyrconnel, from whom he very frequently demanded, that the allowance which was once paid him should be restored; but with whom he never appeared to entertain for a moment the thought of soliciting a reconciliation, and whom he treated at once with all the haughtiness of superiority, and all the bitter­ ness of resentment. He wrote to him, not in a style of supplication or respect, but of reproach, menace, and contempt; and appeared determined, if he ever regained his allowance, to hold it only by the right of conquest. As many more can discover, that a man is richer than that he is wiser than themselves, superiority of understanding is not so readily acknowledged as that of fortune; nor is that haughtiness, which the consciousness of great abilities incites, borne with the same submission as the tyranny of affluence; and therefore Savage, by asserting his claim to deference and regard, and by treating those with contempt whom better fortune animated to rebel against him, did not fail to raise a great num­ ber of enemies in the different classes of mankind. Those who thought themselves raised above him by the advantages of riches, hated him because they found no pro­ tection from the petulance of his wit. Those who were esteemed for their writings feared him as a critic, and maligned him as a rival, and almost all the smaller wits were his professed enemies. Among these Mr. Millar so far indulged his resentment as to introduce him in a farce, and direct him to be personated on the stage in a dress like that which he then wore;120 a mean insult, which only insinuated that Savage had but one coat, and which was therefore despised by him rather than resented; for though he wrote a lampoon against Millar, he never printed it: and as no other person ought to prose­ cute that revenge from which the person who was injured desisted, I shall not pre­ serve what Mr. Savage suppressed; of which the publication would indeed have been a punishment too severe for so impotent an assault. The great hardships of poverty were to Savage not the want of lodging or of food, but the neglect and contempt which it drew upon him. He complained, that as his affairs grew desperate, he found his reputation for capacity visibly decline; that his opinion in questions of criticism was no longer regarded, when his coat was out of fashion; and that those who in the interval of his prosperity were always en­ couraging him to great undertakings by encomiums on his genius and assurances of success, now received any mention of his designs with coldness, thought that the 120. James Miller (1704–1744) wrote The Coffee-­House (1737), comprising two scenes, with songs, and fea­ turing Colley Cibber under his own name and Savage as Mr. Bays.



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subjects on which he proposed to write were very difficult, and were ready to inform him, that the event of a poem was uncertain, that an author ought to employ much time in the consideration of his plan, and not presume to sit down to write in con­ fidence of a few cursory ideas, and a superficial knowledge; difficulties were started on all sides, and he was no longer qualified for any performance but The Volunteer Laureat. Yet even this kind of contempt never depressed him; for he always preserved a steady confidence in his own capacity, and believed nothing above his reach which he should at any time earnestly endeavour to attain. He formed schemes of the same kind with regard to knowledge and to fortune, and flattered himself with advances to be made in science,121 as with riches, to be enjoyed in some distant period of his life. For the acquisition of knowledge he was indeed far better qualified than for that of riches; for he was naturally inquisitive and desirous of the conversation of those from whom any information was to be obtained, but by no means solicitous to improve those opportunities that were sometimes offered of raising his fortune; and he was remarkably retentive of his ideas, which, when once he was in posses­ sion of them, rarely forsook him; a quality which could never be communicated to his money. While he was thus wearing out his life in expectation that the queen would some time recollect her promise, he had recourse to the usual practice of writers, and published proposals for printing his works by subscription,122 to which he was encouraged by the success of many who had not a better right to the favour of the public; but, whatever was the reason, he did not find the world equally inclined to favour him; and he observed with some discontent, that, though he offered his works at half a guinea, he was able to procure but a small number in comparison with those who subscribed twice as much to Duck.123 Nor was it without indignation that he saw his proposals neglected by the queen, who patronised Mr. Duck’s with uncommon ardour, and incited a compe­ tition among those who attended the court, who should most promote his interest, and who should first offer a subscription. This was a distinction to which Mr. Savage made no scruple of asserting that his birth, his misfortunes, and his genius, gave him a fairer title, than could be pleaded by him on whom it was conferred. Savage’s applications were however not universally unsuccessful; for some of the nobility countenanced his design, encouraged his proposals, and subscribed 121. Knowledge in general. 122. The proposals were reprinted in Gentleman’s Magazine, xvii (February 1737), 128. 123. Stephen Duck (1705?–­1756), the thresher poet, had about five hundred subscribers to his Poems on Several Occasions (1736), including Swift and Pope.

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with great liberality. He related of the Duke of Chandos particularly, that, upon re­ ceiving his proposals, he sent him ten guineas. But the money which his subscriptions afforded him was not less volatile than that which he received from his other schemes; whenever a subscription was paid him he went to a tavern; and, as money so collected is necessarily received in small sums, he never was able to send his poems to the press, but for many years con­ tinued his solicitation, and squandered whatever he obtained. This project of printing his works was frequently revived; and, as his proposals grew obsolete, new ones were printed with fresher dates. To form schemes for the publication was one of his favourite amusements; nor was he ever more at ease than when, with any friend who readily fell-­in with his schemes, he was adjusting the print, forming the advertisements, and regulating the dispersion of his new edition, which he really intended some time to publish, and which, as long as experience had shewn him the impossibility of printing the volume together, he at last determined to divide into weekly or monthly numbers, that the profits of the first might supply the expences of the next. Thus he spent his time in mean expedients and tormenting suspense, living for the greatest part in the fear of prosecutions from his creditors, and consequently skulking in obscure parts of the town, of which he was no stranger to the remotest corners. But wherever he came, his address secured him friends, whom his necessi­ ties soon alienated; so that he had perhaps a more numerous acquaintance than any man ever before attained, there being scarcely any person eminent on any account to whom he was not known, or whose character he was not in some degree able to delineate. To the acquisition of this extensive acquaintance every circumstance of his life contributed. He excelled in the arts of conversation, and therefore willingly prac­ tised them: He had seldom any home, or even a lodging in which he could be pri­ vate; and therefore was driven into public-­houses for the common conveniences of life and supports of nature. He was always ready to comply with every invitation, having no employment to withhold him, and often no money to provide for him­ self; and by dining with one company, he never failed of obtaining an introduction into another. Thus dissipated was his life, and thus casual his subsistence; yet did not the distraction of his views hinder him from reflection, nor the uncertainty of his condi­ tion depress his gaiety. When he had wandered about without any fortunate adven­ ture by which he was led into a tavern, he sometimes retired into the fields, and was able to employ his mind in study, or amuse it with pleasing imaginations; and sel­ dom appeared to be melancholy, but when some sudden misfortune had just fallen upon him, and even then in a few moments he would disentangle himself from his



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perplexity, adopt the subject of conversation, and apply his mind wholly to the ob­ jects that others presented to it. This life, unhappy as it may be already imagined, was yet imbittered, in 1738, with new calamities. The death of the queen deprived him of all the prospects of pre­ ferment with which he so long entertained his imagination; and, as Sir Robert Wal­ pole had before given him reason to believe that he never intended the performance of his promise, he was now abandoned again to fortune.124 He was however, at that time, supported by a friend; and as it was not his cus­ tom to look out for distant calamities, or to feel any other pain than that which forced itself upon his senses, he was not much afflicted at his loss, and perhaps comforted himself that his pension would be now continued without the annual tribute of a panegyric. Another expectation contributed likewise to support him: he had taken a reso­ lution to write a second tragedy upon the story of Sir Thomas Overbury, in which he preserved a few lines of his former play, but made a total alteration of the plan, added new incidents, and introduced new characters; so that it was a new tragedy, not a revival of the former. Many of his friends blamed him for not making choice of another subject; but, in vindication of himself, he asserted, that it was not easy to find a better; and that he thought it his interest to extinguish the memory of the first tragedy, which he could only do by writing one less defective upon the same story; by which he should entirely defeat the artifice of the booksellers, who, after the death of any author of reputation, are always industrious to swell his works, by uniting his worst produc­ tions with his best. In the execution of this scheme, however, he proceeded but slowly, and prob­ ably only employed himself upon it when he could find no other amusement; but he pleased himself with counting the profits, and perhaps imagined, that the theatrical reputation which he was about to acquire, would be equivalent to all that he had lost by the death of his patroness. He did not, in confidence of his approaching riches, neglect the measures proper to secure the continuance of his pension, though some of his favourers thought him culpable for omitting to write on her death; but on her birth-­day next year, he gave a proof of the solidity of his judgement, and the power of his genius. He knew that the track of elegy had been so long beaten, that it was impossible to travel in it without treading in the footsteps of those who had gone before him; and that therefore it was necessary, that he might distinguish himself from the herd of encomiasts, to find out some new walk of funeral panegyric. 124. Queen Caroline died in November 1737; through Walpole’s instigation, Savage’s name was struck from a list of beneficiaries of the Queen’s generosity.

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This difficult task he performed in such a manner, that his poem may be justly ranked among the best pieces that the death of princes has produced. By transfer­ ring the mention of her death to her birth-­day, he has formed a happy combination of topics, which any other man would have thought it very difficult to connect in one view, but which he has united in such a manner, that the relation between them ap­ pears natural; and it may be justly said, that what no other man would have thought on, it now appears scarcely possible for any man to miss.125 The beauty of this peculiar combination of images is so masterly, that it is suf­ ficient to set this poem above censure; and therefore it is not necessary to mention many other delicate touches which may be found in it, and which would deservedly be admired in any other performance. To these proofs of his genius may be added, from the same poem, an instance of his prudence, an excellence for which he was not so often distinguished; he does not forget to remind the king, in the most delicate and artful manner, of continuing his pension. With regard to the success of this address, he was for some time in suspence, but was in no great degree solicitous about it; and continued his labour upon his new tragedy with great tranquillity, till the friend who had for a considerable time supported him, removing his family to another place, took occasion to dismiss him. It then became necessary to enquire more diligently what was determined in his af­ fair, having reason to suspect that no great favour was intended him, because he had not received his pension at the usual time. It is said, that he did not take those methods of retrieving his interest, which were most likely to succeed; and some of those who were employed in the Exche­ quer, cautioned him against too much violence in his proceedings; but Mr. Savage, who seldom regulated his conduct by the advice of others, gave way to his passion, and demanded of Sir Robert Walpole, at his levee, the reason of the distinction that was made between him and the other pensioners of the queen, with a degree of roughness which perhaps determined him to withdraw what had been only delayed. Whatever was the crime of which he was accused or suspected, and whatever influence was employed against him, he received soon after an account that took from him all hopes of regaining his pension; and he had now no prospect of subsis­ tence but from his play, and he knew no way of living for the time required to fin­ ish it. So peculiar were the misfortunes of this man, deprived of an estate and title by a particular law, exposed and abandoned by a mother, defrauded by a mother of a fortune which his father had allotted him, he entered the world without a friend; and 125. See The Volunteer Laureat, Number VII. For the First of March, 1738. A Poem Sacred to the Memory of the late Queen. Humbly addressed to his Majesty, ll. 1–8.



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though his abilities forced themselves into esteem and reputation, he was never able to obtain any real advantage, and whatever prospects arose were always intercepted as he began to approach them. The king’s intentions in his favour were frustrated; his dedication to the prince, whose generosity on every other occasion was eminent, procured him no reward; Sir Robert Walpole, who valued himself upon keeping his promise to others, broke it to him without regret; and the bounty of the queen was, after her death, withdrawn from him, and from him only. Such were his misfortunes, which yet he bore not only with decency, but with chearfulness; nor was his gaiety clouded even by his last disappointments, though he was in a short time reduced to the lowest degree of distress, and often wanted both lodging and food. At this time he gave another instance of the insurmountable obstinacy of his spirit: his cloaths were worn out; and he received notice, that at a coffee-­house some cloaths and linen were left for him: the person who sent them, did not, I believe, inform him to whom he was to be obliged, that he might spare the perplexity of acknowledging the benefit; but though the offer was so far generous, it was made with some neglect of ceremonies, which Mr. Savage so much resented, that he refused the present, and declined to enter the house till the cloaths that had been designed for him were taken away. His distress was now publickly known, and his friends, therefore, thought it proper to concert some measures for his relief; and one of them wrote a letter to him, in which he expressed his concern “for the miserable withdrawing of his pension”; and gave him hopes, that in a short time he should find himself supplied with a com­ petence, “without any dependence on those little creatures which we are pleased to call the Great.”126 The scheme proposed for this happy and independent subsistence, was, that he should retire into Wales, and receive an allowance of fifty pounds a year, to be raised by a subscription, on which he was to live privately in a cheap place, without aspiring any more to affluence, or having any farther care of reputation. This offer Mr. Savage gladly accepted, though with intentions very different from those of his friends; for they proposed that he should continue an exile from London for ever, and spend all the remaining part of his life at Swansea; but he de­ signed only to take the opportunity, which their scheme offered him, of retreating for a short time, that he might prepare his play for the stage, and his other works for the press, and then to return to London to exhibit his tragedy, and live upon the profits of his own labour. With regard to his works, he proposed very great improvements, which would 126. Pope wrote the letter, as SJ noted in a book containing two earlier editions of Savage now in the Euing Collection at the University of Glasgow. Pope also initiated the “scheme” described in the next para­ graph.

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have required much time, or great application; and when he had finished them, he designed to do justice to his subscribers, by publishing them according to his pro­ posals. As he was ready to entertain himself with future pleasures, he had planned out a scheme of life for the country, of which he had no knowledge but from pastorals and songs. He imagined that he should be transported to scenes of flowery felicity, like those which one poet has reflected to another; and had projected a perpetual round of innocent pleasures, of which he suspected no interruption from pride, or ignorance, or brutality. With these expectations he was so enchanted, that when he was once gently re­ proached by a friend for submitting to live upon a subscription, and advised rather by a resolute exertion of his abilities to support himself, he could not bear to debar himself from the happiness which was to be found in the calm of a cottage, or lose the opportunity of listening, without intermission, to the melody of the nightingale, which he believed was to be heard from every bramble, and which he did not fail to mention as a very important part of the happiness of a country life. While this scheme was ripening, his friends directed him to take a lodging in the liberties of the Fleet,127 that he might be secure from his creditors, and sent him every Monday a guinea, which he commonly spent before the next morning, and trusted, after his usual manner, the remaining part of the week to the bounty of for­ tune. He now began very sensibly to feel the miseries of dependence: Those by whom he was to be supported, began to prescribe to him with an air of authority, which he knew not how decently to resent, nor patiently to bear; and he soon dis­ covered, from the conduct of most of his subscribers, that he was yet in the hands of “little creatures.” Of the insolence that he was obliged to suffer, he gave many instances, of which none appeared to raise his indignation to a greater height, than the method which was taken of furnishing him with cloaths. Instead of consulting him, and allowing him to send a taylor his orders for what they thought proper to allow him, they pro­ posed to send for a taylor to take his measure, and then to consult how they should equip him. This treatment was not very delicate, nor was it such as Savage’s humanity would have suggested to him on a like occasion; but it had scarcely deserved men­ tion, had it not, by affecting him in an uncommon degree, shewn the peculiarity of his character. Upon hearing the design that was formed, he came to the lodging of a friend with the most violent agonies of rage; and, being asked what it could be that 127. A part of London adjacent to the Fleet prison where debtors were allowed, for a fee, to live without fear of arrest.



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gave him such disturbance, he replied with the utmost vehemence of indignation, “That they had sent for a taylor to measure him.” How the affair ended was never enquired, for fear of renewing his uneasiness. It is probable, that, upon recollection, he submitted with a good grace to what he could not avoid, and that he discovered no resentment where he had no power. He was, however, not humbled to implicit and universal compliance; for when the gentleman, who had first informed him of the design to support him by a sub­ scription, attempted to procure a reconciliation with the Lord Tyrconnel, he could by no means be prevailed upon to comply with the measures that were proposed. A letter was written for him128 to Sir William Lemon,129 to prevail upon him to interpose his good offices with Lord Tyrconnel, in which he solicited Sir William’s assistance, “for a man who really needed it as much as any man could well do”; and informed him, that he was retiring “for ever to a place where he should no more trouble his relations, friends, or enemies”; he confessed, that his passion had be­ trayed him to some conduct with regard to Lord Tyrconnel, “for which he could not but heartily ask his pardon”; and as he imagined Lord Tyrconnel’s passion might be yet so high, that he would not “receive a letter from him,” begged that Sir William would endeavour to soften him; and expressed his hopes that he would comply with his request, and that “so small a relation130 would not harden his heart against him.” That any man should presume to dictate a letter to him, was not very agreeable to Mr. Savage; and therefore he was, before he had opened it, not much inclined to approve it. But when he read it, he found it contained sentiments entirely opposite to his own, and, as he asserted, to the truth; and therefore, instead of copying it, wrote his friend a letter full of masculine resentment and warm expostulations. He very justly observed, that the style was too supplicatory, and the representation too abject, and that he ought at least to have made him complain with “the dignity of a gentleman in distress.” He declared that he would not write the paragraph in which he was to ask Lord Tyrconnel’s pardon; for, “he despised his pardon, and there­ fore could not heartily, and would not hypocritically, ask it.” He remarked, that his friend made a very unreasonable distinction between himself and him; for, says he, when you mention men of high rank “in your own character,” they are “those little creatures whom we are pleased to call the great”; but when you address them “in mine,” no servility is sufficiently humble. He then with great propriety explained the ill consequences which might be expected from such a letter, which his relations would print in their own defence, and which would for ever be produced as a full answer to all that he should alledge against them; for he always intended to publish 128. [SJ’s note, added in 1775] By Mr. Pope. 129. William Leman (1685–1741) married Mrs. Brett’s daughter by Colonel Brett in 1737. 130. “So small a relation”: so brief an account.

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a minute account of the treatment which he had received. It is to be remembered, to the honour of the gentleman by whom this letter was drawn up, that he yielded to Mr. Savage’s reasons, and agreed that it ought to be suppressed. After many alterations and delays, a subscription was at length raised which did not amount to fifty pounds a year, though twenty were paid by one gentleman;131 such was the generosity of mankind, that what had been done by a player without solicitation, could not now be effected by application and interest; and Savage had a great number to court and to obey for a pension less than that which Mrs. Oldfield paid him without exacting any servilities. Mr. Savage however was satisfied, and willing to retire, and was convinced that the allowance, though scanty, would be more than sufficient for him, being now determined to commence a rigid œconomist, and to live according to the exactest rules of frugality; for nothing was in his opinion more contemptible than a man, who, when he knew his income, exceeded it; and yet he confessed, that instances of such folly were too common, and lamented that some men were not to be trusted with their own money. Full of these salutary resolutions, he left London in July 1739, having taken leave with great tenderness of his friends, and parted from the author of this narra­ tive with tears in his eyes.132 He was furnished with fifteen guineas, and informed, that they would be sufficient, not only for the expence of his journey, but for his support in Wales for some time; and that there remained but little more of the first collection. He promised a strict adherence to his maxims of parsimony, and went away in the stage-­coach; nor did his friends expect to hear from him, till he informed them of his arrival at Swansea. But when they least expected, arrived a letter dated the fourteenth day after his departure, in which he sent them word, that he was yet upon the road, and without money; and that he therefore could not proceed without a remittance. They then sent him the money that was in their hands, with which he was enabled to reach Bristol, from whence he was to go to Swansea by water. At Bristol he found an embargo laid upon the shipping, so that he could not immediately obtain a passage; and being therefore obliged to stay there some time, he, with his usual felicity, ingratiated himself with many of the principal inhabitants, was invited to their houses, distinguished at their public feasts, and treated with a regard that gratified his vanity, and therefore easily engaged his affection. He began very early after his retirement to complain of the conduct of his friends in London, and irritated many of them so much by his letters, that they with­ 131. Pope (see p. 770 below). 132. SJ noted in the Euing volume, “I had then a slight fever.” The tearful parting has suggested to several commentators a parallel with the leave-­taking scene in SJ’s London, ll. 1–8, 19–24.



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drew, however honourably, their contributions; and it is believed, that little more was paid him than the twenty pounds a year, which were allowed him by the gentle­ man who proposed the subscription. After some stay at Bristol he retired to Swansea, the place originally proposed for his residence, where he lived about a year very much dissatisfied with the dimi­ nution of his salary; but contracted, as in other places, acquaintance with those who were most distinguished in that country, among whom he has celebrated Mr. Powel and Mrs. Jones, by some verses which he inserted in The Gentleman’s Magazine.133 Here he compleated his tragedy, of which two acts were wanting when he left London, and was desirous of coming to town to bring it upon the stage. This design was very warmly opposed, and he was advised by his chief benefactor to put it into the hands of Mr. Thomson and Mr. Mallet, that it might be fitted for the stage, and to allow his friends to receive the profits, out of which an annual pension should be paid him. This proposal he rejected with the utmost contempt. He was by no means con­ vinced that the judgment of those, to whom he was required to submit, was superior to his own. He was now determined, as he expressed it, to be “no longer kept in leading-­strings,” and had no elevated idea of “his bounty, who proposed to pension him out of the profits of his own labours.” He attempted in Wales to promote a subscription for his works, and had once hopes of success; but in a short time afterwards formed a resolution of leaving that part of the country, to which he thought it not reasonable to be confined for the gratification of those, who, having promised him a liberal income, had no sooner banished him to a remote corner, than they reduced his allowance to a salary scarcely equal to the necessities of life. His resentment of this treatment, which, in his own opinion at least, he had not deserved, was such, that he broke off all correspondence with most of his con­ tributors, and appeared to consider them as persecutors and oppressors; and in the latter part of his life declared, that their conduct toward him, since his departure from London, “had been perfidiousness improving on perfidiousness, and inhu­ manity on inhumanity.” It is not to be supposed, that the necessities of Mr. Savage did not sometimes incite him to satirical exaggerations of the behaviour of those by whom he thought himself reduced to them. But it must be granted, that the diminution of his allow­ ance was a great hardship, and that those who withdrew their subscription from a man, who, upon the faith of their promise, had gone into a kind of banishment, and 133. John Powell (1705–1769) and Bridget Jones (1713–1780), to both of whom Savage addressed poems, one to him and three of the amorous sort to her (Gentleman’s Magazine, xi [1741], 324, 381; xii [1742], 155–56, 490).

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abandoned all those by whom he had been before relieved in his distresses, will find it no easy task to vindicate their conduct. It may be alledged, and perhaps justly, that he was petulant and contemptuous, that he more frequently reproached his subscribers for not giving him more, than thanked them for what he received; but it is to be remembered, that this conduct, and this is the worst charge that can be drawn up against him, did them no real in­ jury; and that it therefore ought rather to have been pitied than resented, at least the resentment it might provoke ought to have been generous and manly; epithets which his conduct will hardly deserve that starves the man whom he has persuaded to put himself into his power. It might have been reasonably demanded by Savage, that they should, before they had taken away what they promised, have replaced him in his former state, that they should have taken no advantages from the situation to which the appear­ ance of their kindness had reduced him, and that he should have been recalled to London before he was abandoned. He might justly represent, that he ought to have been considered as a lion in the toils,134 and demand to be released before the dogs should be loosed upon him. He endeavoured, indeed, to release himself, and, with an intent to return to London, went to Bristol, where a repetition of the kindness which he had formerly found invited him to stay. He was not only caressed and treated, but had a collec­ tion made for him of about thirty pounds, with which it had been happy if he had immediately departed for London; but his negligence did not suffer him to consider, that such proofs of kindness were not often to be expected, and that this ardour of benevolence was in a great degree the effect of novelty, and might, probably, be every day less; and therefore he took no care to improve the happy time, but was encour­ aged by one favour to hope for another, till at length generosity was exhausted, and officiousness wearied. Another part of his misconduct was the practice of prolonging his visits to unseasonable hours, and disconcerting all the families into which he was admitted. This was an error in a place of commerce which all the charms of his conversation could not compensate; for what trader would purchase such airy satisfaction by the loss of solid gain, which must be the consequence of midnight merriment, as those hours which were gained at night were generally lost in the morning? Thus Mr. Savage, after the curiosity of the inhabitants was gratified, found the number of his friends daily decreasing, perhaps without suspecting for what reason their conduct was altered; for he still continued to harrass, with his nocturnal intru­ sions, those that yet countenanced him, and admitted him to their houses. But he did not spend all the time of his residence at Bristol in visits or at tav­ 134. A net or trap for wild animals.



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erns, for he sometimes returned to his studies, and began several considerable de­ signs. When he felt an inclination to write, he always retired from the knowledge of his friends, and lay hid in an obscure part of the suburbs, till he found himself again desirous of company, to which it is likely that intervals of absence made him more welcome. He was always full of his design of returning to London, to bring his tragedy upon the stage; but, having neglected to depart with the money that was raised for him, he could not afterwards procure a sum sufficient to defray the expences of his journey; nor perhaps would a fresh supply have had any other effect, than, by putting immediate pleasures in his power, to have driven the thoughts of his jour­ ney out of his mind. While he was thus spending the day in contriving a scheme for the morrow, distress stole upon him by imperceptible degrees. His conduct had already wearied some of those who were at first enamoured of his conversation; but he might, per­ haps, still have devolved to others, whom he might have entertained with equal suc­ cess, had not the decay of his cloaths made it no longer consistent with their vanity to admit him to their tables, or to associate with him in public places. He now began to find every man from home at whose house he called; and was therefore no longer able to procure the necessities of life, but wandered about the town slighted and ne­ glected, in quest of a dinner, which he did not always obtain. To complete his misery, he was pursued by the officers for small debts which he had contracted; and was therefore obliged to withdraw from the small number of friends from whom he had still reason to hope for favours. His custom was to lie in bed the greatest part of the day, and to go out in the dark with the utmost privacy, and after having paid his visit return again before morning to his lodging, which was in the garret of an obscure inn. Being thus excluded on one hand, and confined on the other, he suffered the utmost extremities of poverty, and often fasted so long that he was seized with faint­ ness, and had lost his appetite, not being able to bear the smell of meat, till the action of his stomach was restored by a cordial. In this distress he received a remittance of five pounds from London, with which he provided himself a decent coat, and determined to go to London, but un­ happily spent his money at a favourite tavern. Thus was he again confined to Bristol, where he was every day hunted by bailiffs. In this exigence he once more found a friend, who sheltered him in his house, though at the usual inconveniences with which his company was attended; for he could neither be persuaded to go to bed in the night, nor to rise in the day. It is observable, that in these various scenes of misery, he was always dis­ engaged and cheerful: he at some times pursued his studies, and at others con­ tinued or enlarged his epistolary correspondence; nor was he ever so far dejected

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as to endeavour to procure an increase of his allowance by any other methods than accusations and reproaches. He had now no longer any hopes of assistance from his friends at Bristol, who as merchants, and by consequence sufficiently studious of profit, cannot be sup­ posed to have looked with much compassion upon negligence and extravagance, or to think any excellence equivalent to a fault of such consequence as neglect of oeconomy. It is natural to imagine, that many of those, who would have relieved his real wants, were discouraged from the exertion of their benevolence by observation of the use which was made of their favours, and conviction that relief would only be momentary, and that the same necessity would quickly return. At last he quitted the house of his friend, and returned to his lodging at the inn, still intending to set out in a few days for London; but on the 10th of January 1742–3, having been at supper with two of his friends, he was at his return to his lodgings arrested for a debt of about eight pounds, which he owed at a coffee-­house, and conducted to the house of a sheriff ’s officer. The account which he gives of this misfortune, in a letter to one of the gentlemen with whom he had supped,135 is too remarkable to be omitted. It was not a little unfortunate for me, that I spent yesterday’s evening with you; because the hour hindered me from entering on my new lodging; how­ ever, I have now got one, but such an one, as I believe nobody would chuse. I was arrested at the suit of Mrs. Read, just as I was going up stairs to bed, at Mr. Bowyer’s;136 but taken in so private a manner, that I believe no­ body at the White Lion is apprised of it. Though I let the officers know the strength (or rather weakness) of my pocket, yet they treated me with the utmost civility; and even when they conducted me to confinement, it was in such a manner, that I verily believe I could have escaped, which I would rather be ruined than have done, notwithstanding the whole amount of my finances was but three pence halfpenny. In the first place I must insist, that you will industriously conceal this from Mrs. S———s,137 because I would not have her good-­nature suffer that pain, which, I know, she would be apt to feel on this occasion. Next, I conjure you, dear Sir, by all the ties of friendship, by no means to have one uneasy thought on my account; but to have the same pleasantry of

135. Rev. William Saunders, a minor canon of Bristol Cathedral, who had published some verses compli­ menting Savage in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1742. 136. Mrs. Read, whom Savage abused in a letter in 1743 (see Gentleman’s Magazine, lvii [1787], 1040), was the proprietor of a coffeehouse; Mr. Bowyer owned the White Lion, where Savage was staying. 137. Saunders.



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countenance and unruffled serenity of mind, which (God be praised!) I have in this, and have had in a much severer calamity. Furthermore, I charge you, if you value my friendship as truly as I do yours, not to utter, or even har­ bour, the least resentment against Mrs. Read. I believe she has ruined me, but I freely forgive her; and (though I will never more have any intimacy with her) I would, at a due distance, rather do her an act of good, than ill will. Lastly (pardon the expression), I absolutely command you not to offer me any pecuniary assistance, nor to attempt getting me any from any one of your friends. At another time, or on any other occasion, you may, dear friend, be well assured, I would rather write to you in the submissive style of a request, than that of a peremptory command. However, that my truly valuable friend may not think I am too proud to ask a favour, let me entreat you to let me have your boy to attend me for this day, not only for the sake of saving me the expence of porters, but for the delivery of some letters to people whose names I would not have known to strangers. The civil treatment I have thus far met from those whose prisoner I am, makes me thankful to the Almighty, that, though he has thought fit to visit me (on my birth-­night) with affliction, yet (such is his great goodness!) my affliction is not without alleviating circumstances. I murmur not; but am all resignation to the divine will. As to the world, I hope that I shall be endued by heaven with that presence of mind, that serene dignity in misfortune, that constitutes the character of a true nobleman; a dignity far beyond that of coronets; a nobility arising from the just principles of philosophy, refined and exalted by those of Christianity.————

He continued five days at the officer’s, in hopes that he should be able to pro­ cure bail, and avoid the necessity of going to prison. The state in which he passed his time, and the treatment which he received, are very justly expressed by him in a letter which he wrote to a friend: “The whole day,” says he, has been employed in various peoples’ filling my head with their foolish chi­ merical systems, which has obliged me coolly (as far as nature will admit) to digest, and accommodate myself to, every different person’s way of think­ ing; hurried from one wild system to another, till it has quite made a chaos of my imagination, and nothing done—promised—disappointed—ordered to send every hour, from one part of the town to the other.—————

When his friends, who had hitherto caressed and applauded, found that to give bail and pay the debt was the same, they all refused to preserve him from a

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prison, at the expence of eight pounds; and therefore, after having been for some time at the officer’s house, “at an immense expence,” as he observes in his letter, he was at length removed to Newgate.138 This expence he was enabled to support by the generosity of Mr. Nash at Bath,139 who, upon receiving from him an account of his condition, immediately sent him five guineas, and promised to promote his subscription at Bath with all his interest. By his removal to Newgate, he obtained at least a freedom from suspense, and rest from the disturbing vicissitudes of hope and disappointment; he now found that his friends were only companions, who were willing to share his gaiety, but not to partake of his misfortunes; and therefore he no longer expected any assistance from them. It must however be observed of one gentleman, that he offered to release him by paying the debt, but that Mr. Savage would not consent, I suppose because he thought he had been before too burthensome to him. He was offered by some of his friends, that a collection should be made for his enlargement; but he “treated the proposal,” and declared, “he should again treat it, with disdain. As to writing any mendicant letters, he had too high a spirit, and deter­ mined only to write to some ministers of state, to try to regain his pension.” He continued to complain of those that had sent him into the country, and ob­ jected to them, that he had “lost the profits of his play which had been finished three years”; and in another letter declares his resolution to publish a pamphlet, that the world might know how “he had been used.” This pamphlet was never written; for he in a very short time recovered his usual tranquillity, and chearfully applied himself to more inoffensive studies. He indeed steadily declared, that he was promised a yearly allowance of fifty pounds, and never received half the sum; but he seemed to resign himself to that as well as to other misfortunes, and lose the remembrance of it in his amusements and employments. The chearfulness with which he bore his confinement appears from the follow­ ing letter, which he wrote, January the 30th, to one of his friends in London: I now write to you from my confinement in Newgate, where I have been ever since Monday last was se’en-­night, and where I enjoy myself with much more tranquillity than I have known for upwards of a twelvemonth past; having a room entirely to myself, and pursuing the amusement of my poeti­ cal studies, uninterrupted, and agreeable to my mind. I thank the Almighty, 138. A prison in Bristol, which included a relatively comfortable area for debtors. 139. Richard (Beau) Nash (1674–1761), so-­called master of ceremonies at Bath, a celebrity who often raised money for charitable causes.



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I am now all collected in myself; and though my person is in confinement, my mind can expatiate on ample and useful subjects with all the freedom imaginable. I am now more conversant with the Nine140 than ever; and if, in­ stead of a Newgate-­bird, I may be allowed to be a bird of the Muses, I assure you, Sir, I sing very freely in my cage; sometimes indeed in the plaintive notes of the nightingale; but, at others, in the chearful strains of the lark.—

In another letter he observes, that he ranges from one subject to another, with­ out confining himself to any particular task; and that he was employed one week upon one attempt, and the next upon another. Surely the fortitude of this man deserves, at least, to be mentioned with ap­ plause; and, whatever faults may be imputed to him, the virtue of suffering well can­ not be denied him. The two powers which, in the opinion of Epictetus,141 constituted a wise man, are those of bearing and forbearing, which cannot indeed be affirmed to have been equally possessed by Savage; and indeed the want of one obliged him very frequently to practise the other. He was treated by Mr. Dagg, the keeper of the prison, with great humanity; was supported by him at his own table without any certainty of recompense; had a room to himself, to which he could at any time retire from all disturbance; was allowed to stand at the door of the prison, and sometimes taken out into the fields; so that he suffered fewer hardships in prison than he had been accustomed to undergo in the greatest part of his life. The keeper did not confine his benevolence to a gentle execution of his office, but made some overtures to the creditor for his release, though without effect; and continued, during the whole time of his imprisonment, to treat him with the utmost tenderness and civility. Virtue is undoubtedly most laudable in that state which makes it most diffi­ cult; and therefore the humanity of a gaoler certainly deserves this public attestation; and the man, whose heart has not been hardened by such an employment, may be justly proposed as a pattern of benevolence. If an inscription was once engraved to the “honest toll-­gatherer,” less honours ought not to be paid “to the tender gaoler.” Mr. Savage very frequently received visits, and sometimes presents, from his acquaintances; but they did not amount to a subsistence, for the greater part of which he was indebted to the generosity of this keeper; but these favours, how­ ever they might endear to him the particular persons from whom he received them, were very far from impressing upon his mind any advantageous ideas of the people 140. The nine muses. 141. Epictetus (55–135 CE), a stoic philosopher whose works were translated by Johnson’s and Savage’s common friend Elizabeth Carter.

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of Bristol, and therefore he thought he could not more properly employ himself in prison, than in writing a poem called London and Bristol delineated.142 When he had brought this poem to its present state, which, without consider­ ing the chasm,143 is not perfect, he wrote to London an account of his design, and in­ formed his friend,144 that he was determined to print it with his name: but enjoined him not to communicate his intention to his Bristol acquaintance. The gentleman, surprized at his resolution, endeavoured to dissuade him from publishing it, at least from prefixing his name; and declared, that he could not reconcile the injunction of secresy with his resolution to own it at its first appearance. To this Mr. Savage re­ turned an answer agreeable to his character in the following terms. I received yours this morning; and not without a little surprize at the con­ tents. To answer a question with a question, you ask me concerning Lon­ don and Bristol, Why will I add delineated? Why did Mr. Woolaston add the same word to his Religion of Nature?145 I suppose that it was his will and pleasure to add it in his case; and it is mine to do so in my own. You are pleased to tell me, that you understand not why secresy is enjoined, and yet I intend to set my name to it. My answer is—I have my private reasons, which I am not obliged to explain to any one. You doubt my friend Mr. S———146 would not approve of it—And what is it to me whether he does or not? Do you imagine that Mr. S——— is to dictate to me? If any man who calls him­ self my friend should assume such an air, I would spurn at his friendship with contempt. You say I seem to think so by not letting him know it—And suppose I do, what then? Perhaps I can give reasons for that disapprobation, very foreign from what you would imagine. You go on in saying, Suppose I should not put my name to it—My answer is, that I will not suppose any such thing, being determined to the contrary: neither, Sir, would I have you suppose, that I applied to you for want of another press: nor would I have you imagine, that I owe Mr. S——— obligations which I do not.

Such was his imprudence, and such his obstinate adherence to his own reso­ lutions, however absurd. A prisoner! supported by charity! and, whatever insults he might have received during the latter part of his stay in Bristol, once caressed, esteemed, and presented with a liberal collection, he could forget on a sudden his 142. SJ noted in 1744: “The author preferred this title to that of London and Bristol compared.” It was published with that title in 1743. 143. There is an apparent break in the poem at l. 96. 144. Edward Cave (1691–1754), founding publisher of the Gentleman’s Magazine. 145. William Wollaston (1660–1724), The Religion of Nature Delineated (1722). 146. Mr. Strong, a post office employee.



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danger and his obligations, to gratify the petulance of his wit, or the eagerness of his resentment, and published a satire, by which he might reasonably expect, that he should alienate those who then supported him, and provoke those whom he could neither resist nor escape. This resolution, from the execution of which, it is probable, that only his death could have hindered him, is sufficient to shew, how much he disregarded all con­ siderations that opposed his present passions, and how readily he hazarded all future advantages for any immediate gratifications. Whatever was his predominant inclination, neither hope nor fear hindered him from complying with it; nor had opposition any other effect than to heighten his ardour, and irritate his vehemence. This performance was however laid aside, while he was employed in solicit­ ing assistance from several great persons; and one interruption succeeding another, hindered him from supplying the chasm, and perhaps from retouching the other parts, which he can hardly be imagined to have finished, in his own opinion; for it is very unequal, and some of the lines are rather inserted to rhyme to others, than to support or improve the sense; but the first and last parts are worked up with great spirit and elegance. His time was spent in the prison for the most part in study, or in receiving visits; but sometimes he descended to lower amusements, and diverted himself in the kitchen with the conversation of the criminals; for it was not pleasing to him to be much without company; and though he was very capable of a judicious choice, he was often contented with the first that offered: for this he was sometimes reproved by his friends, who found him surrounded with felons; but the reproof was on that, as on other occasions, thrown away; he continued to gratify himself, and to set very little value on the opinion of others. But here, as in every other scene of his life, he made use of such opportuni­ ties as occurred of benefiting those who were more miserable than himself, and was always ready to perform any offices of humanity to his fellow-­prisoners. He had now ceased from corresponding with any of his subscribers except one,147 who yet continued to remit him the twenty pounds a year which he had promised him, and by whom it was expected, that he would have been in a very short time enlarged, because he had directed the keeper to enquire after the state of his debts. However, he took care to enter his name according to the forms of the court, that the creditor might be obliged to make him some allowance, if he was continued a prisoner, and when on that occasion he appeared in the hall was treated with very unusual respect. But the resentment of the city was afterwards raised by some accounts that had 147. Pope, as SJ noted in the Euing copy.

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been spread of the satire, and he was informed that some of the merchants intended to pay the allowance which the law required, and to detain him a prisoner at their own expence. This he treated as an empty menace; and perhaps might have hastened the publication, only to shew how much he was superior to their insults, had not all his schemes been suddenly destroyed. When he had been six months in prison, he received from one of his friends,148 in whose kindness he had the greatest confidence, and on whose assistance he chiefly depended, a letter, that contained a charge of very atrocious ingratitude, drawn up in such terms as sudden resentment dictated. Henley,149 in one of his advertise­ ments, had mentioned “Pope’s treatment of Savage.” This was supposed by Pope to be the consequence of a complaint made by Savage to Henley, and was therefore mentioned by him with much resentment. Mr. Savage returned a very solemn pro­ testation of his innocence, but however appeared much disturbed at the accusation. Some days afterwards he was seized with a pain in his back and side, which, as it was not violent, was not suspected to be dangerous; but growing daily more languid and dejected, on the 25th of July he confined himself to his room, and a fever seized his spirits. The symptoms grew every day more formidable, but his condition did not enable him to procure any assistance. The last time that the keeper saw him was on July the 31st, 1743; when Savage, seeing him at his bed-­side, said, with an uncom­ mon earnestness, “I have something to say to you, Sir;” but, after a pause, moved his hand in a melancholy manner; and, finding himself unable to recollect what he was going to communicate, said, “ ’Tis gone!” The keeper soon after left him; and the next morning he died. He was buried in the church-­yard of St. Peter, at the ex­ pence of the keeper. Such were the life and death of Richard Savage, a man equally distinguished by his virtues and vices; and at once remarkable for his weaknesses and abilities. He was of a middle stature, of a thin habit of body, a long visage, coarse fea­ tures, and melancholy aspect; of a grave and manly deportment, a solemn dignity of mien; but which, upon a nearer acquaintance, softened into an engaging easiness of manners. His walk was slow, and his voice tremulous and mournful. He was easily excited to smiles, but very seldom provoked to laughter. His mind was in an uncommon degree vigorous and active. His judgement was accurate, his apprehension quick, and his memory so tenacious, that he was frequently observed to know what he had learned from others in a short time, better than those by whom he was informed; and could frequently recollect incidents, with all their combination of circumstances, which few would have regarded at the 148. [SJ’s note] Mr. Pope. 149. John (Orator) Henley (1692–1756) preached a sermon on Pope’s cruelty to Savage, which he adver­ tised, like his other sermons, in the newspaper.



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present time, but which the quickness of his apprehension impressed upon him. He had the peculiar felicity, that his attention never deserted him; he was present to every object, and regardful of the most trifling occurrences. He had the art of es­ caping from his own reflections, and accommodating himself to every new scene. To this quality is to be imputed the extent of his knowledge, compared with the small time which he spent in visible endeavours to acquire it. He mingled in cursory conversation with the same steadiness of attention as others apply to a lecture; and, amidst the appearance of thoughtless gaiety, lost no new idea that was started, nor any hint that could be improved. He had therefore made in coffee-­houses the same proficiency as others in their closets: and it is remarkable, that the writings of a man of little education and little reading have an air of learning scarcely to be found in any other performances, but which perhaps as often obscures as embellishes them. His judgement was eminently exact both with regard to writings and to men. The knowledge of life was indeed his chief attainment; and it is not without some satisfaction, that I can produce the suffrage of Savage in favour of human nature, of which he never appeared to entertain such odious ideas as some, who perhaps had neither his judgement nor experience, have published, either in ostentation of their sagacity, vindication of their crimes, or gratification of their malice. His method of life particularly qualified him for conversation, of which he knew how to practise all the graces. He was never vehement or loud, but at once modest and easy, open and respectful; his language was vivacious and elegant, and equally happy upon grave or humorous subjects. He was generally censured for not knowing when to retire; but that was not the defect of his judgement, but of his for­ tune; when he left his company, he was frequently to spend the remaining part of the night in the street, or at least was abandoned to gloomy reflections, which it is not strange that he delayed as long as he could; and sometimes forgot that he gave others pain to avoid it himself. It cannot be said, that he made use of his abilities for the direction of his own conduct: an irregular and dissipated manner of life had made him the slave of every passion that happened to be excited by the presence of its object, and that slavery to his passions reciprocally produced a life irregular and dissipated. He was not master of his own motions, nor could promise any thing for the next day. With regard to his oeconomy, nothing can be added to the relation of his life: He appeared to think himself born to be supported by others, and dispensed from all necessity of providing for himself; he therefore never prosecuted any scheme of advantage, nor endeavoured even to secure the profits which his writings might have afforded him. His temper was, in consequence of the dominion of his passions, un­ certain and capricious; he was easily engaged, and easily disgusted: but he is accused of retaining his hatred more tenaciously than his benevolence. He was compassionate both by nature and principle, and always ready to per­

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form offices of humanity; but when he was provoked (and very small offences were sufficient to provoke him), he would prosecute his revenge with the utmost acrimony till his passion had subsided. His friendship was therefore of little value; for though he was zealous in the support or vindication of those whom he loved, yet it was always dangerous to trust him, because he considered himself as discharged by the first quarrel from all ties of honour or gratitude; and would betray those secrets which, in the warmth of confi­ dence, had been imparted to him. This practice drew upon him an universal accu­ sation of ingratitude: nor can it be denied that he was very ready to set himself free from the load of an obligation; for he could not bear to conceive himself in a state of dependence, his pride being equally powerful with his other passions, and appear­ ing in the form of insolence at one time, and of vanity at another. Vanity, the most innocent species of pride, was most frequently predominant: He could not easily leave off, when he had once begun to mention himself, or his works; nor ever read his verses without stealing his eyes from the page, to discover, in the faces of his audience, how they were affected with any favourite passage. A kinder name than that of vanity ought to be given to the delicacy with which he was always careful to separate his own merit from every other man’s, and to re­ ject that praise to which he had no claim. He did not forget, in mentioning his per­ formances, to mark every line that had been suggested or amended; and was so accurate, as to relate that he owed three words in The Wanderer to the advice of his friends. His veracity was questioned, but with little reason; his accounts, though not indeed always the same, were generally consistent. When he loved any man, he sup­ pressed all his faults; and, when he had been offended by him, concealed all his virtues: But his characters were generally true, so far as he proceeded; though it cannot be denied, that his partiality might have sometimes the effect of falsehood. In cases indifferent he was zealous for virtue, truth, and justice: he knew very well the necessity of goodness to the present and future happiness of mankind; nor is there perhaps any writer, who has less endeavoured to please by flattering the appetites, or perverting the judgement. As an author, therefore, and he now ceases to influence mankind in any other character, if one piece which he had resolved to suppress be excepted,150 he has very little to fear from the strictest moral or religious censure. And though he may not be altogether secure against the objections of the critic, it must however be ac­ knowledged, that his works are the productions of a genius truly poetical; and, what many writers who have been more lavishly applauded cannot boast, that they have an original air, which has no resemblance of any foregoing work, that the versifica­ 150. The Progress of a Divine (see pp. 560–62 above).



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tion and sentiments have a cast peculiar to themselves, which no man can imitate with success, because what was nature in Savage, would in another be affectation. It must be confessed, that his descriptions are striking, his images animated, his fic­ tions justly imagined, and his allegories artfully pursued; that his diction is elevated, though sometimes forced, and his numbers151 sonorous and majestic, though fre­ quently sluggish and encumbered. Of his style, the general fault is harshness, and its general excellence is dignity; of his sentiments, the prevailing beauty is sublimity, and uniformity the prevailing defect. For his life, or for his writings, none, who candidly consider his fortune, will think an apology either necessary or difficult. If he was not always sufficiently in­ structed in his subject, his knowledge was at least greater than could have been at­ tained by others in the same state. If his works were sometimes unfinished, accu­ racy cannot reasonably be exacted from a man oppressed with want, which he has no hope of relieving but by a speedy publication. The insolence and resentment of which he is accused were not easily to be avoided by a great mind, irritated by per­ petual hardships, and constrained hourly to return the spurns of contempt, and re­ press the insolence of prosperity; and vanity may surely readily be pardoned in him, to whom life afforded no other comforts than barren praises, and the consciousness of deserving them. Those are no proper judges of his conduct, who have slumbered away their time on the down of plenty; nor will any wise man presume to say, “Had I been in Savage’s condition, I should have lived or written better than Savage.” This relation will not be wholly without its use, if those, who languish under any part of his sufferings, shall be enabled to fortify their patience, by reflecting that they feel only those afflictions from which the abilities of Savage did not exempt him; or those, who, in confidence of superior capacities or attainments, disregard the common maxims of life, shall be reminded, that nothing will supply the want of prudence; and that negligence and irregularity, long continued, will make knowl­ edge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible.

151. “Metrical periods or feet; lines, verses” (OED, sense 17a).

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L I F E O F C OW L E Y The life of Cowley, notwithstanding the penury of English biography, has been written by Dr. Sprat, an author whose pregnancy of imagination and elegance of lan­ guage have deservedly set him high in the ranks of literature;1 but his zeal of friend­ ship, or ambition of eloquence, has produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the character, not the life of Cowley; for he writes with so little detail, that scarcely any thing is distinctly known, but all is shown confused and enlarged through the mist of panegyrick. Abraham Cowley was born in the year one thousand six hundred and eigh­ teen. His father was a grocer, whose condition Dr. Sprat conceals under the gen­ eral appellation of a citizen; and, what would probably not have been less carefully suppressed, the omission of his name in the register of St. Dunstan’s parish, gives reason to suspect that his father was a sectary.2 Whoever he was, he died before the birth of his son, and consequently left him to the care of his mother; whom Wood3 represents as struggling earnestly to procure him a literary education, and who, as she lived to the age of eighty, had her solicitude rewarded by seeing her son emi­ nent, and, I hope, by seeing him fortunate, and partaking his prosperity. We know at least, from Sprat’s account, that he always acknowledged her care, and justly paid the dues of filial gratitude. In the window of his mother’s apartment lay Spenser’s Fairy Queen; in which he very early took delight to read, till, by feeling the charms of verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are the accidents, which, sometimes remembered, and perhaps sometimes 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. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter of the present age, had the first fondness for his art excited by the perusal of Richardson’s treatise.4 By his mother’s solicitation he was admitted into Westminster-­school, where he was soon distinguished. He was wont, says Sprat, to relate, “That he had this de­ fect in his memory at that time, that his teachers never could bring it to retain the ordinary rules of grammar.” This is an instance of the natural desire of man to propagate a wonder. It is 1. Thomas Sprat (1635–1713) wrote a life of Cowley as an appendix to his Works (1668). 2. Dissenting Protestant. 3. Anthony à Wood (1632–1695), author of Athenae Oxonienses (1691–92), a biographical dictionary of Oxford University alumni. 4. Jonathan Richardson, the elder (1667–1745), An Essay on the Theory of Painting (1715).

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surely very difficult to tell any thing as it was heard, when Sprat could not refrain from amplifying a commodious5 incident, though the book to which he prefixed his narrative contained its confutation. A memory admitting some things, and rejecting others, an intellectual digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks, had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision made by nature for literary politeness. But in the author’s own honest relation, the mar­ vel vanishes: he was, he says, such “an enemy to all constraint, that his master never could prevail on him to learn the rules without book.” He does not tell that he could not learn the rules, but that being able to perform his exercises without them, and being an “enemy to constraint,” he spared himself the labour. Among the English poets, Cowley, Milton, and Pope, might be said “to lisp in numbers”;6 and have given such early proofs, not only of powers of language, but of comprehension of things, as to more tardy minds seems scarcely credible. But of the learned puerilities of Cowley there is no doubt, since a volume of his poems was not only written but printed in his thirteenth year; containing, with other poetical compositions, The Tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe, written when he was ten years old; and Constantia and Philetus, written two years after.7 While he was yet at school he produced a comedy called Love’s Riddle, though it was not published till he had been some time at Cambridge. This comedy is of the pastoral kind, which requires no acquaintance with the living world, and therefore the time at which it was composed adds little to the wonders of Cowley’s minority. In 1636, he was removed to Cambridge, where he continued his studies with great intenseness; for he is said to have written, while he was yet a young student, the greater part of his Davideis; a work of which the materials could not have been collected without the study of many years, but by a mind of the greatest vigour and activity. Two years after his settlement at Cambridge he published Love’s Riddle, with a poetical dedication to Sir Kenelm Digby;8 of whose acquaintance all his contem­ poraries seem to have been ambitious; and Naufragium Joculare;9 a comedy written in Latin, but without due attention to the ancient models; for it is not loose verse, but mere prose. It was printed, with a dedication in verse to Dr. Comber, master of the college; but having neither the facility of a popular nor the accuracy of a learned work, it seems to be now universally neglected. 5. “Convenient; suitable” (Dictionary, sense 1). 6. Pope, Epistle to Arbuthnot, l. 128. 7. Cowley’s first publication, Poetical Blossomes, appeared in 1633, when he was fifteen. 8. Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–1665), courtier, scientist, and philosopher. 9. Literally, “The Laughable Shipwreck,” a version of the Ship of Fools, an allegorical subgenre based on a passage in Plato’s Republic, most famously imitated in 1494 by Sebastian Brant as Stultifera Navis (trans. Alex­ ander Barclay, 1509). See Yale, xviii.259 and n. 2.

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At the beginning of the civil war, as the prince10 passed through Cambridge in his way to York, he was entertained with the representation of The Guardian, a comedy, which Cowley says was neither written nor acted, but roughdrawn by him, and repeated by the scholars. That this comedy was printed during his absence from his country, he appears to have considered as injurious to his reputation; though, during the suppression of the theatres,11 it was sometimes privately acted with suf­ ficient approbation. In 1643, being now master of arts, he was, by the prevalence of the parliament, ejected from Cambridge, and sheltered himself at St. John’s College in Oxford; where, as is said by Wood, he published a satire called The Puritan and Papist, which was only inserted in the last collection of his works; and so distinguished himself by the warmth of his loyalty, and the elegance of his conversation, that he gained the kindness and confidence of those who attended the king, and amongst others of Lord Falkland, whose notice cast a lustre on all to whom it was extended.12 About the time when Oxford was surrendered to the parliament, he followed the queen to Paris, where he became secretary to the lord Jermin, afterwards Earl of St. Albans, and was employed in such correspondence as the royal cause required, and particularly in ciphering and deciphering13 the letters that passed between the king and queen; an employment of the highest confidence and honour. So wide was his province of intelligence,14 that, for several years, it filled all his days and two or three nights in the week. In the year 1647, his Mistress was published; for he imagined, as he declared in his preface to a subsequent edition, that “poets are scarce thought freemen of their company without paying some duties, or obliging themselves to be true to love.” This obligation to amorous ditties owes, I believe, its original to the fame of Petrarch, who, in an age rude and uncultivated, by his tuneful homage to his Laura, refined the manners of the lettered world, and filled Europe with love and poetry.15 But the basis of all excellence is truth: he that professes love ought to feel its power. Petrarch was a real lover, and Laura doubtless deserved his tenderness. Of Cowley, we are told by Barnes,16 who had means enough of information, that, whatever he may talk of his own inflammability, and the variety of characters by which his heart 10. Prince Charles, later Charles II. 11. The theaters were closed by the parliamentary government from 1642 to 1660. 12. Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland (1609/10–1643) (Lonsdale, Lives of the Eminent Poets). 13. Reading and writing in code. 14. “Commerce of information; notice; mutual communication; account of things distant or secret” (Dictionary, s.v. intelligency, sense 1). 15. Francesco Petrarcha (1304–1374) wrote 366 poems, later collected as Il Canzoniere (the song book), inspired by a woman called Laura, whom he barely knew. 16. Joshua Barnes (1654–1712), Anacreon (1705), p. xxxii.



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was divided, he in reality was in love but once, and then never had resolution to tell his passion. This consideration cannot but abate, in some measure, the reader’s esteem for the work and the author. To love excellence, is natural; it is natural likewise for the lover to solicit reciprocal regard by an elaborate display of his own qualifications. The desire of pleasing has in different men produced actions of heroism, and effu­ sions of wit; but it seems as reasonable to appear the champion as the poet of an “airy nothing,”17 and to quarrel as to write for what Cowley might have learned from his master Pindar to call the “dream of a shadow.”18 It is surely not difficult, in the solitude of a college, or in the bustle of the world, to find useful studies and serious employment. No man needs to be so burthened with life as to squander it in voluntary dreams of fictitious occurrences. The man that sits down to suppose himself charged with treason or peculation,19 and heats his mind to an elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of his folly from him who praises beauty which he never saw, complains of jealousy which he never felt; supposes himself sometimes invited, and sometimes forsaken; fatigues his fancy, and ransacks his memory, for images which may exhibit the gaiety of hope, or the gloominess of despair, and dresses his imaginary Chloris or Phyllis sometimes in flowers fading as her beauty, and sometimes in gems lasting as her virtues. At Paris, as secretary to Lord Jermin,20 he was engaged in transacting things of real importance with real men and real women, and at that time did not much employ his thoughts upon phantoms of gallantry. Some of his letters to Mr. Bennet, afterwards Earl of Arlington, from April to December in 1650, are preserved in Miscellanea Aulica, a collection of papers published by Brown.21 These letters being written like those of other men whose mind is more on things than words, contribute no otherwise to his reputation than as they shew him to have been above the affec­ tation of unseasonable elegance, and to have known that the business of a statesman can be little forwarded by flowers of rhetorick. One passage, however, seems not unworthy of some notice. Speaking of the Scotch treaty then in agitation:22 “The scotch treaty,” says he, 17. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, v.i.16. 18. Cowley, Life of Fame, l. 7, echoes Pindar, Pythian Odes, viii.95. Cf. Yale, viii.975. 19. “Robbery of the Public” (Dictionary). 20. Henry Jermyn (1605–1684), Earl of St. Albans, followed Charles I’s queen, Henrietta Maria, to the Continent during the interregnum. 21. Miscellanea Aulica, or a Collection of State-­Treatises, ed. Thomas Brown (1702). 22. In 1649, after the execution of Charles I, the Scots proclaimed Charles II the king of Scotland and negotiated with him while he was abroad.

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is the only thing now in which we are vitally concerned; I am one of the last hopers, and yet cannot now abstain from believing, that an agreement will be made: all people upon the place incline to that of union. The Scotch will moderate something of the rigour of their demands, the mutual necessity of an accord is visible, the king is persuaded of it. And to tell you the truth (which I take to be an argument above all the rest) Virgil has told the same thing to that purpose.23

This expression from a secretary of the present time, would be considered as merely ludicrous, or at most as an ostentatious display of scholarship; but the man­ ners of that time were so tinged with superstition, that I cannot but suspect Cowley of having consulted on this great occasion the Virgilian lots, and to have given some credit to the answer of his oracle.24 Some years afterwards, “business,” says Sprat, “passed of course into other hands”; and Cowley being no longer useful at Paris, was in 1656 sent back into England, that “under pretence of privacy and retirement, he might take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this nation.”25 Soon after his return to London, he was seized by some messengers of the usurping powers, who were sent out in quest of another man; and being examined, was put into confinement, from which he was not dismissed without the security of a thousand pounds given by Dr. Scarborow.26 This year he published his poems, with a preface, in which he seems to have inserted something, suppressed in subsequent editions, which was interpreted to denote some relaxation of his loyalty. In this preface he declares, that “his desire had been for some days past, and did still very vehemently continue, to retire himself to some of the American plantations, and to forsake this world for ever.”27 From the obloquy which the appearance of submission to the usurpers brought upon him, his biographer has been very diligent to clear him, and indeed it does not seem to have lessened his reputation. His wish for retirement we can easily believe to be undissembled; a man harrassed in one kingdom, and persecuted in another, who, after a course of business that employed all his days and half his nights in cyphering and decyphering, comes to his own country and steps into a prison, will be willing enough to retire to some place of quiet, and of safety. Yet let neither our reverence 23. Miscellanea Aulica, p. 130. 24. The Virgilian lots or sortes Virgiliana was a kind of fortune-­telling in which one threw open the text of Virgil and, choosing a passage at random, read it as sage advice. 25. For Sprat’s Account, see Joel E. Spingarn, Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, 3 vols. (1908–9), ii.124. 26. Sir Charles Scarborough (1615–1694), physician. 27. The English Writings of Abraham Cowley, ed. A. R. Waller, 2 vols. (1905–6), i.8.



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for a genius, nor our pity for a sufferer, dispose us to forget that, if his activity was virtue, his retreat was cowardice. He then took upon himself the character of physician, still, according to Sprat, with intention “to dissemble the main design of his coming over,” and, as Mr. Wood relates, “complying with the men then in power (which was much taken notice of by the royal party), he obtained an order to be created doctor of physick,28 which being done to his mind (whereby he gained the ill-­will of some of his friends), he went into France again, having made a copy of verses on Oliver’s death.”29 This is no favourable representation, yet even in this not much wrong can be discovered. How far he complied with the men in power, is to be enquired before he can be blamed. It is not said that he told them any secrets, or assisted them by intel­ ligence, or any other act. If he only promised to be quiet, that they in whose hands he was might free him from confinement, he did what no law of society prohibits. The man whose miscarriage in a just cause has put him in the power of his enemy may, without any violation of his integrity, regain his liberty, or preserve his life by a promise of neutrality: for the stipulation gives the enemy nothing which he had not before; the neutrality of a captive may be always secured by his imprison­ ment or death. He that is at the disposal of another, may not promise to aid him in any injurious act, because no power can compel active obedience. He may engage to do nothing, but not to do ill. There is reason to think that Cowley promised little. It does not appear that his compliance gained him confidence enough to be trusted without security, for the bond of his bail was never cancelled; nor that it made him think himself secure, for at that dissolution of government, which followed the death of Oliver, he returned into France, where he resumed his former station, and staid till the Restoration. “He continued,” says his biographer, “under these bonds till the general deliv­ erance”; it is therefore to be supposed, that he did not go to France, and act again for the king without the consent of his bondsman; that he did not shew his loyalty at the hazard of his friend, but by his friend’s permission. Of the verses on Oliver’s death, in which Wood’s narrative seems to imply something encomiastick, there has been no appearance. There is a discourse con­ cerning his government, indeed, with verses intermixed, but such as certainly gained its author no friends among the abettors of usurpation.30 A doctor of physick however he was made at Oxford, in December 1657; and in the commencement of the Royal Society, of which an account has been published 28. A medical doctor. 29. Oliver Cromwell, then Lord Protector, died in 1658. SJ quotes Sprat (Spingarn, Critical Essays, ii.135) and Anthony à Wood, Fasti (Athenae Oxoniensis, ii.210). 30. A Vision, concerning his late pretended Highness, Cromwell the Wicked (1661).

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by Dr. Birch,31 he appears busy among the experimental philosophers with the title of Doctor Cowley. There is no reason for supposing that he ever attempted practice; but his pre­ paratory studies have contributed something to the honour of his country. Consid­ ering botany as necessary to a physician, he retired into Kent to gather plants, and as the predominance of a favourite study affects all subordinate operations of the intellect, botany in the mind of Cowley turned into poetry. He composed in Latin several books on plants, of which the first and second display the qualities of herbs, in elegiac verse;32 the third and fourth the beauties of flowers in various measures; and in the fifth and sixth, the uses of trees in heroick numbers.33 At the same time were produced from the same university, the two great poets, Cowley and Milton, of dissimilar genius, of opposite principles; but concurring in the cultivation of Latin poetry, in which the English, till their works and May’s poem appeared,34 seemed unable to contest the palm with any other of the lettered nations. If the Latin performances of Cowley and Milton be compared, for May I hold to be superior to both, the advantage seems to lie on the side of Cowley. Milton is generally content to express the thoughts of the ancients in their language; Cowley, without much loss of purity or elegance, accommodates the diction of Rome to his own conceptions. At the Restoration, after all the diligence of his long service, and with con­ sciousness not only of the merit of fidelity, but of the dignity of great abilities, he naturally expected ample preferments; and, that he might not be forgotten by his own fault, wrote a song of triumph. But this was a time of such general hope, that great numbers were inevitably disappointed; and Cowley found his reward very tediously delayed. He had been promised by both Charles the first and second the mastership of the Savoy, but “he lost it,” says Wood, “by certain persons, enemies to the Muses.”35 The neglect of the court was not his only mortification; having, by such alter­ ation as he thought proper, fitted his old comedy of the Guardian for the stage, he produced it to the public under the title of the Cutter of Coleman-­street. It was treated on the stage with great severity, and was afterwards censured as a satire on the king’s party. Mr. Dryden, who went with Mr. Sprat to the first exhibition, related to Mr. 31. Thomas Birch, A History of the Royal Society (1756). Dedicated to the pursuit of scientific research, the Royal Society was founded in 1660. 32. A Greek and Latin verse form combining lines of hexameter and pentameter. 33. In Greek and Latin, this is dactylic hexameter. 34. Thomas May, Supplementum Lucani (1640), a continuation of the Roman poet Lucan’s Pharsalia. 35. Fasti, ii.210; the Hospital of the Savoy was a superannuated charitable institution, and the master­ ship was largely a sinecure.



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Dennis, “that when they told Cowley how little favour had been shewn him, he re­ ceived the news of his ill success, not with so much firmness as might have been ex­ pected from so great a man.”36 What firmness they expected, or what weakness Cowley discovered,37 cannot be known. He that misses his end will never be as much pleased as he that attains it, even when he can impute no part of his failure to himself; and when the end is to please the multitude, no man perhaps has a right, in things admitting of gradation and comparison, to throw the whole blame upon his judges, and totally to exclude diffidence and shame by a haughty consciousness of his own excellence. For the rejection of this play, it is difficult now to find the reason: it certainly has, in a very great degree, the power of fixing attention and exciting merriment. From the charge of disaffection he exculpates himself in his preface, by observing how unlikely it is that, having followed the royal family through all their distresses, “he should chuse the time of their restoration to begin a quarrel with them.” It ap­ pears, however, from the Theatrical Register of Downes the prompter, to have been popularly considered as a satire on the Royalists.38 That he might shorten this tedious suspense, he published his pretensions and his discontent, in an ode called The Complaint; in which he stiles himself the “melancholy” Cowley. This met with the usual fortune of complaints, and seems to have excited more contempt than pity. These unlucky incidents are brought, maliciously enough, together in some stanzas, written about that time, on the choice of a laureat; a mode of satire, by which, since it was first introduced by Suckling,39 perhaps every generation of poets has been teazed. Savoy-­missing Cowley came into the court,    Making apologies for his bad play; Every one gave him so good a report,    That Apollo gave heed to all he could say; Nor would he have had, ’tis thought, a rebuke,    Unless he had done some notable folly; Writ verses unjustly in praise of Sam Tuke,    Or printed his pitiful Melancholy.40

36. John Dennis, “A Large Account of the Taste in Poetry” (1702), in The Critical Works of John Dennis, ed. E. N. Hooker, 2 vols. (1939–43), i.289. 37. Revealed. 38. John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus (1708), p. 25. 39. Sir John Suckling, “A Session of the Poets,” in Fragmenta Aurea (1646). 40. “The Session of the Poets, To the Tune of Cook-­Laurel,” ll. 49–56.

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His vehement desire of retirement now came again upon him. “Not finding,” says the morose Wood, “that preferment conferred upon him which he expected, while others for their money carried away most places, he retired discontented into Surrey.”41 He was now,” says the courtly Sprat, weary of the vexations and formalities of an active condition. He had been perplexed with a long compliance to foreign manners. He was satiated with the arts of a court; which sort of life, though his virtue made it innocent to him, yet nothing could make it quiet. Those were the reasons that moved him to follow the violent inclination of his own mind, which, in the greatest throng of his former business, had still called upon him, and represented to him the true delights of solitary studies, of temperate pleasures, and a mod­ erate revenue below the malice and flatteries of fortune.42

So differently are things seen, and so differently are they shown; but actions are visible, though motives are secret. Cowley certainly retired; first to Barn-­elms, and afterwards to Chertsey, in Surrey. He seems, however, to have lost part of his dread of the “hum of men.”43 He thought himself now safe enough from intrusion, without the defence of mountains and oceans; and instead of seeking shelter in America, wisely went only so far from the bustle of life as that he might easily find his way back, when solitude should grow tedious. His retreat was at first but slen­ derly accommodated; yet he soon obtained, by the interest of the Earl of St. Albans and the Duke of Buckingham, such a lease of the queen’s lands as afforded him an ample income. By the lover of virtue and of wit it will be solicitously asked, if he now was happy. Let them peruse one of his letters accidentally preserved by Peck,44 which I recommend to the consideration of all that may hereafter pant for solitude. To Dr. Thomas Sprat. Chertsey, 21 May, 1665. The first night that I came hither I caught so great a cold, with a defluxion of rheum,45 as made me keep my chamber ten days. And, two after, had such a bruise on my ribs with a fall, that I am yet unable to move or turn myself in

41. Wood, Fasti, ii.210. 42. Sprat in Spingarn, Critical Essays, ii.127. 43. [SJ’s note] L’Allegro of Milton [l. 118]. 44. Francis Peck, in Memoirs of the Life and Actions of Oliver Cromwell (1740), Part ii, pp. 81–82 and n. 45. Discharge of nasal mucus.



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my bed. This is my personal fortune here to begin with. And besides, I can get no money from my tenants, and have my meadows eaten up every night by cattle put in by my neighbours. What this signifies, or may come to in time, God knows; if it be ominous, it can end in nothing less than hanging. Another misfortune has been, and stranger than all the rest, that you have broke your word with me, and failed to come, even though you told Mr. Bois that you would. This is what they call monstri simile.46 I do hope to recover my late hurt so farre within five or six days (though it be uncertain yet whether I shall ever recover it) as to walk about again. And then, me-­thinks, you and I and the Dean might be very merry upon S. Anne’s Hill. You might very conveniently come hither the way of Hamp­ ton Town, lying there one night. I write this in pain, and can say no more: verbum sapienti.47

He did not long enjoy the pleasure or suffer the uneasiness of solitude; for he died at the Porch-­house in Chertsey in 1667, in the 49th year of his age. He was buried with great pomp near Chaucer and Spenser; and King Charles pronounced, “That Mr. Cowley had not left a better man behind him in England.”48 He is represented by Dr. Sprat as the most amiable of mankind; and this posthu­ mous praise may be safely credited, as it has never been contradicted by envy or by faction. Such are the remarks and memorials which I have been able to add to the nar­ rative of Dr. Sprat; who, writing when the feuds of the civil war were yet recent, and the minds of either party easily irritated, was obliged to pass over many trans­ actions in general expressions, and to leave curiosity often unsatisfied. What he did not tell, cannot however now be known. I must therefore recommend the perusal of his work, to which my narration can be considered only as a slender supplement. Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and instead of tracing intellectual pleasure to its natural sources in the mind of man, paid their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much praised, and too much neglected at another. Wit, like all other things subject by their nature to the choice of man, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes different forms.49 About the be­ 46. “Like a portent” (something supernatural), Terence, Eunuchus, i.334. 47. “A word to the wise [is sufficient].” 48. Sprat in Spingarn, Critical Essays, ii.145. 49. Wit: “The powers of the mind; the mental faculties; the intellects; this is the original signification” (Dictionary, sense 1); “Imagination; quickness of fancy” (sense 2).

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ginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets; of whom, in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not im­ proper to give some account. The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to shew their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to shew it in rhyme, instead of writ­ ing poetry, they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables. If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry τέχνη μιμετική,50 “an imitative art,” these writers will, without great wrong, lose their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be said to have imitated any thing; they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intel­ lect. Those however who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne in wit, but maintains that they surpass him in poetry.51 If wit be well described by Pope, as being “that which has been often thought, but was never before so well expressed,”52 they certainly never attained, nor ever sought it; for they endeavoured to be singular in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope’s account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depresses it below its natural dignity, and reduces it from strength of thought to happiness of language. If by a more noble and more adequate conception that be considered as wit, which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that, which he that never found it, won­ ders how he missed; to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found. But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of discordia concors;53 a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas 50. Aristotle refers to it this way in his Poetics. 51. “A Discourse concerning Satire,” The Works of John Dryden, ed. E. N. Hooker, H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., et al., 22 vols. (1956–2000), iv.78. 52. See An Essay on Criticism, ll. 297–98: “True wit is nature to advantage drest, / What oft was thought, but ne’er so well exprest.” 53. Harmonious discord.



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are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, com­ parisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtilty surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and though he sometimes admires is seldom pleased. From this account of their compositions it will be readily inferred, that they were not successful in representing or moving the affections. As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising, they had no regard to that uni­ formity of sentiment which enables us to conceive and to excite the pains and the pleasures of other minds: they never enquired what, on any occasion, they should have said or done; but wrote rather as beholders than partakers of human nature; as Beings looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as Epicurean deities making remarks on the actions of men, and the vicissitudes of life, without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say what they hoped had been never said before. Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetick;54 for they never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which at once fills the whole mind, and of which the first effect is sudden astonishment, and the second rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dis­ persion. Great thoughts are always general, and consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in descriptions not descending to minuteness. It is with great pro­ priety that subtlety, which in its original import means exility55 of particles, is taken in its metaphorical meaning for nicety of distinction. Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty could have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation. Their attempts were always analytick; they broke every image into fragments; and could no more represent, by their slender conceits and laboured particularities, the prospects of nature, or the scenes of life, than he, who dissects a sun-­beam with a prism, can exhibit the wide effulgence of a summer noon. What they wanted however of the sublime, they endeavoured to supply by hy­ perbole; their amplification had no limits; they left not only reason but fancy behind them; and produced combinations of confused magnificence, that not only could not be credited, but could not be imagined. Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost: if they fre­ quently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth: if their conceits were far-­fetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write on their plan, it was at least necessary to read and think. No man could be born a metaphysical poet, nor assume the dignity of a writer, by descrip­ tions copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by tradi­ 54. “Affecting the passions; passionate; moving” (Dictionary). 55. “Slenderness; smallness; diminution” (Dictionary).

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tional imagery, and hereditary similes, by readiness of rhyme, and volubility of syl­ lables. In perusing the works of this race of authours, the mind is exercised either by recollection or inquiry; either something already learned is to be retrieved, or some­ thing new is to be examined. If their greatness seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises; if the imagination is not always gratified, at least the powers of reflection and comparison are employed; and in the mass of materials which ingenious ab­ surdity has thrown together, genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes found, buried perhaps in grossness of expression, but useful to those who know their value; and such as, when they are expanded to perspicuity, and polished to elegance, may give lustre to works which have more propriety, though less copious­ ness of sentiment. This kind of writing, which was, I believe, borrowed from Marino and his followers,56 had been recommended by the example of Donne, a man of very exten­ sive and various knowledge, and by Jonson, whose manner resembled that of Donne more in the ruggedness of his lines than in the cast of his sentiments. When their reputation was high, they had undoubtedly more imitators, than time has left behind. Their immediate successors, of whom any remembrance can be said to remain, were Suckling, Waller, Denham, Cowley, Cleveland,57 and Milton. Denham and Waller sought another way to fame, by improving the harmony of our numbers. Milton tried the metaphysick stile only in his lines upon Hobson the car­ rier. Cowley adopted it, and excelled his predecessors, having as much sentiment, and more musick. Suckling neither improved versification, nor abounded in con­ ceits. The fashionable stile remained chiefly with Cowley; Suckling could not reach it, and Milton disdained it. Critical remarks are not easily understood without examples; and I have there­ fore collected instances of the modes of writing by which this species of poets, for poets they were called by themselves and their admirers, was eminently distinguished. As the authors of this race were perhaps more desirous of being admired than understood, they sometimes drew their conceits from recesses of learning not very much frequented by common readers of poetry. Thus Cowley on knowledge: The sacred tree midst the fair orchard grew;    The phoenix Truth did on it rest,    And built his perfum’d nest, That right Porphyrian tree which did true logick shew. 56. Giambattista Marino (1569–1625), a Neapolitan baroque poet. 57. John Suckling (1609–1641?); Edmund Waller (1606–1687); John Denham (1614/15–1669); John Cleveland (1613–1658).



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   Each leaf did learned notions give,    And th’ apples were demonstrative:    So clear their colour and divine, The very shade they cast did other lights outshine.58

On Anacreon continuing a lover in his old age: Love was with thy life entwin’d, Close as heat with fire is join’d, A powerful brand prescrib’d the date Of thine, like Meleager’s fate. Th’ antiperistasis of age More enflam’d thy amorous rage.59

In the following verses we have an allusion to a Rabbinical opinion concern­ ing manna: Variety I ask not: give me one To live perpetually upon. The person Love does to us fit, Like manna, has the taste of all in it.60

Thus Donne shews his medicinal knowledge in some encomiastick verses:    In every thing there naturally grows A balsamum to keep it fresh and new,    If ’twere not injur’d by extrinsique blows; Your youth and beauty are this balm in you.    But you, of learning and religion, And virtue and such ingredients, have made    A mithridate, whose operation Keeps off, or cures what can be done or said.61

Though the following lines of Donne, on the last night of the year, have some­ thing in them too scholastick, they are not inelegant: 58. “The Tree of Knowledge,” ll. 1–8. 59. “Elegy upon Anacreon,” ll. 33–38. The Greek hero Meleager was destined to live only as long as a certain piece of firewood remained unconsumed by flame. “Antiperistasis” means resistance or opposition. 60. “Resolved to be Beloved” (The Mistress), ll. 21–24. 61. “To the Countess of Bedford,” ll. 21–28.

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This twilight of two years, not past nor next,    Some emblem is of me, or I of this, Who, meteor-­like, of stuff and form perplext,    Whose what and where, in disputation is,    If I should call me any thing, should miss. I sum the years and me, and find me not    Debtor to th’ old, nor creditor to th’ new, That cannot say, my thanks I have forgot,    Nor trust I this with hopes; and yet scarce true    This bravery is, since these times shew’d me you. —Donne.62

Yet more abstruse and profound is Donne’s reflection upon man as a microcosm: If men be worlds, there is in every one Something to answer in some proportion All the world’s riches: and in good men, this Virtue, our form’s form, and our soul’s soul is.63

Of thoughts so far-­fetched, as to be not only unexpected, but unnatural, all their books are full. To a lady, who wrote poesies for rings. They, who above do various circles find, Say, like a ring th’ aequator heaven does bind. When heaven shall be adorn’d by thee, (Which then more heav’n than ’tis, will be) ’Tis thou must write the poesy there, For it wanteth one as yet, Tho’ the sun pass through’t twice a year, The sun, which is esteem’d the god of wit. —Cowley.64

The difficulties which have been raised about identity in philosophy, are by Cowley with still more perplexity applied to love: 62. “To the Countess of Bedford,” ll. 1–10. 63. “To Mr. R. W.,” ll. 29–32. 64. “To a Lady Who Made Posies for Rings,” ll. 25–32.



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Five years ago (says story) I lov’d you, For which you call me most inconstant now; Pardon me, madam, you mistake the man; For I am not the same that I was then; No flesh is now the same ’twas then in me, And that my mind is chang’d yourself may see. The same thoughts to retain still, and intents Were more inconstant far; for accidents Must of all things most strangely inconstant prove, If from one subject they t’another move: My members then, the father members were From whence these take their birth, which now are here. If then this body love what th’ other did, ’Twere incest, which by nature is forbid.65

The love of different women is, in geographical poetry, compared to travels through different countries: Hast thou not found, each woman’s breast    (The lands where thou hast travelled) Either by savages possest,    Or wild, and uninhabited?    What joy could’st take, or what repose In countries so uncivilis’d as those? Lust, the scorching dog-­star, here    Rages with immoderate heat; Whilst Pride, the rugged Northern Bear,    In others makes the cold too great. And where these are temp’rate known, The soil’s all barren sand, or rocky stone. —Cowley.66

A lover, burnt up by his affection, is compared to Egypt:    The fate of Egypt I sustain,    And never feel the dew of rain,

65. “Inconstancy” (The Mistress), ll. 1–14. 66. “The Welcome” (The Mistress), ll. 13–24.

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From clouds which in the head appear;    But all my too much moisture owe, To overflowings of the heart below. —Cowley.67

The lover supposes his lady acquainted with the ancient laws of augury and rites of sacrifice: And yet this death of mine, I fear, Will ominous to her appear:    When sound in every other part, Her sacrifice is found without an heart.    For the last tempest of my death Shall sigh out that too, with my breath.68

That the chaos was harmonised has been recited of old; but whence the differ­ ent sounds arose, remained for a modern to discover:    Th’ ungovern’d parts no correspondence knew, An artless war from thwarting motions grew; Till they to number and fixt rules were brought. Water and air he for the tenor chose, Earth made the base, the treble flame arose. —Cowley.69

The tears of lovers are always of great poetical account; but Donne has ex­ tended them into worlds. If the lines are not easily understood, they may be read again.    On a round ball. A workman, that hath copies by, can lay An Europe, Afric, and an Asia, And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.    So doth each tear,    Which thee doth wear,

67. “Sleep” (The Mistress), ll. 10–14. 68. “The Concealment,” (The Mistress), ll. 23–28. 69. Davideis, i.453–55, 457–58.



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A globe, yea world, by that impression grow, Till thy tears mixt with mine do overflow This world, by waters sent from thee my heaven dissolved so.70

On reading the following lines the reader may perhaps cry out—“Confusion worse confounded.”71 Here lies a she sun, and a he moon here,    She gives the best light to his sphere,    Or each is both, and all, and so They unto one another nothing owe. —Donne.72

Who but Donne would have thought that a good man is a telescope? Tho’ God be our true glass, thro’ which we see All, since the being of all things is he, Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive Things, in proportion fit, by perspective Deeds of good men; for by their living here, Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near.73

Who would imagine it possible that in a very few lines so many remote ideas could be brought together? Since ’tis my doom, Love’s undershrieve,      Why this reprieve? Why doth my She Advowson fly      Incumbency? To sell thyself dost thou intend      By candle’s end, And hold the contrast thus in doubt,      Life’s taper out? Think but how soon the market fails, Your sex lives faster than the males; 70. “A Valediction: of Weeping,” ll. 10–18. 71. Paradise Lost, ii.996. 72. “An Epithalamium . . . on the Lady Elizabeth,” ll. 85–88. 73. “Obsequies to the Lord Harrington,” ll. 35–40.

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As if to measure age’s span, The sober Julian were th’ account of man, Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian. —Cleveland.74

Of enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be examples:    By every wind, that comes this way,    Send me at least a sigh or two,    Such and so many I’ll repay As shall themselves make winds to get to you. —Cowley.75    In tears I’ll waste these eyes    By love so vainly fed; So lust of old the Deluge punished. —Cowley.76 All arm’d in brass, the richest dress of war, (A dismal glorious fight) he shone afar. The sun himself started with sudden fright, To see his beams return so dismal bright. —Cowley.77

An universal consternation: His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws Tear up the ground; then runs he wild about, Lashing his angry tail and roaring out. Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there; Trees, tho’ no wind is stirring, shake with fear; Silence and horrour fill the place around: Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound. —Cowley.78

74. “To Julia, to Expedite her Promise,” ll. 1–4, 10–18. 75. “Friendship in Absence,” ll. 39–42. 76. “The Despair” (The Mistress), ll. 4–6. 77. Davideis, iii.387–90. 78. Davideis, i.654–60.



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Their fictions were often violent and unnatural. Of his mistress bathing:    The fish around her crouded, as they do    To the false light that treach’rous fishers shew, And all with as much ease might taken be,    As she at first took me:    For ne’er did light so clear    Among the waves appear, Tho’ ev’ry night the sun himself set there. —Cowley.79

The poetical effect of a lover’s name upon glass:    My name engrav’d herein Doth contribute my firmness to this glass;    Which, ever since that charm, hath been As hard, as that which grav’d it, was. —Donne.80

Their conceits were sometimes slight and trifling. On an inconstant woman: He enjoys thy calmy sunshine now,    And no breath stirring hears, In the clear heaven of thy brow,    No smallest cloud appears.    He sees thee gentle, fair and gay, And trusts the faithless April of thy May. —Cowley.81

Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon, and read by the fire:

79. “Bathing in the River” (The Mistress), ll. 1–7. 80. “A Valediction: of my Name, in the Window,” ll. 1–4. 81. “Ode in Imitation of Horace’s Ode, Bk. I, Ode 5,” ll. 19–24.

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   Nothing yet in thee is seen,    But when a genial heat warms thee within, A new-­born wood of various lines there grows;    Here buds an L, and there a B,    Here sprouts a V, and there a T, And all the flourishing letters stand in rows. —Cowley.82

As they sought only for novelty, they did not much enquire whether their allu­ sions were to things high or low, elegant or gross; whether they compared the little to the great, or the great to the little. Physick and chirurgery for a lover. Gently, ah gently, madam, touch    The wound, which you yourself have made; That pain must needs be very much,    Which makes me of your hand afraid. Cordials of pity give me now, For I too weak for purgings grow. —Cowley.83

The world and a clock. Mahol, th’ inferior world’s fantastic face, Thro’ all the turns of matter’s maze did trace; Great Nature’s well-­set clock in pieces took; On all the springs and smallest wheels did look Of life and motion; and with equal art Made up again the whole of every part. —Cowley.84

A coal-­pit has not often found its poet; but that it may not want its due honour, Cleveland has paralleled it with the sun:

82. “Written in Juice of Lemon” (The Mistress), ll. 31–36. 83. “Counsel” (The Mistress), ll. 1–6. 84. Davideis, i.741–46.



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The mod’rate value of our guiltless ore, Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore, Yet why should hallow’d vestal’s sacred shrine, Deserve more honour than a flaming mine? These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be Than a few embers, for a deity. Had he our pits, the Persian would admire No sun, but warm’s devotion at our fire: He’d leave the trotting whipster, and prefer Our profound Vulcan ’bove that waggoner. For wants he heat, or light? or would have store Of both? ’tis here: and what can suns give more? Nay, what’s the sun but, in a different name, A coal-­pit rampant, or a mine on flame! Then let this truth reciprocally run, The sun’s heaven’s coalery, and coals our sun.85

Death, a voyage:          No family Ere rigg’d a soul for heaven’s discovery, With whom more venturers might boldly dare Venture their stakes, with him in joy to share. —Donne.86

Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, and such as no figures or licence can reconcile to the understanding. A lover neither dead nor alive: Then down I laid my head, Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead, And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled:    Ah, sottish soul, said I, When back to its cage again I saw it fly:    Fool to resume her broken chain!    And row her galley here again! 85. “News from Newcastle,” ll. 21–36, no longer attributed to Cleveland. 86. “Elegy on the L. C.,” ll. 13–16.

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   Fool, to that body to return Where it condemn’d and destin’d is to burn!    Once dead, how can it be, Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee, That thou shouldst come to live it o’er again in me? —Cowley.87

A lover’s heart, a hand grenado: Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine come    Into the self-­same room    ’Twill tear and blow up all within, Like a grenado shot into a magazin. Then shall love keep the ashes, and torn parts,    Of both our broken hearts:    Shall out of both one new one make; From her’s th’ allay; from mine, the metal take. —Cowley.88

The poetical propagation of light: The prince’s favour is diffus’d o’er all, From which all fortunes, names and natures fall; Then from those wombs of stars, the bride’s bright eyes,    At every glance, a constellation flies, And sowes the court with stars, and doth prevent    In light and power, the all-­ey’d firmament; First her eye kindles other ladies’ eyes,    Then from their beams their jewels lustres rise; And from their jewels torches do take fire,    And all is warmth, and light, and good desire. —Donne.89

They were in very little care to clothe their notions with elegance of dress, and therefore miss the notice and the praise which are often gained by those, who think less, but are more diligent to adorn their thoughts. 87. “The Despair” (The Mistress), ll. 25–36. 88. “The Given Heart” (The Mistress), ll. 9–16. 89. “Eclogue” (1613), ll. 23–32.



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That a mistress beloved is fairer in idea than in reality, is by Cowley thus ex­ pressed: Thou in my fancy dost much higher stand, Than women can be plac’d by Nature’s hand; And I must needs, I’m sure, a loser be, To change thee, as thou’rt there, for very thee.90

That prayer and labour should co-­operate, are thus taught by Donne: In none but us, are such mixt engines found, As hands of double office: for the ground We till with them; and them to heav’n we raise; Who prayerless labours, or without this, prays, Doth but one half, that’s none.91

By the same author, a common topick, the danger of procrastination, is thus illustrated:    —That which I should have begun In my youth’s morning, now late must be done; And I, as giddy travellers must do, Which stray or sleep all day, and having lost Light and strength, dark and tir’d must then ride post.92

All that man has to do is to live and die; the sum of humanity is comprehended by Donne in the following lines: Think in how poor a prison thou didst lie, After, enabled but to suck and cry. Think, when ’twas grown to most, ’twas a poor inn, A province pack’d up in two yards of skin, And that usurp’d, or threaten’d with a rage Of sicknesses, or their true mother, age. But think that death hath now enfranchis’d thee;

90. “Against Fruition” (The Mistress), ll. 17–20. 91. “To the Countess of Bedford,” ll. 43–47. 92. “To Mr. B. B.,” ll. 10–14.

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Thou hast thy expansion now, and liberty; Think, that a rusty piece discharg’d is flown In pieces, and the bullet is his own, And freely flies: this to thy soul allow, Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatch’d but now.93

They were sometimes indelicate and disgusting. Cowley thus apostrophises beauty: —Thou tyrant, which leav’st no man free! Thou subtle thief, from whom nought safe can be! Thou murth’rer, which hast killed, and devil, which would’st damn me.94

Thus he addresses his mistress: Thou, who in many a propriety, So truly art the sun to me, Add one more likeness, which I’m sure you can, And let me and my sun beget a man.95

Thus he represents the meditations of a lover: Tho’ in thy thoughts scarce any tracts have been    So much as of original sin, Such charms thy beauty wears as might Desires in dying confest saints excite.    Thou with strange adultery Dost in each breast a brothel keep;    Awake, all men do lust for thee, And some enjoy thee when they sleep.96

The true taste of tears: Hither with crystal vials, lovers, come,    And take my tears, which are love’s wine, 93. “The Second Anniversary,” ll. 173–84. 94. “Beauty” (The Mistress), ll. 34–36. 95. “The Parting” (The Mistress), ll. 21–24. 96. “The Innocent Ill” (The Mistress), ll. 12–19.



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   And try your mistress’ tears at home, For all are false, that taste not just like mine. —Donne.97

This is yet more indelicate: As the sweet sweat of roses in a still, As that which from chaf ’d musk-­cat’s pores doth trill, As the almighty balm of th’ early East, Such are the sweet drops of my mistress’ breast. And on her neck her skin such lustre sets, They seem no sweat drops, but pearl coronets: Rank sweaty froth thy mistress’ brow defiles. —Donne.98

Their expressions sometimes raise horror, when they intend perhaps to be pathetic: As men in hell are from diseases free,    So from all other ills am I,    Free from their known formality: But all pains eminently lie in thee. —Cowley.99

They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions from which they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were popular. Bacon re­ marks, that some falsehoods are continued by tradition, because they supply com­ modious allusions.100 It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke; In vain it something would have spoke: The love within too strong for’t was, Like poison put into a Venice-­glass. —Cowley.101

97. “Twickenham Garden,” ll. 19–22. 98. “Elegy VIII, The Comparison,” ll. 1–7. 99. “The Usurpation” (The Mistress), ll. 33–36. 100. The Advancement of Learning (1605), ii.i.3. 101. “The Heart Breaking” (The Mistress), ll. 1–4.

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In forming descriptions they looked out not for images, but for conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended to adorn. Dryden’s Night is well known;102 Donne’s is as follows: Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest: Time’s dead low-­water; when all minds divest To-­morrow’s business, when the labourers have Such rest in bed, that their last church-­yard grave, Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this, Now when the client, whose last hearing is To-­morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man, Who when he opes his eyes, must shut them then Again by death, altho’ sad watch he keep, Doth practise dying by a little sleep, Thou at this midnight seest me.103

It must be however confessed of these writers, that if they are upon common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle; yet where scholastick specu­ lation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon hope, shews an unequalled fertility of ­invention:    Hope, whose weak being ruin’d is,    Alike if it succeed, and if it miss; Whom good or ill does equally confound, And both the horns of Fate’s dilemma wound.    Vain shadow, which dost vanish quite,    Both at full noon and perfect night!    The stars have not a possibility     Of blessing thee; If things then from their end we happy call, ’Tis Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.    Hope, thou bold taster of delight,    Who, whilst thou should’st but taste, devour’st it quite!    Thou bring’st us an estate, yet leav’st us poor,    By clogging it with legacies before!    The joys which we entire should wed, 102. The Indian Emperor (1667), iii.ii.1–6. 103. “Obsequies to the Lord Harrington,” ll. 15–25.



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   Come deflow’r’d virgins to our bed; Good fortunes without gain imported be,    Such mighty custom’s paid to thee: For joy, like wine, kept close does better taste;    If it take air before, its spirits waste.104

To the following comparison of a man that travels, and his wife that stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether absurdity or ingenuity has the better claim: Our two souls therefore, which are one,    Tho’ I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion,    Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so    As stiff twin-­compasses are two, Thy soul the fixt foot, makes no show    To move, but doth, if th’ other do. And tho’ it in the centre sit,    Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it,    And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must    Like th’ other foot, obliquely run. Thy firmness makes my circle just,    And makes me end, where I begun. —Donne.105

In all these examples it is apparent, that whatever is improper or vitious,106 is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in pursuit of something new and strange; and that the writers fail to give delight, by their desire of exciting admira­ tion. Having thus endeavoured to exhibit a general representation of the stile and 104. “Against Hope” (The Mistress), ll. 1–20. 105. “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” ll. 21–36. 106. “Corrupt; wicked; opposite to virtuous” (Dictionary).

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sentiments of the metaphysical poets, it is now proper to examine particularly the works of Cowley, who was almost the last of that race, and undoubtedly the best. His Miscellanies contain a collection of short compositions, written some as they were dictated by a mind at leisure, and some as they were called forth by dif­ ferent occasions; with great variety of stile and sentiment, from burlesque levity to awful grandeur. Such an assemblage of diversified excellence no other poet has hitherto afforded. To choose the best, among many good, is one of the most haz­ ardous attempts of criticism. I know not whether Scaliger himself has persuaded many readers to join with him in his preference of the two favourite odes, which he estimates in his raptures at the value of a kingdom.107 I will however venture to rec­ ommend Cowley’s first piece, which ought to be inscribed To my Muse, for want of which the second couplet is without reference.108 When the title is added, there will still remain a defect; for every piece ought to contain in itself whatever is necessary to make it intelligible. Pope has some epitaphs without names, which are therefore epitaphs to be let, occupied indeed for the present, but hardly appropriated. The ode on wit is almost without a rival. It was about the time of Cowley that “wit,” which had been till then used for “intellection,” in contradistinction to “will,” took the meaning, whatever it be, which it now bears. Of all the passages in which poets have exemplified their own precepts, none will easily be found of greater excellence than that in which Cowley condemns exu­ berance of wit: Yet ’tis not to adorn and gild each part,    That shews more cost than art. Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear;    Rather than all things wit, let none be there.    Several lights will not be seen,    If there be nothing else between. Men doubt, because they stand so thick i’ th’ sky, If those be stars which paint the galaxy.109

In his verses to Lord Falkland, whom every man of his time was proud to praise, there are, as there must be in all Cowley’s compositions, some striking thoughts; but

107. Julius Caesar Scaliger, Poetices (1561), p. 880, referring to Horace, Odes, iii.ix and iv.iii; he in fact prefers them to nectar and ambrosia. 108. Cowley’s first piece is entitled “The Motto,” the opening lines of which are “What shall I do to be forever known, / And make the age to come my own? / I shall, like beasts or common people, die, / Unless you write my elegy.” 109. Ode. Of Wit, ll. 33–40.



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they are not well wrought. His elegy on Sir Henry Wotton110 is vigorous and happy, the series of thoughts is easy and natural, and the conclusion, though a little weak­ ened by the intrusion of Alexander, is elegant and forcible. It may be remarked, that in this elegy, and in most of his encomiastick poems, he has forgotten or neglected to name his heroes. In his poem on the death of Hervey, there is much praise, but little passion, a very just and ample delineation of such virtues as a studious privacy admits, and such intellectual excellence as a mind not yet called forth to action can display. He knew how to distinguish, and how to commend the qualities of his companion; but when he wishes to make us weep, he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sor­ row by imagining how his crown of bays if he had it, would “crackle in the fire.”111 It is the odd fate of this thought to be worse for being true. The bay-­leaf crackles remarkably as it burns; as therefore this property was not assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently at ease that could attend to such minuteness of physiology.112 But the power of Cowley is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise the understanding. The Chronicle is a composition unrivalled and alone: such gaiety of fancy, such facility of expression, such varied similitude, such a succession of images, and such a dance of words, it is vain to expect except from Cowley. His strength always ap­ pears in his agility; his volatility is not the flutter of a light but the bound of an elastick mind. His levity never leaves his learning behind it; the moralist, the poli­ tician, and the critick, mingle their influence even in this airy frolick of genius. To such a performance Suckling could have brought the gaiety, but not the knowledge; Dryden could have supplied the knowledge, but not the gaiety. The verses to Davenant, which are vigorously begun, and happily concluded, contain some hints of criticism very justly conceived and happily expressed. Cowley’s critical abilities have not been sufficiently observed: the few decisions and remarks which his prefaces and his notes on the Davideis supply, were at that time accessions to English literature, and shew such skill as raises our wish for more ex­ amples. The lines from Jersey are a very curious and pleasing specimen of the familiar descending to the burlesque.113 His two metrical disquisitions for and against reason, are no mean specimens of metaphysical poetry.114 The stanzas against knowledge produce little conviction. 110. Henry Wotton (1568–1639), diplomat and writer. 111. “On the Death of Mr. William Hervey,” ll. 67–68, with some minor changes. 112. Cf. “Milton” (p. 684 below): “Passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. . . . Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief.” 113. “An Answer to a Copy of Verses sent me to Jersey.” 114. “The Tree of Knowledge. That there is no Knowledge” and “Reason, the Use of it in Divine Matters.”

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In those which are intended to exalt the human faculties, reason has its proper task assigned it; that of judging, not of things revealed, but of the reality of revelation. In the verses for reason is a passage which Bentley, in the only English verses which he is known to have written, seems to have copied, though with the inferiority of an imitator. The holy Book like the eighth sphere does shine    With thousand lights of truth divine, So numberless the stars that to our eye    It makes all but one galaxy: Yet reason must assist too; for in seas    So vast and dangerous as these, Our course by stars above we cannot know    Without the compass too below.115

After this says Bentley:    Who travels in religious jars, Truth mix’d with error, clouds with rays,    With Whiston wanting pyx and stars, In the wide ocean sinks or strays.116

Cowley seems to have had, what Milton is believed to have wanted, the skill to rate his own performances by their just value, and has therefore closed his Miscellanies with the verses upon Crashaw,117 which apparently excel all that have gone be­ fore them, and in which there are beauties which common authors may justly think not only above their attainment, but above their ambition. To the Miscellanies succeed the Anacreontiques, or paraphrastical translations of some little poems, which pass, however justly, under the name of Anacreon.118 Of those songs dedicated to festivity and gaiety, in which even the morality is volup­ tuous, and which teach nothing but the enjoyment of the present day, he has given rather a pleasing than a faithful representation, having retained their spriteliness, but lost their simplicity. The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope, has ad­ mitted the decoration of some modern graces, by which he is undoubtedly made more amiable to common readers, and perhaps, if they would honestly declare their 115. Cowley, “Reason,” ll. 33–40. 116. Richard Bentley (1662–1742), A Reply, ll. 13–16. 117. Richard Crashaw (1612/13–1648), poet and royalist exile. 118. Anacreon was a Greek lyric poet of the fifth century BCE who wrote of wine, women, and song.



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own perceptions, to far the greater part of those whom courtesy and ignorance are content to stile the learned. These little pieces will be found more finished in their kind than any other of Cowley’s works. The diction shews nothing of the mould of time, and the senti­ ments are at no great distance from our present habitudes of thought. Real mirth must be always natural, and nature is uniform. Men have been wise in very different modes; but they have always laughed the same way. Levity of thought naturally produced familiarity of language, and the familiar part of language continues long the same: the dialogue of comedy, when it is tran­ scribed from popular manners and real life, is read from age to age with equal plea­ sure. The artifice of inversion by which the established order of words is changed, or of innovation, by which new words or new meanings of words are introduced, is practised not by those who talk to be understood, but by those who write to be admired. The Anacreontiques therefore of Cowley give now all the pleasure which they ever gave. If he was formed by nature for one kind of writing more than for another, his power seems to have been greatest in the familiar and the festive. The next class of his poems is called The Mistress, of which it is not necessary to select any particular pieces for praise or censure. They have all the same beau­ ties and faults, and nearly in the same proportion. They are written with exuber­ ance of wit, and with copiousness of learning; and it is truly asserted by Sprat, that the plenitude of the writer’s knowledge flows in upon his page, so that the reader is commonly surprised into some improvement.119 But, considered as the verses of a lover, no man that has ever loved will much commend them. They are neither courtly nor pathetick, have neither gallantry nor fondness. His praises are too far-­sought, and too hyperbolical, either to express love or to excite it: every stanza is crouded with darts and flames, with wounds and death, with mingled souls, and with bro­ ken hearts. The principal artifice by which The Mistress is filled with conceits is very copi­ ously displayed by Addison. Love is by Cowley, as by other poets, expressed meta­ phorically by flame and fire; and that which is true of real fire is said of love, or figu­ rative fire, the same word in the same sentence retaining both significations. Thus, observing the cold regard of his mistress’s eyes, and at the same time their power of producing love in him, he considers them as burning-­glasses made of ice. Finding himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love, he con­ 119. “Besides this amorous tenderness, I know not how in every copy there is something of more useful knowledge very naturally and gracefully insinuated, and every where there may be something found to inform the minds of wise men as well as to move the hearts of young men or women” (Spingarn, Critical Essays, ii.131).

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cludes the torrid zone to be habitable. Upon the dying of a tree, on which he had cut his loves, he observes, that his flames had burnt up and withered the tree.120

These conceits Addison calls mixed wit; that is, wit which consists of thoughts true in one sense of the expression, and false in the other. Addison’s representation is sufficiently indulgent. That confusion of images may entertain for a moment; but being unnatural, it soon grows wearisome. Cowley delighted in it, as much as if he had invented it; but, not to mention the ancients, he might have found it full-­blown in modern Italy. Thus Sannazaro: Aspice quam variis distringar Vesbia curis,    Uror, & heu! nostro manat ab igne liquor; Sum Nilus, sumque Aetna simul; restringite flammas    O lacrimae, aut lacrimas ebibe flamma meas.121

One of the severe theologians of that time censured him as having published “a book of profane and lascivious verses.”122 From the charge of profaneness, the constant tenour of his life, which seems to have been eminently virtuous, and the general tendency of his opinions, which discover no irreverence of religion, must defend him; but that the accusation of lasciviousness is unjust, the perusal of his works will sufficiently evince. Cowley’s Mistress has no power of seduction: “she plays round the head, but comes not at the heart.”123 Her beauty and absence, her kindness and cruelty, her disdain and inconstancy, produce no correspondence of emotion. His poetical ac­ count of the virtues of plants, and colours of flowers, is not perused with more slug­ gish frigidity. The compositions are such as might have been written for penance by a hermit, or for hire by a philosophical rhymer who had only heard of another sex; for they turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without thinking on a woman but as the subject for his task, we sometimes esteem as learned, and sometimes despise as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and always condemn as unnatural.124 The Pindarique odes are now to be considered; a species of composition, 120. SJ liberally extracts a passage in Spectator 62. Addison refers, successively, to three poems in The Mistress: “The Vain Love,” “The Request,” “The Tree.” 121. Jacopo Sannazaro, “Ad Vesbiam”: “Behold, Vesbia, with what a mixture of tribulations I’m torn apart. I am ablaze, and, alas, moisture drips from my flames. I am, at once, the Nile, at once, Etna. Quench my fire, O tears. Drink up my tears, O fire” (Latin Poetry, trans. Michael C. J. Putnam [2009], p. 295). 122. Edmund Elys, An Exclamation . . . against . . . Mr. Cowley’s Lascivious and Profane Verses (1670). 123. See Pope, Essay on Man, iv.253–54. 124. Cf. “Milton,” pp. 684–85 below.



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which Cowley thinks Pancirolus might have counted “in his list of the lost inven­ tions of antiquity,” and which he has made a bold and vigorous attempt to recover.125 The purpose with which he has paraphrased an Olympick and Nemeaean ode, is by himself sufficiently explained. His endeavour was not to shew “precisely what Pindar spoke, but his manner of speaking.”126 He was therefore not at all restrained to his expressions, nor much to his sentiments; nothing was required of him, but not to write as Pindar would not have written. Of the Olympick ode the beginning is, I think, above the original in elegance, and the conclusion below it in strength. The connection is supplied with great per­ spicuity, and the thoughts, which to a reader of less skill seem thrown together by chance, are concatenated without any abruption.127 Though the English ode cannot be called a translation, it may be very properly consulted as a commentary. The spirit of Pindar is indeed not every where equally preserved. The following pretty lines are not such as his “deep mouth” was used to pour:128    Great Rhea’s son, If in Olympus’ top where thou Sitt’st to behold thy sacred show, If in Alpheus’ silver flight, If in my verse thou take delight, My verse, great Rhea’s son, which is Lofty as that, and smooth as this.129

In the Nemeaean ode the reader must, in mere justice to Pindar, observe that whatever is said of “the original new moon, her tender forehead and her horns,”130 is superadded by his paraphrast, who has many other plays of words and fancy un­ suitable to the original, as,    The table free for every guest,    No doubt will thee admit, And feast more upon thee, than thou on it.131 125. Cowley’s Preface to his Pindaric Odes; Guido Panciroli (1523–1599), Raccolta breve d’alcune cose più segnalate ch’ebbero gli antichi, e d’alcune altre trovate dai moderni. 126. Preface to Pindaric Odes. 127. “Breaking off, violent and sudden separation” (Dictionary). 128. Addison, “Account of the Greatest English Poets” (1694), ll. 46–47, alluding to Horace, Odes, iv.ii.7–8. 129. SJ quotes from the second stanza of Cowley’s “Second Olympic Ode of Pindar.” 130. “The First Nemaean Ode,” l. 6. 131. Ibid., ll. 54–56.

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He sometimes extends his author’s thoughts without improving them. In the Olympionick an oath is mentioned in a single word, and Cowley spends three lines in swearing by the “Castalian stream.”132 We are told of Theron’s bounty, with a hint that he had enemies, which Cowley thus enlarges in rhyming prose: But in this thankless world the giver Is envied even by the receiver; ’Tis now the cheap and frugal fashion Rather to hide than own the obligation: Nay, ’tis much worse than so; It now an artifice does grow Wrongs and injuries to do, Lest men should think we owe.133

It is hard to conceive that a man of the first rank in learning and wit, when he was dealing out such minute morality in such feeble diction, could imagine, either waking or dreaming, that he imitated Pindar. In the following odes, where Cowley chooses his own subjects, he sometimes rises to dignity truly Pindarick; and, if some deficiencies of language be forgiven, his strains are such as those of the Theban bard were to his contemporaries:    Begin the song, and strike the living lyre: Lo how the years to come, a numerous and well-­fitted quire,    All hand in hand do decently advance, And to my song with smooth and equal measure dance;    While the dance lasts, how long soe’er it be, My musick’s voice shall bear it company;    Till all gentle notes be drown’d    In the last trumpet’s dreadful sound.134

After such enthusiasm, who will not lament to find the poet conclude with lines like these!    But stop, my Muse— Hold thy Pindarick Pegasus closely in,    Which does to rage begin— 132. “Second Olympick Ode,” l. 170. 133. Ibid., ll. 180–87. 134. “The Resurrection,” ll. 113–20.



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   —’Tis an unruly and a hard-­mouth’d horse—    ’Twill no unskilful touch endure, But flings writer and reader too that sits not sure.135

The fault of Cowley, and perhaps of all the writers of the metaphysical race, is that of pursuing his thoughts to their last ramifications, by which he loses the gran­ deur of generality; for of the greatest things the parts are little; what is little can be but pretty, and by claiming dignity becomes ridiculous. Thus all the power of de­ scription is destroyed by a scrupulous enumeration; and the force of metaphors is lost, when the mind by the mention of particulars is turned more upon the original than the secondary sense, more upon that from which the illustration is drawn than that to which it is applied. Of this we have a very eminent example in the ode entitled The Muse, who goes to “take the air”136 in an intellectual chariot, to which he harnesses Fancy and Judge­ ment, Wit and Eloquence, Memory and Invention: how he distinguished Wit from Fancy, or how Memory could properly contribute to Motion, he has not explained: we are however content to suppose that he could have justified his own fiction, and wish to see the Muse begin her career; but there is yet more to be done. Let the postilion Nature mount, and let The coachman Art be set; And let the airy footmen, running all beside, Make a long row of goodly pride; Figures, conceits, raptures, and sentences, In a well-­worded dress, And innocent loves, and pleasant truths, and useful lies, In all their gaudy liveries.137

Every mind is now disgusted with this cumber of magnificence; yet I cannot refuse myself the four next lines:    Mount, glorious queen, thy travelling throne,       And bid it to put on;    For long though cheerful is the way, And life alas allows but one ill winter’s day. 135. Ibid., ll. 52–55, 62–63. 136. “The Muse,” l. 2. 137. Ibid., ll. 8–15.

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In the same ode, celebrating the power of the Muse, he gives her prescience, or, in poetical language, the foresight of events hatching in futurity; but having once an egg in his mind, he cannot forbear to shew us that he knows what an egg contains: Thou into the close nests of time do’st peep,    And there with piercing eye Through the firm shell and the thick white dost spy    Years to come a-­forming lie, Close in their sacred secundine asleep.138

The same thought is more generally, and therefore more poetically, expressed by Casimir, a writer who has many of the beauties and faults of Cowley: Omnibus mundi Dominator horis Aptat urgendas per inane pennas, Pars adhuc nido latet, & futuros    Crescit in annos.139

Cowley, whatever was his subject, seems to have been carried, by a kind of destiny, to the light and the familiar, or to conceits which require still more ignoble epithets. A slaughter in the Red Sea, “new dies the waters name”;140 and England, during the Civil War, was “Albion no more, nor to be named from white.”141 It is surely by some fascination not easily surmounted, that a writer, professing to revive “the noblest and highest writing in verse,” makes this address to the new year: Nay, if thou lov’st me, gentle year, Let not so much as love be there, Vain fruitless love I mean; for, gentle year,    Although I fear, There’s of this caution little need,    Yet, gentle year, take heed    How thou dost make    Such a mistake; 138. Ibid., ll. 45–49. 139. Casimir Sarbiewski (1595–1640), “Ad Crispum Levinium” (Odes, i.iv), ll. 25–28: “The Ruler of the world fits wings to all the hours to propel them through the void; some still lie hidden in the nest and grow into future years.” 140. “The Plagues of Egypt,” stanza 17, last line: “New paint the water’s name, and double dye the shore.” 141. “To Dr. Scarborough,” l. 6.



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Such love I mean alone As by thy cruel predecessors has been shewn; For, tho’ I have too much cause to doubt it, I fain would try, for once, if life can live without it.142

The reader of this will be inclined to cry out with Prior—       —Ye criticks, say, How poor to this was Pindar’s stile!143

Even those who cannot perhaps find in the Isthmian or Nemeaean songs what an­ tiquity has disposed them to expect, will at least see that they are ill represented by such puny poetry; and all will determine that if this be the old Theban strain, it is not worthy of revival. To the disproportion and incongruity of Cowley’s sentiments must be added the uncertainty and looseness of his measures. He takes the liberty of using in any place a verse of any length, from two syllables to twelve. The verses of Pindar have, as he observes, very little harmony to a modern ear; yet by examining the syllables we perceive them to be regular, and have reason enough for supposing that the an­ cient audiences were delighted with the sound. The imitator ought therefore to have adopted what he found, and to have added what was wanting; to have preserved a constant return of the same numbers, and to have supplied smoothness of transition and continuity of thought. It is urged by Dr. Sprat, that the “irregularity of numbers is the very thing” which makes “that kind of poesy fit for all manner of subjects.”144 But he should have remembered, that what is fit for every thing can fit nothing well. The great plea­ sure of verse arises from the known measure of the lines, and uniform structure of the stanzas, by which the voice is regulated, and the memory relieved. If the Pindarick stile be, what Cowley thinks it, “the highest and noblest kind of writing in verse,”145 it can be adapted only to high and noble subjects; and it will not be easy to reconcile the poet with the critick, or to conceive how that can be the highest kind of writing in verse, which, according to Sprat, “is chiefly to be pre­ ferred for its near affinity to prose.”146 This lax and lawless versification so much concealed the deficiencies of the 142. “To the New Year,” ll. 37–48. 143. “An English Ballad, On the Taking of Namur,” ll. 95–96. 144. Spingarn, Critical Essays, ii.132. 145. Preface to Pindarick Odes. 146. Spingarn, Critical Essays, ii.132.

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barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle, that it immediately overspread our books of poetry; all the boys and girls caught the pleasing fashion, and they that could do nothing else could write like Pindar. The rights of antiquity were invaded, and disorder tried to break into the Latin: a poem on the Sheldonian Theatre, in which all kinds of verse are shaken together, is unhappily inserted in the Musae Anglicanae.147 Pindarism prevailed above half a century; but at last died gradually away, and other imitations supply its place. The Pindarique odes have so long enjoyed the highest degree of poetical repu­ tation, that I am not willing to dismiss them with unabated censure; and surely though the mode of their composition be erroneous, yet many parts deserve at least that admiration which is due to great comprehension of knowledge, and great fer­ tility of fancy. The thoughts are often new, and often striking; but the greatness of one part is disgraced by the littleness of another, and total negligence of language gives the noblest conceptions the appearance of a fabrick august in the plan, but mean in the materials. Yet surely those verses are not without a just claim to praise; of which it may be said with truth, that no man but Cowley could have written them. The Davideis now remains to be considered; a poem which the author de­ signed to have extended to twelve books, merely, as he makes no scruple of declar­ ing, because the Aeneid had that number; but he had leisure or perseverance only to write the third part. Epick poems have been left unfinished by Virgil, Statius, Spenser, and Cowley. That we have not the whole Davideis is, however, not much to be regretted; for in this undertaking Cowley is, tacitly at least, confessed to have miscarried. There are not many examples of so great a work, produced by an author generally read, and generally praised, that has crept through a century with so little regard. Whatever is said of Cowley is meant of his other works. Of the Davideis no mention is made; it never appears in books, nor emerges in conversation. By the Spectator it has once been quoted, by Rymer it has once been praised, and by Dryden, in MacFlecknoe, it has once been imitated;148 nor do I recollect much other notice from its publication till now, in the whole succession of English literature. Of this silence and neglect, if the reason be inquired, it will be found partly in the choice of the subject, and partly in the performance of the work. Sacred history has been always read with submissive reverence, and an imagi­ nation over-­awed and controlled. We have been accustomed to acquiesce in the nakedness and simplicity of the authentick narrative, and to repose on its veracity 147. Owen Corbett, Carmen Pindaricum in Theatrum Sheldonianum (1669), reprinted in Musarum Anglicanorum Analecta (1692). 148. Spectator 590; Thomas Rymer’s translation of Rapin’s Reflections on Aristotle’s Treatise of Poesie (1674), in Spingarn, Critical Essays, ii.171, 173; MacFlecknoe, ll. 72–73 and 76–77, parody, respectively, Davideis, i.79–80 and i.75–76.



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with such humble confidence, as suppresses curiosity. We go with the historian as he goes, and stop with him when he stops. All amplification is frivolous and vain; all addition to that which is already sufficient for the purposes of religion, seems not only useless, but in some degree profane. Such events as were produced by the visible interposition of Divine Power are above the power of human genius to dignify. The miracle of Creation, however it may teem with images, is best described with little diffusion of language: “He spake the word, and they were made.”149 We are told that Saul “was troubled with an evil spirit”:150 from this Cowley takes an opportunity of describing hell, and telling the history of Lucifer, who was, he says, Once general of a gilded host of sprites, Like Hesper leading forth the spangled nights; But down like lightning, which him struck, he came, And roar’d at his first plunge into the flame.151

Lucifer makes a speech to the inferior agents of mischief, in which there is something of heathenism, and therefore of impropriety; and, to give efficacy to his words, concludes by lashing “his breast with his long tail.” Envy, after a pause, steps out, and among other declarations of her zeal utters these lines: Do thou but threat, loud storms shall make reply, And thunder echo to the trembling sky. Whilst raging seas swell to so bold an height, As shall the fire’s proud element affright. Th’ old drudging Sun, from his longbeaten way, Shall at thy voice start, and misguide the day. The jocund orbs shall break their measur’d pace, And stubborn Poles change their allotted place. Heaven’s gilded troops shall flutter here and there, Leaving their boasting songs tun’d to a sphere.152

Every reader feels himself weary with this useless talk of an allegorical being. It is not only when the events are confessedly miraculous, that fancy and fiction 149. Psalms 33:9. 150. 1 Samuel 16:​14. 151. Davideis, i.93–96. 152. Davideis, i.143, 175–84.

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lose their effect: the whole system of life, while the theocracy was yet visible, has an appearance so different from all other scenes of human action, that the reader of the Sacred Volume habitually considers it as the peculiar mode of existence of a distinct species of mankind, that lived and acted with manners uncommunicable; so that it is difficult even for imagination to place us in the state of them whose story is related, and by consequence their joys and griefs are not easily adopted, nor can the atten­ tion be often interested in any thing that befals them.153 To the subject, thus originally indisposed to the reception of poetical embel­ lishments, the writer brought little that could reconcile impatience, or attract curi­ osity. Nothing can be more disgusting than a narrative spangled with conceits, and conceits are all that the Davideis supplies. One of the great sources of poetical delight is description, or the power of pre­ senting pictures to the mind. Cowley gives inferences instead of images, and shews not what may be supposed to have been seen, but what thoughts the sight might have suggested. When Virgil describes the stone which Turnus lifted against Æneas, he fixes the attention on its bulk and weight:    Saxum circumspicit ingens, Saxum antiquum, ingens, campo quod forte jacebat, Limes agro positus, litem ut discerneret arvis.154

Cowley says of the stone with which Cain slew his brother, I saw him fling the stone, as if he meant At once his murther and his monument.155

Of the sword taken from Goliah, he says, A sword so great, that it was only fit To cut off his great head that came with it.156

Other poets describe death by some of its common appearances; Cowley says, with a learned allusion to sepulchral lamps real or fabulous, 153. Cf. SJ’s remarks on Adam and Eve in his commentary on Paradise Lost in “Milton” (p. 695 below). 154. Aeneid, xii.896–98: “Saying no more, he glances round and sees a huge stone, an ancient stone and huge which by chance lay upon the plain, set for a landmark to keep dispute from the fields” (Loeb edition, trans. Fairclough and Goold, 2001). 155. Davideis, i.201–2. 156. Ibid., iii.13–14.



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’Twixt his right ribs deep pierc’d the furious blade, And open’d wide those secret vessels where Life’s light goes out, when first they let in air.157

But he has allusions vulgar as well as learned. In a visionary succession of kings: Joas at first does bright and glorious show, In life’s fresh morn his fame does early crow.158

Describing an undisciplined army, after having said with elegance, His forces seem’d no army, but a crowd Heartless, unarm’d, disorderly, and loud;159

he gives them a fit of the ague. The allusions however are not always to vulgar things: he offends by exaggera­ tion as much as by diminution: The king was plac’d alone, and o’er his head A well-­wrought heav’n of silk and gold was spread.160

Whatever he writes is always polluted with some conceit: Where the sun’s fruitful beams give metals birth, Where he the growth of fatal gold does see, Gold, which alone more influence has than he.161

In one passage he starts a sudden question, to the confusion of philosophy: Ye learned heads, whom ivy garlands grace, Why does that twining plant the oak embrace? The oak, for courtship most of all unfit, And rough as are the winds that fight with it.162 157. Ibid., iv.587–89. 158. Ibid., ii.601–2. 159. Ibid., iv.719–20. 160. Ibid., ii.350–51. 161. Ibid., i.72–74. 162. Ibid., ii.58–61.

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His expressions have sometimes a degree of meanness that surpasses expec­ tation: Nay, gentle guests, he cries, since now you’re in, The story of your gallant friend begin.163

In a simile descriptive of the morning: As glimm’ring stars just at th’ approach of day, Cashier’d by troops, at last drop all away.164

The dress of Gabriel deserves attention: He took for skin a cloud most soft and bright, That e’er the midday sun pierc’d thro’ with light, Upon his cheeks a lively blush he spread, Wash’d from the morning beauties deepest red, An harmless flatt’ring meteor shone for hair, And fell adown his shoulders with loose care; He cuts out a silk mantle from the skies, Where the most spritely azure pleas’d the eyes; This he with starry vapour sprinkles all, Took in their prime ere they grow ripe and fall; Of a new rainbow, ere it fret or fade, The choicest piece cut out, a scarfe is made.165

This is a just specimen of Cowley’s imagery: what might in general expressions be great and forcible, he weakens and makes ridiculous by branching it into small parts. That Gabriel was invested with the softest or brightest colours of the sky, we might have been told, and been dismissed to improve the idea in our different pro­ portions of conception; but Cowley could not let us go till he had related where Gabriel got first his skin, and then his mantle, then his lace, and then his scarfe, and related it in the terms of the mercer and the taylor. Sometimes he indulges himself in a digression, always conceived with his ­natural exuberance, and commonly, even where it is not long, continued till it is tedious: 163. Ibid., iii.309–10. 164. Ibid., iv.402–3. 165. Ibid., ii.797–808.



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I’ th’ library a few choice authors stood, Yet ’twas well stor’d; for that small store was good; Writing, man’s spiritual physic, was not then Itself, as now, grown a disease of men. Learning (young virgin) but few suitors knew; The common prostitute she lately grew, And with the spurious brood loads now the press; Laborious effects of idleness!166

As the Davideis affords only four books, though intended to consist of twelve, there is no opportunity for such criticisms as epick poems commonly supply. The plan of the whole work is very imperfectly shewn by the third part. The duration of an unfinished action cannot be known. Of characters either not yet introduced, or shewn but upon few occasions, the full extent and the nice discriminations cannot be ascertained. The fable is plainly implex,167 formed rather from the Odyssey than the Iliad; and many artifices of diversification are employed, with the skill of a man acquainted with the best models. The past is recalled by narration, and the future an­ ticipated by vision: but he has been so lavish of his poetical art, that it is difficult to imagine how he could fill eight books more without practising again the same modes of disposing his matter; and perhaps the perception of his growing incumbrance in­ clined him to stop. By this abruption, posterity lost more instruction than delight. If the continuation of the Davideis can be missed, it is for the learning that had been diffused over it, and the notes in which it had been explained. Had not his characters been depraved like every other part by improper deco­ rations, they would have deserved uncommon praise. He gives Saul both the body and mind of a hero: His way once chose, he forward thrust outright, Nor turn’d aside for danger or delight.168

And the different beauties of the lofty Merah and the gentle Michol are very justly conceived and strongly painted.169 Rymer has declared the Davideis superior to the Jerusalem of Tasso, “which,” says he, “the poet, with all his care, has not totally purged from pedantry.”170 If by 166. Ibid., i.707–14. 167. “Intricate; entangled; complicated; opposed to simple” (Dictionary). 168. Davideis, iv.360–61. 169. Ibid., iii.652–94. 170. Spingarn, Critical Essays, ii.173; Torquato Tasso (1544–1595), Gerusalemme Liberata (1581).

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pedantry is meant that minute knowledge which is derived from particular sciences and studies, in opposition to the general notions supplied by a wide survey of life and nature, Cowley certainly errs, by introducing pedantry far more frequently than Tasso. I know not, indeed, why they should be compared, for the resemblance of Cowley’s work to Tasso’s is only that they both exhibit the agency of celestial and in­ fernal spirits, in which however they differ widely; for Cowley supposes them com­ monly to operate upon the mind by suggestion; Tasso represents them as promoting or obstructing events by external agency. Of particular passages that can be properly compared, I remember only the description of Heaven, in which the different manner of the two writers is suffi­ ciently discernible. Cowley’s is scarcely description, unless it be possible to describe by negatives; for he tells us only what there is not in heaven. Tasso endeavours to represent the splendours and pleasures of the regions of happiness. Tasso affords images, and Cowley sentiments.171 It happens, however, that Tasso’s description af­ fords some reason for Rymer’s censure. He says of the Supreme Being, Hà sotto i piedi e fato e la natura Ministri humili, e’l moto, e chi’l misura.172

The second line has in it more of pedantry than perhaps can be found in any other stanza of the poem. In the perusal of the Davideis, as of all Cowley’s works, we find wit and learn­ ing unprofitably squandered. Attention has no relief; the affections are never moved; we are sometimes surprised, but never delighted, and find much to admire, but little to approve. Still however it is the work of Cowley, of a mind capacious by nature, and replenished by study. In the general review of Cowley’s poetry it will be found, that he wrote with abundant fertility, but negligent or unskilful selection; with much thought, but with little imagery; that he is never pathetick, and rarely sublime, but always either in­ genious or learned, either acute or profound. It is said by Denham in his elegy, To him no author was unknown; Yet what he writ was all his own.173

171. “Thought; notion; opinion” (Dictionary, sense 1). 172. Gerusalemme Liberata, ix.lvi.7–8: “He has under his feet both fate and nature—humble ministers— both motion and the measure of time and space.” 173. John Denham, “On Mr. Abraham Cowley’s Death and Burial Amongst the Ancient Poets,” ll. 29–30.



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This wide position requires less limitation, when it is affirmed of Cowley than per­ haps of any other poet—He read much, and yet borrowed little. His character of writing was indeed not his own: he unhappily adopted that which was predominant. He saw a certain way to present praise, and not sufficiently enquiring by what means the ancients have continued to delight through all the changes of human manners, he contented himself with a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure in its spring was bright and gay, but which time has been continually stealing from his brows. He was in his own time considered as of unrivalled excellence. Clarendon rep­ resents him as having taken a flight beyond all that went before him;174 and Milton is said to have declared, that the three greatest English poets were Spenser, Shake­ speare, and Cowley.175 His manner he had in common with others; but his sentiments were his own. Upon every subject he thought for himself; and such was his copiousness of knowl­ edge, that something at once remote and applicable rushed into his mind; yet it is not likely that he always rejected a commodious idea merely because another had used it: his known wealth was so great, that he might have borrowed without loss of credit. In his elegy on Sir Henry Wotton, the last lines have such resemblance to the noble epigram of Grotius upon the death of Scaliger,176 that I cannot but think them copied from it, though they are copied by no servile hand. One passage in his Mistress is so apparently borrowed from Donne, that he probably would not have written it, had it not mingled with his own thoughts, so as that he did not perceive himself taking it from another. Altho’ I think thou never found wilt be,    Yet I’m resolv’d to search for thee;    The search itself rewards the pains. So, tho’ the chymic his great secret miss,    (For neither it in Art nor Nature is)    Yet things well worth his toil he gains:    And does his charge and labour pay With good unsought experiments by the way. —Cowley.177 174. The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon (1827), i.34. 175. Thomas Newton in his edition of Paradise Lost (1749) cited Milton’s third wife as the authority for this opinion (p. lvi). 176. Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) wrote several elegies on Joseph Scaliger (1540–1609). Perhaps the one be­ ginning “Unica lex saecli, genitoris Gloria” comes closest to Cowley’s poem, but the one beginning “Hic jacet & Gades” is also close. 177. “Maidenhead,” ll. 25–32.

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Some that have deeper digg’d Love’s mine than I, Say, where his centric happiness doth lie:    I have lov’d, and got, and told; But should I love, get, tell, till I were old, I should not find that hidden mystery;    Oh, ’tis imposture all. And as no chymic yet th’ elixir got,    But glorifies his pregnant pot,    If by the way to him befal Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,    So, lovers dream a rich and long delight,    But get a winter-­seeming summer’s night. —Donne.178

Jonson and Donne, as Dr. Hurd remarks, were then in the highest esteem.179 It is related by Clarendon, that Cowley always acknowledged his obligation to the learning and industry of Jonson,180 but I have found no traces of Jonson in his works; to emulate Donne appears to have been his purpose; and from Donne he may have learned that familiarity with religious images, and that light allusion to sacred things, by which readers far short of sanctity are frequently offended; and which would not be born in the present age, when devotion, perhaps not more fervent, is more delicate. Having produced one passage taken by Cowley from Donne, I will recompense him by another which Milton seems to have borrowed from him. He says of Goliah, His spear, the trunk was of a lofty tree, Which Nature meant some tall ship’s mast should be.181

Milton of Satan, His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great admiral, were but a wand, He walk’d with.—182

178. “Love’s Alchemy,” ll. 1–12. 179. Richard Hurd, ed., Select Works of Mr. A. Cowley (1772), i.163n. 180. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1609–1674), The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon (1759), i.35. 181. Davideis, iii.393–94. 182. Paradise Lost, i.292–95.



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His diction was in his own time censured as negligent. He seems not to have known, or not to have considered, that words being arbitrary must owe their power to association, and have the influence, and that only, which custom has given them. Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien, or most graceful action, would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanicks, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy, and the most splendid ideas drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed by words used commonly upon low and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar mouths, and contami­ nated by inelegant applications. Truth indeed is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have an intrin­ sick and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual gold which defies destruc­ tion: but gold may be so concealed in baser matter that only a chymist can recover it, sense may be so hidden in unrefined and plebeian words that none but philoso­ phers can distinguish it; and both may be so buried in impurities, as not to pay the cost of their extraction. The diction being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents itself to the intellec­ tual eye; and if the first appearance offends, a further knowledge is not often sought. Whatever professes to benefit by pleasing, must please at once. The pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected; that which elevates must always surprise. What is perceived by slow degrees may gratify us with the consciousness of improvement, but will never strike with the sense of pleasure. Of all this, Cowley appears to have been without knowledge, or without care. He makes no selection of words, nor seeks any neatness of phrase: he has no elegan­ cies either lucky or elaborate; as his endeavours were rather to impress sentences upon the understanding than images on the fancy, he has few epithets,183 and those scattered without peculiar propriety or nice adaptation. It seems to follow from the necessity of the subject, rather than the care of the writer, that the diction of his hero­ ick poem is less familiar than that of his slightest writings. He has given not the same numbers, but the same diction to the gentle Anacreon and the tempestuous Pindar. His versification seems to have had very little of his care; and if what he thinks be true, that his numbers are unmusical only when they are ill read, the art of read­ ing them is at present lost; for they are commonly harsh to modern ears. He has in­ deed many noble lines, such as the feeble care of Waller never could produce. The bulk of his thoughts sometimes swelled his verse to unexpected and inevitable gran­ deur; but his excellence of this kind is merely fortuitous: he sinks willingly down to his general carelessness, and avoids with very little care either meanness or asperity. His contractions are often rugged and harsh: 183. Epithet: “An adjective denoting any quality good or bad: as, the verdant grove, the craggy mountain’s lofty head” (Dictionary, sense 1).

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One flings a mountain, and its rivers too Torn up with’t.—184

His rhymes are very often made by pronouns or particles,185 or the like unim­ portant words, which disappoint the ear, and destroy the energy of the line. His combination of different measures is sometimes dissonant and unpleas­ ing; he joins verses together, of which the former does not slide easily into the latter. The words do and did, which so much degrade in present estimation the line that admits them, were in the time of Cowley little censured or avoided: how often he used them, and with how bad an effect, at least to our ears, will appear by a pas­ sage, in which every reader will lament to see just and noble thoughts defrauded of their praise by inelegance of language: Where honour or where conscience does not bind,    No other law shall shackle me.    Slave to myself I ne’er will be; Nor shall my future actions be confin’d    By my own present mind. Who, by resolves and vows engag’d does stand    For days, that yet belong to fate, Does like an unthrift mortgage his estate,    Before it falls into his hand,    The bondman of the cloister so, All that he does receive does always owe. And still as Time comes in, it goes away,    Not to enjoy, but debts to pay. Unhappy slave, and pupil to a bell! Which his hours’ work as well as hours does tell: Unhappy till the last, the kind releasing knell.186

His heroick lines are often formed of monosyllables; but yet they are some­ times sweet and sonorous. He says of the Messiah, Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound, And reach to worlds that must not yet be found.187 184. Davideis, iii.379–80. 185. Short indeclinable words, such as the. 186. “Ode. Upon Liberty,” ll. 95–110, part of Cowley’s essay “On Liberty.” 187. Davideis, ii.833–34.



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In another place, of David, Yet bid him go securely, when he sends; ’Tis Saul that is his foe, and we his friends. The man who has his God, no aid can lack, And we who bid him go, will bring him back.188

Yet amidst his negligence he sometimes attempted an improved and scientifick versification; of which it will be best to give his own account subjoined to this line, “Nor can the glory contain itself in th’ endless space.”189 I am sorry that it is necessary to admonish the most part of readers, that it is not by negligence that this verse is so loose, long, and, as it were, vast; it is to paint in the number the nature of the thing which it describes, which I would have observed in divers other places of this poem, that else will pass for very careless verses: as before, “And over-­runs the neighb’ring fields with violent course.” In the second book; “Down a precipice deep, down he casts them all.—” —And, “And fell a-­down his shoulders with loose care.” In the third, “Brass was his helmet, his boots brass, and o’er His breast a thick plate of strong brass he wore.” In the fourth, “Like some fair pine o’er-­looking all th’ ignobler wood.” 188. Ibid., i.409–12. 189. Ibid., i.354; the following is Cowley’s note, quoting Davideis, i.60; ii.611, 802; iii.391–92; iv.351, 983.

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And, “Some from the rocks cast themselves down headlong.” And many more: but it is enough to instance in a few. The thing is, that the disposition of words and numbers should be such, as that, out of the order and sound of them, the things themselves may be represented. This the Greeks were not so accurate as to bind themselves to; neither have our English poets observed it, for aught I can find. The Latins (qui musas colunt severiores)190 sometimes did it, and their prince, Virgil, always: in whom the examples are innumerable, and taken notice of by all judicious men, so that it is superfluous to collect them.

I know not whether he has, in many of these instances, attained the represen­ tation or resemblance that he purposes. Verse can imitate only sound and motion. A “boundless” verse, a “headlong” verse, and a verse of “brass” or of “strong brass,” seem to comprise very incongruous and unsociable ideas. What there is peculiar in the sound of the line expressing “loose care,” I cannot discover; nor why the “pine” is “taller” in an Alexandrine than in ten syllables. But, not to defraud him of his due praise, he has given one example of repre­ sentative versification, which perhaps no other English line can equal: Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise. He who defers this work from day to day, Does on a river’s bank expecting stay Till the whole stream that stopp’d him shall be gone, Which runs, and as it runs, for ever shall run on.191

Cowley was, I believe, the first poet that mingled Alexandrines at pleasure with the common heroick of ten syllables, and from him Dryden borrowed the practice, whether ornamental or licentious. He considered the verse of twelve syllables as ele­ vated and majestick, and has therefore deviated into that measure when he supposes the voice heard of the Supreme Being. The author of the Davideis is commended by Dryden for having written it in couplets, because he discovered that any staff 192 was too lyrical193 for an heroick poem; 190. Martial, Epigrams, ix.ii.17: “they who cultivate more austere muses.” 191. Cowley’s translation of Horace, Epistles, i.ii.40–43, in his essay “The Danger of Procrastination.” 192. “A stanza; a series of verses regularly disposed, so as that, when the series concluded, the same order begins again” (Dictionary, sense 7). 193. Characteristic of song or singing.



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but this seems to have been known before by May and Sandys, the translators of the Pharsalia and the Metamorphoses.194 In the Davideis are some hemistichs, or verses left imperfect by the author, in imitation of Virgil, whom he supposes not to have intended to complete them: that this opinion is erroneous may be probably concluded, because this truncation is imitated by no subsequent Roman poet; because Virgil himself filled up one bro­ ken line in the heat of recitation; because in one the sense is now unfinished; and because all that can be done by a broken verse, a line intersected by a caesura and a full stop will equally effect. Of triplets in his Davideis he makes no use, and perhaps did not at first think them allowable; but he appears afterwards to have changed his mind, for in the verses on the government of Cromwell he inserts them liberally with great happi­ ness. After so much criticism on his poems, the essays which accompany them must not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, that no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, may be applied to these compo­ sitions. No author ever kept his verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural, and his stile has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-­sought, or hard-­ laboured; but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness. It has been observed by Felton, in his Essay on the Classicks, that Cowley was beloved by every Muse that he courted; and that he has rivalled the Ancients in every kind of poetry but tragedy.195 It may be affirmed, without any encomiastick fervour, that he brought to his poetick labours a mind replete with learning, and that his pages are embellished with all the ornaments which books could supply; that he was the first who imparted to English numbers the enthusiasm of the greater ode, and the gaiety of the less;196 that he was equally qualified for spritely sallies, and for lofty flights; that he was among those who freed translation from servility, and instead of following his author at a distance, walked by his side; and that if he left versification yet improvable, he left likewise from time to time such specimens of excellence as enabled succeeding poets to improve it.

194. Thomas May (c. 1596–1650) translated Lucan’s Pharsalia (1626–27). George Sandys (1578–1644) translated Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1621–26). 195. Henry Felton, A Dissertation on Reading the Classics, 3d ed. (1718), p. 26. 196. The “greater ode” is Pindaric; “the less” is Horatian.

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L I F E O F M I LTO N The life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with such minute enquiry, that I might perhaps more properly have contented myself with the addition of a few notes to Mr. Fenton’s elegant abridgement,1 but that a new narra­ tive was thought necessary to the uniformity of this edition. John Milton was by birth a gentleman, descended from the proprietors of Milton near Thame in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate in the times of York and Lancaster. Which side he took I know not; his descendant inherited no veneration for the White Rose.2 His grandfather John was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous papist, who disinherited his son, because he had forsaken the religion of his ancestors. His father, John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse for his support to the profession of a scrivener. He was a man eminent for his skill in musick, many of his compositions being still to be found; and his reputation in his profession was such, that he grew rich, and retired to an estate. He had probably more than com­ mon literature,3 as his son addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems.4 He married a gentlewoman of the name of Caston, a Welsh family, by whom he had two sons, John the poet, and Christopher who studied the law, and adhered, as the law taught him, to the king’s party, for which he was awhile persecuted, but having, by his brother’s interest, obtained permission to live in quiet, he supported himself so honourably by chamber-­practice, that, soon after the accession of King James, he was knighted and made a judge; but, his constitution being too weak for business, he retired before any disreputable compliances became necessary.5 He had likewise a daughter Anne, whom he married with a considerable for­ tune to Edward Phillips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the Crown-­office to be secondary:6 by him she had two sons, John and Edward, who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only authentick account of his domes­ tick manners. John, the poet, was born in his father’s house, at the Spread-­Eagle in Bread-­ 1. Elijah Fenton’s short biography appended to an edition of Paradise Lost (1725), which SJ commended for its “tenderness and integrity” in “Fenton” (Yale, xxii.782). 2. The Wars of the Roses (red for Lancaster and white for York) were fought 1455–85 and resulted in the rise of the Lancastrian Tudor dynasty, in which Elizabeth I was the last monarch. 3. Learning. 4. Ad Patrem (“To Father”). 5. James II, a Catholic, became king in 1685 and knighted Christopher Milton in 1686. 6. “An officer of the corporation of the City of London” (OED, sense B1C).

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street, Dec. 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning. His father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; for he was instructed at first by pri­ vate tuition under the care of Thomas Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburgh; and of whom we have reason to think well, since his scholar considered him as worthy of an epistolary elegy.7 He was then sent to St. Paul’s School, under the care of Mr. Gill;8 and re­ moved, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ’s College in Cambridge, where he entered a sizer, Feb. 12, 1624.9 He was at this time eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he himself, by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of which the learned Politian10 had given him an example, seems to commend the earliness of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity. But the products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by many, and particularly by his contemporary Cowley. Of the powers of the mind it is difficult to form an estimate: many have excelled Milton in their first essays, who never rose to works like Paradise Lost. At fifteen, a date which he uses till he is sixteen, he translated or versified two Psalms, 114 and 136, which he thought worthy of the publick eye; but they raise no great expectations: they would in any numerous school have obtained praise, but not excited wonder. Many of his elegies appear to have been written in his eighteenth year, by which it appears that he had then read the Roman authors with very nice discern­ ment. I once heard Mr. Hampton, the translator of Polybius, remark what I think is true, that Milton was the first Englishman who, after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classick elegance.11 If any exceptions can be made, they are very few: Haddon and Ascham, the pride of Elizabeth’s reign, however they may have succeeded in prose, no sooner attempt verses than they provoke derision.12 If we produced any thing worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was perhaps Alabaster’s Roxana.13 Of the exercises which the rules of the university required, some were pub­ lished by him in his maturer years. They had been undoubtedly applauded; for they were such as few can perform: yet there is reason to suspect that he was regarded 7. Elegia Quarta (Elegy IV) is addressed to Thomas Young. 8. Alexander Gill (1564–1635), a spelling reformer. 9. Milton was not a sizar, one who has to work for his tuition, but a lesser-­pensioner, who was somewhat better off. 10. Angelo Poliziano (1454–1494), humanist scholar-­poet of whose Latin poetry SJ proposed an edition in 1734. 11. James Hampton, The General History of Polybius (1756), which SJ reviewed (see Yale, xx.291). 12. Walter Haddon (1516–1572) and Roger Ascham (1515–1568), whose English Works SJ edited in 1761; his notes to the edition touch on some poetic efforts of both writers (see Yale, xix.448–49). 13. William Alabaster composed Roxana (1632) about forty years before its publication.

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in his college with no great fondness. That he obtained no fellowship is certain; but the unkindness with which he was treated was not merely negative. I am ashamed to relate what I fear is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either university that suffered the publick indignity of corporal correction. It was, in the violence of controversial hostility, objected to him,14 that he was expelled: this he steadily denies, and it was apparently not true; but it seems plain from his own verses to Diodati, that he had incurred rustication; a temporary dis­ mission into the country, with perhaps the loss of a term: Me tenet urbs refluâ quam Thamesis alluit undâ,    Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet. Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum,    Nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor.— Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri,    Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo. Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates,    Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi, Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemve recuso,    Laetus et exilii conditione fruor.15

I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence can give to the term, vetiti laris, “a habitation from which he is excluded”; or how “exile” can be otherwise interpreted. He declares yet more, that he is weary of en­ during “the threats of a rigorous master, and something else, which a temper like his cannot undergo.” What was more than threat was probably punishment. This poem, which mentions his “exile,” proves likewise that it was not perpetual; for it concludes with a resolution of returning some time to Cambridge. And it may be conjectured from the willingness with which he has perpetuated the memory of his exile, that its cause was such as gave him no shame. He took both the usual degrees; that of batchelor in 1628, and that of master in 1632; but he left the university with no kindness for its institution, alienated either by the injudicious severity of his governors, or his own captious perverseness. The 14. To object: “To bring forth or mention (something) by way of disapproval, disparagement or mockery” (OED, sense 3). 15. Elegia Prima (Elegy I), addressed to Milton’s friend Charles Diodati (1609/10–1638), ll. 9–12 and 15–20: “I am still in the city which the Thames washes with its tides: still in the delightful place where I was born. Nor am I reluctant to be here. At present I am not anxious to revisit the reedy Cam. I am not pining away for my rooms, long forbidden to me. . . . I do not like having always to stomach the threats of a stern tutor, and other things which my spirit will not tolerate. If this be exile—to have come home, to live in welcome leisure free from care—then I do not object to the name or fate of an exile, but gladly enjoy my banishment” (John Milton: Complete Shorter Poems, 2d ed., trans. John Carey [1997]).



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cause cannot now be known, but the effect appears in his writings. His scheme of education, inscribed to Hartlib, supersedes all academical instruction, being in­ tended to comprise the whole time which men usually spend in literature, from their entrance upon grammar, “till they proceed, as it is called, masters of arts.”16 And in his discourse On the likeliest Way to remove Hirelings out of the Church, he inge­ niously proposes, that the profits of the lands forfeited by the act for superstitious uses, should be applied to such academies all over the land, where languages and arts may be taught together; so that youth may be at once brought up to a competency of learning and an honest trade, by which means such of them as had the gift, being enabled to support themselves (without tithes) by the latter, may, by the help of the former, become worthy preachers.17

One of his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted, is, that men designed for orders in the Church were permitted to act plays, “writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antick and dishonest gestures of Trinca­ los, buffoons and bawds, prostituting the shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes of courtiers and court-­ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles.”18 This is sufficiently peevish in a man, who, when he mentions his exile from the college, relates, with great luxuriance, the compensation which the pleasures of the theatre afford him. Plays were therefore only criminal when they were acted by academicks. He went to the university with a design of entering into the church, but in time altered his mind; for he declared, that whoever became a clergyman must “sub­ scribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a conscience that could retch, he must straight perjure himself. He thought it better to prefer a blame­ less silence before the office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing.”19 These expressions are, I find, applied to the subscription of the Articles;20 but it seems more probable that they relate to canonical obedience. I know not any of the 16. Milton dedicated his essay Of Education (1644) to Samuel Hartlib (c. 1600–1662), educational re­ former. SJ paraphrases parts; see Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al., 8 vols. (1953– 82), ii.380. 17. SJ paraphrases part of Milton’s Considerations Touching the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings Out of the Church (1659); see Milton, Complete Prose Works, vii.305–6. 18. An Apology for Smectymnuus; see Milton, Complete Prose Works, i.887. 19. The Reason of Church Government (1642); see Milton, Complete Prose Works, i.822–23. 20. The thirty-­nine articles of faith established by the Church of England, subscription to which was

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Articles which seem to thwart his opinions; but the thoughts of obedience, whether canonical or civil, raised his indignation. His unwillingness to engage in the ministry, perhaps not yet advanced to a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his friends, who had reproved his suspended and dilatory life, which he seems to have imputed to an in­ satiable curiosity, and fantastick luxury of various knowledge. To this he writes a cool and plausible answer, in which he endeavours to persuade him that the delay proceeds not from the delights of desultory study, but from the desire of obtaining more fitness for his task; and that he goes on, “not taking thought of being late, so it give advantage to be more fit.”21 When he left the university, he returned to his father, then residing at Horton in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years; in which time he is said to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. With what limitations this universality is to be understood, who shall inform us? It might be supposed that he who read so much should have done nothing else; but Milton found time to write the masque of Comus, which was presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the Lord President of Wales, in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by the Earl of Bridgewater’s sons and daughter. The fiction is derived from Homer’s Circe;22 but we never can refuse to any modern the liberty of borrowing from Homer:       —a quo ceu fonte perenni Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis.23

His next production was Lycidas, an elegy, written in 1637, on the death of Mr. King, the son of Sir John King, secretary for Ireland in the time of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. King was much a favourite at Cambridge, and many of the wits joined to do honour to his memory. Milton’s acquaintance with the Italian writers may be discovered by a mixture of longer and shorter verses, according to the rules of Tus­ can poetry, and his malignity to the Church by some lines which are interpreted as threatening its extermination.24 He is supposed about this time to have written his Arcades; for while he lived at Horton he used sometimes to steal from his studies a few days, which he spent then required of students at Cambridge. Canonical obedience is required of communicants to the episcopal hierarchy. 21. For this letter, see Milton, Complete Prose Works, i.319–21. 22. Circe is a wicked temptress with magical powers in the Odyssey (x.133 ff.). 23. Ovid, Amores, iii.ix.25–26: “from whom as from fount perennial the lips of bards are bedewed with Pierian waters” (Loeb edition, trans. Showerman and Goold, 1977). 24. See Lycidas, ll. 108–31.



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at Harefield, the house of the Countess Dowager of Derby, where the Arcades made part of a dramatick entertainment. He began now to grow weary of the country; and had some purpose of taking chambers in the Inns of Court,25 when the death of his mother set him at liberty to travel, for which he obtained his father’s consent, and Sir Henry Wotton’s direc­ tions, with the celebrated precept of prudence, “i pensieri stretti, ed il viso sciolto”; “thoughts close, and looks loose.”26 In 1638 he left England, and went first to Paris; where, by the favour of Lord Scudamore, he had the opportunity of visiting Grotius, then residing at the French court as ambassador from Christina of Sweden.27 From Paris he hasted into Italy, of which he had with particular diligence studied the language and literature; and, though he seems to have intended a very quick perambulation of the country, staid two months at Florence; where he found his way into the academies, and produced his compositions with such applause as appears to have exalted him in his own opin­ ion, and confirmed him in the hope, that, “by labour and intense study, which,” says he, “I take to be my portion in this life, joined with a strong propensity of nature,” he might “leave something so written to after-­times, as they should not willingly let it die.”28 It appears, in all his writings, that he had the usual concomitant of great abili­ ties, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps not without some contempt of others; for scarcely any man ever wrote so much and praised so few. Of his praise he was very frugal; as he set its value high, and considered his mention of a name as a security against the waste of time, and a certain preservative from oblivion. At Florence he could not indeed complain that his merit wanted distinction. Carlo Dati presented him with an encomiastick inscription, in the tumid lapidary stile; and Francini wrote him an ode, of which the first stanza is only empty noise; the rest are perhaps too diffuse on common topicks; but the last is natural and beau­ tiful.29 From Florence he went to Sienna, and from Sienna to Rome, where he was again received with kindness by the learned and the great. Holstenius, the keeper of the Vatican Library, who had resided three years at Oxford, introduced him to Car­ 25. The professional center for lawyers and judges in London. 26. Henry Wotton (1568–1639), then Provost of Eton, sent his thoughts to Milton in 1638; see Milton, Complete Prose Works, i.339–43. 27. Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), statesman, scholar, and author of De Veritate Religionis, an important religious guide. 28. Reason of Church-­Government (1642), Milton, Complete Prose Works, i.809–10. 29. Testimonials from Carlo Roberto Dati and Antonio Francini appear in the preliminary matter of Milton’s Poemata (1645), along with those of Selvaggi and Salzilli (mentioned below); see The Complete Works of John Milton, Vol. III, The Shorter Poems, ed. Barbara Lewalski and Estelle Hann (2012), 106–15.

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dinal Barberini,30 and he, at a musical entertainment, waited for him at the door, and led him by the hand into the assembly. Here Selvaggi praised him in a distich, and Salsilli in a tetrastick; neither of them of much value. The Italians were gainers by this literary commerce; for the encomiums with which Milton repaid Salsilli, though not secure against a stern grammarian, turn the balance indisputably in Milton’s favour. Of these Italian testimonies, poor as they are, he was proud enough to publish them before his poems; though he says, he cannot be suspected but to have known that they were said non tam de se, quam supra se.31 At Rome, as at Florence, he staid only two months; a time indeed sufficient, if he desired only to ramble with an explainer of its antiquities, or to view palaces and count pictures; but certainly too short for the contemplation of learning, policy, or manners. From Rome he passed on to Naples, in company of a hermit; a companion from whom little could be expected, yet to him Milton owed his introduction to Manso marquis of Villa, who had been before the patron of Tasso.32 Manso was enough delighted with his accomplishments to honour him with a sorry distich, in which he commends him for every thing but his religion; and Milton, in return, ad­ dressed him in a Latin poem, which must have raised an high opinion of English elegance and literature.33 His purpose was now to have visited Sicily and Greece; but, hearing of the differences between the king and parliament, he thought it proper to hasten home, rather than pass his life in foreign amusements while his countrymen were contend­ ing for their rights. He therefore came back to Rome, tho’ the merchants informed him of plots laid against him by the Jesuits, for the liberty of his conversations on religion. He had sense enough to judge that there was no danger, and therefore kept on his way, and acted as before, neither obtruding nor shunning controversy. He had perhaps given some offence by visiting Galileo, then a prisoner in the Inquisition for philosophical heresy; and at Naples he was told by Manso, that, by his declarations on religious questions, he had excluded himself from some distinctions which he should otherwise have paid him. But such conduct, though it did not please, was yet sufficiently safe; and Milton staid two months more at Rome, and went on to Florence without molestation. From Florence he visited Lucca. He afterwards went to Venice; and, having 30. Lucas Holste (1596–1661) was in Oxford in 1622–24 before going to Rome, where he met the scholar and book collector Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597–1679). 31. Milton, Shorter Poems, 106: “not so much about him as over and above him.” 32. Giovanni Battista Manso (1569–1645), who befriended the great poet Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) in 1588. 33. Milton, Shorter Poems, 204–11.



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sent away a collection of musick and other books, travelled to Geneva, which he probably considered as the metropolis of orthodoxy. Here he reposed, as in a con­ genial element, and became acquainted with John Diodati and Frederick Spanheim, two learned professors of divinity.34 From Geneva he passed through France; and came home, after an absence of a year and three months. At his return he heard of the death of his friend Charles Diodati; a man whom it is reasonable to suppose of great merit, since he was thought by Milton worthy of a poem, intituled, Epitaphium Damonis, written with the common but childish imitation of pastoral life.35 He now hired a lodging at the house of one Russel, a taylor in St. Bride’s Church-­yard, and undertook the education of John and Edward Phillips, his sister’s sons. Finding his rooms too little, he took a house and garden in Aldersgate-­street, which was not then so much out of the world as it is now;36 and chose his dwelling at the upper end of a passage, that he might avoid the noise of the street. Here he received more boys, to be boarded and instructed. Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree of merri­ ment on great promises and small performance, on the man who hastens home, because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his patriotism in a private boarding-­school. This is the period of his life from which all his biographers seem inclined to shrink. They are unwilling that Milton should be degraded to a school-­master; but since it cannot be denied that he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and another that his motive was only zeal for the propagation of learning and virtue; and all tell what they do not know to be true, only to excuse an act which no wise man will con­ sider as in itself disgraceful.37 His father was alive; his allowance was not ample, and he supplied its deficiencies by an honest and useful employment. It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read in Aldersgate-­street, by youth between ten and fifteen or sixteen years of age. Those who tell or receive these stories, should consider that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed of the best horseman must be limited by the power of his horse. Every man, that has ever undertaken to instruct others, can tell what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd misapprehension.

34. Giovanni Diodati (1576–1649) was uncle to Milton’s friend Charles; Frederick Spanheim (1600–1649) was, like Diodati, a professor of divinity, though it is doubtful that Milton met him. 35. See Milton, Shorter Poems, 212 ff. 36. Aldersgate Street is near St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and the Barbican in the City of London. 37. SJ was himself a schoolmaster from late 1735 to early 1737.

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The purpose of Milton, as it seems, was to teach something more solid than the common literature of schools, by reading those authors that treat of physical sub­ jects; such as the Georgick,38 and astronomical treatises of the ancients. This was a scheme of improvement which seems to have busied many literary projectors of that age. Cowley, who had more means than Milton of knowing what was wanting to the embellishments of life, formed the same plan of education in his imaginary college.39 But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and the sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonable­ ness of opinions. Prudence and justice are virtues, and excellencies, of all times, and of all places; we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure. Physiological40 learning is of such rare emergence, that one man may know another half his life without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostaticks41 or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears. Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians. Let me not be censured for this digression as pedantick or paradoxical; for if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my side.42 It was his labour to turn phi­ losophy from the study of nature to speculations upon life, but the innovators whom I oppose are turning off attention from life to nature. They seem to think, that we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of the stars. Socrates was rather of opinion, that what we had to learn was, how to do good, and avoid evil. ὃττι τοι ἐν μεγάροισι κακόν τ᾽ ἀγαθόν τε τέτυκται.43

Of institutions we may judge by their effects. From this wonder-­working academy, I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent for knowl­ 38. Agricultural treatises or poems. 39. See Cowley, Proposition for the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy (1661). 40. “Relating to the doctrine of the natural constitution of things” (Dictionary). 41. “The science of weighing fluids” (Dictionary). 42. Cf. Rambler 24 in praise of Socrates (p. 23 above). See also the Astronomer’s comments in Rasselas (p. 238 above). 43. Odyssey, iv.392: “all that’s occurred within your palace, good and bad” (trans. Robert Fagles).



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edge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a small history of poetry, written in Latin by his nephew Phillips, of which perhaps none of my readers has ever heard.44 That in his school, as in every thing else which he undertook, he laboured with great diligence, there is no reason for doubting. One part of his method deserves general imitation. He was careful to instruct his scholars in religion. Every Sunday was spent upon theology, of which he dictated a short system, gathered from the writers that were then fashionable in the Dutch universities. He set his pupils an example of hard study and spare diet; only now and then he allowed himself to pass a day of festivity and indulgence with some gay gentle­ men of Gray’s Inn.45 He now began to engage in the controversies of the times, and lent his breath to blow the flames of contention. In 1641 he published a treatise of Reformation in two books, against the established Church; being willing to help the Puritans, who were, he says, “inferior to the prelates in learning.”46 Hall bishop of Norwich had published an Humble Remonstrance, in defence of Episcopacy;47 to which, in 1641, six ministers, of whose names the first letters made the celebrated word “Smectymnuus,” gave their answer.48 Of this answer a confuta­ tion was attempted by the learned Usher;49 and to the confutation Milton published a reply, intituled, Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduced from the Apostolical Times, by virtue of those testimonies which are alleged to that purpose in some late treatises, one whereof goes under the name of James lord bishop of Armagh. I have transcribed this title to shew, by his contemptuous mention of Usher, that he had now adopted the puritanical savageness of manners. His next work was, The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy, by Mr. John Milton, 1642. In this book he discovers, not with ostentatious exultation, but with calm confi­ dence, his high opinion of his own powers; and promises to undertake something, he yet knows not what, that may be of use and honour to his country. “This,” says he, is not to be obtained but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that can en­ rich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. 44. Edward Phillips, Tractatulus de Carmine Dramatico Poetarum Veterum, in Johann Buchler, Sacrum Profanarumque Phrasium Poeticarum Thesaurus (17th ed., 1669). 45. Gray’s Inn was one of the four Inns of Court (see p. 648, n. 25, above). 46. Defensio Secunda, in Milton, Complete Prose Works, iv(i).623. 47. Joseph Hall (1574–1656), Humble Remonstrance (1641). 48. There were only five: Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow. 49. James Usher (1581–1656), Archbishop of Armagh, wrote tracts on biblical chronology and dated the beginning of the world to 23 October 4004 BCE.

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To this must be added, industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs; till which in some measure be compast, I refuse not to sustain this expectation.50

From a promise like this, at once fervid, pious, and rational, might be expected the Paradise Lost. He published the same year two more pamphlets, upon the same question.51 To one of his antagonists, who affirms that he was “vomited out of the university,” he answers, in general terms; The Fellows of the College wherein I spent some years, at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many times how much better it would content them that I should stay.—As for the common ap­ probation or dislike of that place, as now it is, that I should esteem or dis­ esteem myself the more for that, too simple is the answerer, if he think to obtain52 with me. Of small practice were the physician who could not judge, by what she and her sister have of long time vomited, that the worser stuff she strongly keeps in her stomach, but the better she is ever kecking at, and is queasy: she vomits now out of sickness; but before it be well with her, she must vomit by strong physick.—The university, in the time of her better health, and my younger judgement, I never greatly admired, but now much less.53

This is surely the language of a man who thinks that he has been injured. He proceeds to describe the course of his conduct, and the train of his thoughts; and, because he has been suspected of incontinence, gives an account of his own purity: “That if I be justly charged,” says he, “with this crime, it may come upon me with tenfold shame.” The stile of his piece is rough, and such perhaps was that of his antagonist. This roughness he justifies, by great examples, in a long digression. Sometimes he tries to be humorous: Lest I should take him for some chaplain in hand, some squire of the body to his prelate, one who serves not at the altar only but at the Court-­cupboard,

50. Milton, Complete Prose Works, i.820–21. 51. Animadversions upon the Remonstrant’s Defence Against Smectymnuus (1641) and An Apology Against a Pamphlet (1642). See Milton, Complete Prose Works, i.653–735, 862–953. 52. “To be victorious; to prevail” (OED, sense 4.b). 53. An Apology, in Milton, Complete Prose Works, i.884–85.



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he will bestow on us a pretty model of himself; and sets me out half a dozen ptisical54 mottos, wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of convulsion fits; in which labour the agony of his wit having scaped nar­ rowly, instead of well-­sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of thum­ bring posies.—And thus ends this section, or rather dissection of himself.

Such is the controversial merriment of Milton: his gloomy seriousness is yet more offensive. Such is his malignity, “that hell grows darker at his frown.”55 His father, after Reading was taken by Essex, came to reside in his house; and his school increased. At Whitsuntide, in his thirty-­fifth year, he married Mary, the daughter of Mr. Powel, a justice of the peace in Oxfordshire.56 He brought her to town with him, and expected all the advantages of a conjugal life. The lady, however, seems not much to have delighted in the pleasures of spare diet and hard study; for, as Phillips relates, “having for a month led a philosophical life, after having been used at home to a great house, and much company and joviality, her friends, pos­ sibly by her own desire, made earnest suit to have her company the remaining part of the summer; which was granted, upon a promise of her return at Michaelmas.”57 Milton was too busy to much miss his wife: he pursued his studies; and now and then visited the lady Margaret Leigh, whom he has mentioned in one of his son­ nets.58 At last Michaelmas arrived; but the lady had no inclination to return to the sullen gloom of her husband’s habitation, and therefore very willingly forgot her promise. He sent her a letter, but had no answer; he sent more with the same suc­ cess. It could be alleged that letters miscarry; he therefore dispatched a messenger, being by this time too angry to go himself. His mesasenger was sent back with some contempt. The family of the lady were Cavaliers.59 In a man whose opinion of his own merit was like Milton’s, less provocation than this might have raised violent resentment. Milton soon determined to repudi­ ate her for disobedience; and, being one of those who could easily find arguments to justify inclination, published (in 1644)60 The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; which was followed by The Judgement of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce; and the next year, his Tetrachordon, Expositions upon the four chief Places of Scripture which treat of Marriage. 54. Tubercular. 55. Paradise Lost, ii.719–20. 56. Milton married Mary Powell in 1642, probably in early July. 57. From Phillips’s life of Milton; see The Early Lives of Milton, ed. Helen Darbishire (1932), p. 64. 58. Milton’s Sonnet X is addressed to Lady Margaret Ley, daughter of the first Earl of Marlborough, James Ley (1550–1629). 59. Supporters of the king during the Civil Wars. 60. The first edition was published in 1643, the second in 1644.

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This innovation was opposed, as might be expected, by the clergy; who, then holding their famous assembly at Westminster, procured that the author should be called before the Lords; “but that house,” says Wood, “whether approving the doc­ trine, or not favouring his accusers, did soon dismiss him.”61 There seems not to have been much written against him, nor any thing by any writer of eminence. The antagonist that appeared is stiled by him, “a serving-­man turned solicitor.” Howel in his letters mentions the new doctrine with contempt; and it was, I suppose, thought more worthy of derision than of confutation. He com­ plains of this neglect in two sonnets, of which the first is contemptible, and the sec­ ond not excellent.62 From this time it is observed that he became an enemy to the Presbyterians, whom he had favoured before. He that changes his party by his humour,63 is not more virtuous than he that changes it by his interest; he loves himself rather than truth. His wife and her relations now found that Milton was not an unresisting suf­ ferer of injuries; and perceiving that he had begun to put his doctrine in practice, by courting a young woman of great accomplishments, the daughter of one Doctor Davis, who was however not ready to comply, they resolved to endeavour a re-­union. He went sometimes to the house of one Blackborough, his relation, in the lane of St. Martin’s-­le-­Grand, and at one of his usual visits was surprised to see his wife come from another room, and implore forgiveness on her knees. He resisted her intreaties for a while; “but partly,” says Phillips, “his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger or revenge, and partly the strong intercession of friends on both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion64 and a firm league of peace.”65 It were injurious to omit, that Milton afterwards received her father and her brothers in his own house, when they were distressed, with other Royalists. He published about the same time his Areopagitica, a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed Printing. The danger of such unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of govern­ ment, which human understanding seems hitherto unable to solve. If nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have previously approved, power must always be the standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his 61. Anthony à Wood (1632–1695) included in his Fasti Oxonienses (1691) a life of Milton, which is in­ cluded in Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton. 62. Sonnet XI and Sonnet XII. 63. “A temporary state of mind or feeling; a mood” (OED, sense ii5a). 64. A reference to the act of Parliament in 1660 that pardoned crimes against the crown during the Inter­ regnum; see p. 667 below. 65. Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, p. 67.



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projects, there can be no settlement;66 if every murmurer at government may dif­ fuse discontent, there can be no peace; and if every sceptick in theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion. The remedy against these evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed that every society may punish, though not prevent, the publication of opinions, which that society shall think pernicious: but this punish­ ment, though it may crush the author, promotes the book; and it seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be after­ wards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief. But whatever were his engagements, civil or domestick, poetry was never long out of his thoughts. About this time (1645) a collection of his Latin and English poems appeared, in which the Allegro and Penseroso, with some others, were first published. He had taken a larger house in Barbican for the reception of scholars; but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he generously granted refuge for a while, occupied his rooms. In time, however, they went away; and the “house again,” says Phillips, now looked like a house of the Muses only, though the accession of schol­ ars was not great. Possibly his having proceeded so far in the education of youth, may have been the occasion of his adversaries calling him pedagogue and school-­master; whereas it is well known he never set up for a publick school, to teach all the young fry of a parish; but only was willing to impart his learning and knowledge to relations, and the sons of gentlemen who were his intimate friends; and that neither his writings nor his way of teaching ever savoured in the least of pedantry.67

Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and what might be confessed without disgrace. Milton was not a man who could become mean by a mean employment. This, however, his warmest friends seem not to have found; they therefore shift and palliate. He did not sell literature to all comers at an open shop; he was a chamber-­milliner,68 and measured his commodities only to his friends. Phillips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this state of degradation, tells us that it was not long continued; and, to raise his character again, has a mind to in­ vest him with military splendour: “He is much mistaken,” he says, “if there was not

66. “The act of establishing (public affairs, etc.) in security or tranquility” (OED, ii7a). 67. Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, pp. 67–68. 68. “A milliner who transacts business from a private house, rather than a shop” (OED).

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about this time a design of making him an adjutant-­general in Sir William Waller’s army. But the new-­modelling of the army proved an obstruction to the design.”69 An event cannot be set at a much greater distance than by having been only “designed, about some time,” if a man “be not much mistaken.” Milton shall be a pedagogue no longer; for, if Phillips be not much mistaken, somebody at some time designed him for a soldier. About the time that the army was new-­modelled (1645) he removed to a smaller house in Holbourn, which opened backward into Lincoln’s-­Inn-­Fields. He is not known to have published any thing afterwards till the king’s death, when, finding his murderers condemned by the Presbyterians, he wrote a treatise to justify it, and “to compose the minds of the people.”70 He made some Remarks on the Articles of Peace between Ormond and the Irish Rebels.71 While he contented himself to write, he perhaps did only what his con­ science dictated; and if he did not very vigilantly watch the influence of his own passions, and the gradual prevalence of opinions, first willingly admitted and then habitually indulged, if objections, by being overlooked, were forgotten, and desire superinduced conviction, he yet shared only the common weakness of mankind, and might be no less sincere than his opponents. But as faction seldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him, Milton is suspected of having interpolated the book called Icon Basilike, which the Council of State, to whom he was now made Latin secretary, employed him to censure, by inserting a prayer taken from Sidney’s Arcadia, and imputing it to the king;72 whom he charges, in his Iconoclastes, with the use of this prayer as with a heavy crime, in the indecent language with which prosperity had emboldened the advocates for rebellion to insult all that is vener­ able or great: “Who would have imagined so little fear in him of the true all-­seeing Deity—as, immediately before his death, to pop into the hands of the grave bishop that attended him, as a special relique of his saintly exercises, a prayer stolen word for word from the mouth of a heathen woman praying to a heathen god?”73 The papers which the king gave to Dr. Juxon on the scaffold the regicides took away, so that they were at least the publishers of this prayer; and Dr. Birch, who had examined the question with great care, was inclined to think them the forgers.74 The 69. Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, p. 68. 70. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649); SJ paraphrases. 71. Observations Upon the Articles of Peace (1649); see Milton, Complete Prose Works, iii.259 ff. 72. The charge of forgery, first made in 1697, is without foundation. 73. Eikonoklastes; Milton, Complete Prose Works, iii.362. 74. Thomas Birch’s “Historical and Critical Account of the Life and Writings of Mr. John Milton” is part of his edition of Milton’s prose (1738): i.lxxviii–­lxxxiii. In the second edition of this work (1753), Birch makes clear his disbelief of the forgery charge. Bishop William Juxon (1582–1663) attended Charles I in court and on the scaffold.



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use of it by adaptation was innocent; and they who could so noisily censure it, with a little extension of their malice could contrive what they wanted to accuse. King Charles the Second, being now sheltered in Holland, employed Salma­ sius, professor of Polite Learning at Leyden,75 to write a defence of his father and of monarchy; and, to excite his industry, gave him, as was reported, a hundred jaco­ buses.76 Salmasius was a man of skill in languages, knowledge of antiquity, and sa­ gacity of emendatory criticism, almost exceeding all hope of human attainment; and having, by excessive praises, been confirmed in great confidence of himself, though he probably had not much considered the principles of society or the rights of gov­ ernment, undertook the employment without distrust of his own qualifications; and, as his expedition in writing was wonderful, in 1649 published Defensio Regis. To this Milton was required to write a sufficient answer; which he performed (1651) in such a manner, that Hobbes declared himself unable to decide whose lan­ guage was best, or whose arguments were worst.77 In my opinion, Milton’s periods are smoother, neater, and more pointed; but he delights himself with teizing his ad­ versary as much as with confuting him. He makes a foolish allusion of Salmasius, whose doctrine he considers as servile and unmanly, to the stream of Salmacis, which whoever entered left half his virility behind him. Salmasius was a French­ man, and was unhappily married to a scold. Tu es Gallus, says Milton, et, ut aiunt, nimium gallinaceus.78 But his supreme pleasure is to tax his adversary, so renowned for criticism, with vitious Latin. He opens his book with telling that he has used persona, which, according to Milton, signifies only a “mask,” in a sense not known to the Romans, by applying it as we apply “person.”79 But as Nemesis is always on the watch, it is memorable that he has enforced the charge of a solecism by an expres­ sion in itself grossly solecistical, when, for one of those supposed blunders, he says, as Ker, and I think some one before him, has remarked, propino te grammatistis tuis vapulandum.80 From vapulo, which has a passive sense, vapulandus can never be derived. No man forgets his original trade: the rights of nations, and of kings, sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them. Milton when he undertook this answer was weak of body, and dim of sight; 75. Claude Saumaise (1588–1653). 76. A gold coin minted in the reign of James I (1603–1625). 77. Milton’s work is Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (A Defense of the English People); Thomas Hobbes made his comment in Behemoth (1679), p. 172. 78. “You yourself . . . are Gallic, and (they say) but too cocky.” Using Latin puns, the passage accuses Salmasius of having no control over his wife; see The Works of John Milton, 18 vols. (1931–38), vii.280–81. 79. The Works of John Milton (1931–38), vii.16–17. 80. “I turn you over to your fellow grammarians for lashing”; see The Works of John Milton (1931–38), vii.16. John Ker made a similar remark in his Select Remarks on Latin (1709), ii.sig.Rq4v, and cited an earlier commentator. Professor Robert D. Brown confirms SJ’s finding that this personal use of the gerundive of vapulo is impossible.

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but his will was forward, and what was wanting of health was supplied by zeal. He was rewarded with a thousand pounds, and his book was much read; for paradox,81 recommended by spirit and elegance, easily gains attention; and he who told every man that he was equal to his king, could hardly want an audience. That the performance of Salmasius was not dispersed with equal rapidity, or read with equal eagerness, is very credible. He taught only the stale doctrine of au­ thority, and the unpleasing duty of submission; and he had been so long not only the monarch but the tyrant of literature, that almost all mankind were delighted to find him defied and insulted by a new name, not yet considered as any one’s rival. If Christina, as is said, commended the Defence of the People, her purpose must be to torment Salmasius, who was then at her court; for neither her civil station nor her natural character could dispose her to favour the doctrine, who was by birth a queen, and by temper despotick.82 That Salmasius was, from the appearance of Milton’s book, treated with ne­ glect, there is not much proof; but to a man so long accustomed to admiration, a little praise of his antagonist would be sufficiently offensive, and might incline him to leave Sweden, from which, however, he was dismissed, not with any mark of con­ tempt, but with a train of attendance scarce less than regal. He prepared a reply, which, left as it was imperfect, was published by his son in the year of the Restauration. In the beginning, being probably most in pain for his Latinity, he endeavours to defend his use of the word persona; but, if I remem­ ber right, he misses a better authority than any that he has found, that of Juvenal in his fourth satire: —Quid agas cum dira & foedior omni Crimine persona est? 83

As Salmasius reproached Milton with losing his eyes in the quarrel, Milton delighted himself with the belief that he had shortened Salmasius’s life, and both perhaps with more malignity than reason. Salmasius died at the Spa, Sept. 3, 1653; and as controvertists are commonly said to be killed by their last dispute, Milton was flattered with the credit of destroying him. Cromwell had now dismissed the parliament by the authority of which he had destroyed monarchy, and commenced monarch himself, under the title of Protector, but with kingly and more than kingly power. That his authority was lawful, never was 81. “A position in appearance absurd” (Dictionary). 82. Queen Christina of Sweden (1626–89) continued to admire and support Salmasius after Milton’s attack. See Milton, Complete Prose Works, iv (ii).964–77. 83. “What can you do when the person himself is more dreadful and repulsive than any accusation?” ll. 14–15 (Loeb edition, trans. Susanna Morton Braund, 2004).



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pretended; he himself founded his right only in necessity; but Milton, having now tasted the honey of publick employment, would not return to hunger and philoso­ phy, but, continuing to exercise his office under a manifest usurpation, betrayed to his power that liberty which he had defended. Nothing can be more just than that rebellion should end in slavery; that he, who had justified the murder of his king, for some acts which to him seemed unlawful, should now sell his services, and his flatteries, to a tyrant, of whom it was evident that he could do nothing lawful. He had now been blind for some years; but his vigour of intellect was such, that he was not disabled to discharge his office of Latin secretary, or continue his controversies. His mind was too eager to be diverted, and too strong to be subdued. About this time his first wife died in childbed, having left him three daughters. As he probably did not much love her, he did not long continue the appearance of lamenting her; but after a short time married Catherine, the daughter of one Captain Woodcock of Hackney; a woman doubtless educated in opinions like his own. She died within a year, of childbirth, or some distemper that followed it; and her hus­ band has honoured her memory with a poor sonnet.84 The first reply to Milton’s Defensio Populi was published in 1651, called Apologia pro Rege & Populo Anglicano, contra Johannis Polypragmatici (alias Miltoni) defensionem destructivam Regis & Populi. Of this the author was not known; but Milton and his nephew Phillips, under whose name he published an answer so much corrected by him that it might be called his own, imputed it to Bramhal; and, knowing him no friend to regicides, thought themselves at liberty to treat him as if they had known what they only suspected.85 Next year appeared Regii Sanguinis clamor ad Coelum. Of this the author was Peter du Moulin, who was afterwards prebendary of Canterbury; but Morus, or More, a French minister, having the care of its publication, was treated as the writer by Milton, in his Defensio Secunda, and overwhelmed by such violence of invective, that he began to shrink under the tempest, and gave his persecutors the means of knowing the true author. Du Moulin was now in great danger; but Milton’s pride operated against his malignity, and both he and his friends were more willing that Du Moulin should escape than that he should be convicted of mistake. In this second Defence he shews that his eloquence is not merely satirical; the rudeness of his invective is equalled by the grossness of his flattery. Deserimur, Cromuelle, tu solus superes, ad te summa nostrarum rerum rediit, in te solo consistit, insuperabili tuae virtuti cedimus cuncti, nemine vel oblo84. Sonnet XIX (“Methought I saw my late espoused saint”). 85. John Bramhall (1594–1663), Archbishop of Armagh, famous for his refutations of Hobbes (which SJ quoted at least seventy-­two times in Dictionary), was not the author; the author was an obscure writer named John Rowland. The nephew to whom SJ refers is John Phillips (1631–1706?).

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quente, nisi qui aequales inaequalis ipse honores sibi quaerit, aut digniori concessos invidet, aut non intelligit nihil esse in societate hominum magis vel Deo gratum, vel rationi consentaneum, esse in civitate nihil aequius, nihil utilius, quam potiri rerum dignissimum. Eum te agnoscunt omnes, Cromuelle, ea tu civis maximus et gloriosissimus,86 dux publici consilii, exercituum fortissimorum imperator, pater patriae gessisti. Sic tu spontanea bonorum omnium et animitus missa voce salutaris.

Caesar, when he assumed the perpetual dictatorship, had not more servile or more elegant flattery. A translation may shew its servility; but its elegance is less at­ tainable. Having exposed the unskilfulness or selfishness of the former government, “We were left,” says Milton, “to ourselves: the whole national interest fell into your hands, and subsists only in your abilities. To your virtue, over­ powering and resistless, every man gives way, except some who, without equal qualifications, aspire to equal honours, who envy the distinctions of merit greater than their own, or who have yet to learn, that in the coalition of human society nothing is more pleasing to God, or more agreeable to reason, than that the highest mind should have the sovereign power. Such, Sir, are you by general confession; such are the things atchieved by you, the greatest and most glorious of our countrymen, the director of our pub­ lick councils, the leader of unconquered armies, the father of your country; for by that title does every good man hail you, with sincere and voluntary praise.”

Next year, having defended all that wanted defence, he found leisure to defend himself. He undertook his own vindication against More, whom he declares in his title to be justly called the author of the Regii Sanguinis clamor. In this there is no want of vehemence nor eloquence, nor does he forget his wonted wit. “Morus es? an Momus? an uterque idem est?”87 He then remembers that morus is Latin for a mulberry-­tree, and hints at the known transformation:       —Poma alba ferebat Quae post nigra tulit morus.88 86. [SJ’s note] It may be doubted whether gloriosissimus be here used with Milton’s boasted purity. Res gloriosa is an “illustrious thing”; but vir gloriosus is commonly a “braggart,” as in miles gloriosus. 87. “Are you Morus, or Momus? Or are both one and the same person?” (The Works of John Milton [1931–38], ix.168–69). 88. “Now fruit all black, the conscious Morus bore, / Which purer white had ever borne before” (The Works of John Milton [1931–38], ix.208–9).



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With this piece ended his controversies; and he from this time gave himself up to his private studies and his civil employment. As secretary to the Protector he is supposed to have written the declaration of the reasons for a war with Spain. His agency was considered as of great importance; for when a treaty with Sweden was artfully suspended, the delay was publickly im­ puted to Mr. Milton’s indisposition; and the Swedish agent was provoked to express his wonder, that only one man in England could write Latin, and that man blind. Being now forty-­seven years old, and seeing himself disencumbered from ex­ ternal interruptions, he seems to have recollected his former purposes, and to have resumed three great works which he had planned for his future employment: an epick poem, the history of his country, and a dictionary of the Latin tongue. To collect a dictionary seems a work of all others least practicable in a state of blindness, because it depends upon perpetual and minute inspection and collation. Nor would Milton probably have begun it, after he had lost his eyes; but, having had it always before him, he continued it, says Phillips, “almost to his dying-­day; but the papers were so discomposed and deficient, that they could not be fitted for the press.”89 The compilers of the Latin dictionary, printed afterwards at Cambridge,90 had the use of those collections in three folios; but what was their fate afterwards is not known. To compile a history from various authors, when they can only be consulted by other eyes, is not easy, nor possible, but with more skilful and attentive help than can be commonly obtained; and it was probably the difficulty of consulting and compar­ ing that stopped Milton’s narrative at the Conquest; a period at which affairs were not yet very intricate, nor authors very numerous. For the subject of his epick poem, after much deliberation, “long chusing, and beginning late,”91 he fixed upon “Paradise Lost”; a design so comprehensive, that it could be justified only by success. He had once designed to celebrate King Arthur, as he hints in his verses to Mansus; but “Arthur was reserved,” says Fenton, “to another destiny.”92 It appears, by some sketches of poetical projects left in manuscript, and to be seen in a library at Cambridge,93 that he had digested his thoughts on this subject into one of those wild dramas which were anciently called mysteries; and Phillips had seen what he terms part of a tragedy, beginning with the first ten lines of Satan’s 89. Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, p. 72. 90. Adam Littleton, Linguae Romanae Dictionarium Luculentum Novum (1693). Milton’s manuscript is lost. 91. Paradise Lost, ix.25–26. 92. Paradise Lost, ed. Elijah Fenton (1725), pp. x–­xi. See Milton’s Mansus, ll. 80–84. 93. This and the following quotations of the manuscript refer to Wren Library, Trinity College, Cam­ bridge, MS. R.3.4. There is no evidence that SJ saw the Cambridge manuscripts himself.

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address to the sun. These mysteries consist of allegorical persons; such as Justice, Mercy, Faith. Of the tragedy or mystery of Paradise Lost there are two plans:  The Persons.  The Persons. Michael. Moses. Chorus of Angels. Divine Justice, Wisdom, Heavenly Love.  Heavenly Love. Lucifer. The Evening Star, ⎫ Adam,  with the  Hesperus. ⎬ Eve,   Chorus of Angels. ⎭ Serpent. Conscience. Lucifer. Death. Adam. Labour, Eve. ⎫ Sickness, Conscience. Discontent, Mutes. Labour, ⎬ Ignorance, Sickness, with others, ⎭ Discontent,  Mutes. Faith. Ignorance, Hope. Fear, Charity. Death, Faith. Hope. Charity.

⎫ ⎬

⎭

Paradise Lost. The Persons. Moses, προλογίζει,94 recounting how he assumed his true body; that it cor­ rupts not, because it is with God in the mount; declares the like of Enoch and Eliah; besides the purity of the place, that certain pure winds, dews and clouds, preserve it from corruption; whence exhorts to the sight of God; tells, they cannot see Adam in the state of innocence, by reason of their sin. Justice, ⎫ Mercy,   ⎬ debating what should become of man, if he fall. Wisdom, ⎭ Chorus of Angels singing a hymn of the Creation. 94. “Delivers the prologue.”



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ACT II. Heavenly Love. Evening Star. Chorus sing the marriage-­song, and describe Paradise.

ACT III. Lucifer, contriving Adam’s ruin. Chorus fears for Adam, and relates Lucifer’s rebellion and fall.

ACT IV. Adam, ⎫ ⎬ fallen. Eve, ⎭ Conscience cites them to God’s examination. Chorus bewails, and tells the good Adam has lost.

ACT V. Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise. ——— presented by an angel with Labour, Grief, Hatred, Envy, ⎫  War, Famine, Pestilence, Sickness,   ⎬ Mutes.  Discontent, Ignorance, Fear, Death,⎭ To whom he gives their names. Likewise Winter, Heat, Tempest, &c. Faith, ⎫ Hope,  comfort him, and instruct him. ⎬ Charity, ⎭ Chorus briefly concludes.

Such was his first design, which could have produced only an allegory, or mys­ tery. The following sketch seems to have attained more maturity. Adam unparadised: The angel Gabriel, either descending or entering; shewing, since this globe was created, his frequency as much on earth as in heaven: describes Paradise. Next, the Chorus, shewing the reason of his coming to keep his watch in Paradise, after Lucifer’s rebellion, by command from God; and withal expressing his desire to see

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and know more concerning this excellent new creature, man. The angel Gabriel, as by his name signifying a prince of power, tracing Paradise with a more free office, passes by the station of the Chorus, and, desired by them, relates what he knew of man; as the creation of Eve, with their love and marriage. After this, Lucifer ap­ pears, after his overthrow; bemoans himself, seeks revenge on man. The Chorus prepare resistance at his first approach. At last, after discourse of enmity on either side, he departs; whereat the Chorus sings of the battle and victory in heaven, against him and his accomplices: as before, after the first act, was sung a hymn of the creation. Here again may appear Lucifer, relating and insulting in what he had done to the destruction of man. Man next, and Eve having by this time been seduced by the Serpent, appears confusedly covered with leaves. Conscience, in a shape, accuses him; Justice cites him to the place whither Jehovah called for him. In the mean while, the Chorus entertains the stage, and is informed by some angel the manner of the Fall. Here the Chorus bewails Adam’s fall; Adam then and Eve return; accuse one another; but especially Adam lays the blame to his wife; is stub­ born in his offence. Justice appears, reasons with him, convinces him. The Chorus admonisheth Adam, and bids him beware Lucifer’s example of impenitence. The angel is sent to banish them out of Paradise; but before causes to pass before his eyes, in shapes, a mask of all the evils of this life and world. He is humbled, re­ lents, despairs: at last appears Mercy, comforts him, promises the Messiah; then calls in Faith, Hope, and Charity; instructs him; he repents, gives God the glory, submits to his penalty. The Chorus briefly concludes. Compare this with the former draught. These are very imperfect rudiments of Paradise Lost; but it is pleasant to see great works in their seminal state, pregnant with latent possibilities of excellence; nor could there be any more delightful entertainment than to trace their gradual growth and expansion, and to observe how they are sometimes suddenly advanced by accidental hints, and sometimes slowly improved by steady meditation. Invention is almost the only literary labour which blindness cannot obstruct, and therefore he naturally solaced his solitude by the indulgence of his fancy, and the melody of his numbers. He had done what he knew to be necessarily previous to poetical excellence; he had made himself acquainted with “seemly arts and affairs”;95 his comprehension was extended by various knowledge, and his memory stored with intellectual treasures. He was skilful in many languages, and had by reading and composition attained the full mastery of his own. He would have wanted little help from books, had he retained the power of perusing them. 95. SJ is quoting Milton from a passage included above (p. 653).



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But while his greater designs were advancing, having now, like many other authors, caught the love of publication, he amused himself, as he could, with little productions. He sent to the press (1658) a manuscript of Raleigh, called the Cabinet Council; and next year gratified his malevolence to the clergy, by a Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Cases, and the Means of removing Hirelings out of the Church. Oliver was now dead; Richard96 was constrained to resign: the system of ex­ temporary government, which had been held together only by force, naturally fell into fragments when that force was taken away; and Milton saw himself and his cause in equal danger. But he had still hope of doing something. He wrote let­ ters, which Toland has published, to such men as he thought friends to the new commonwealth;97 and even in the year of the Restoration he “bated no jot of heart or hope,”98 but was fantastical enough to think that the nation, agitated as it was, might be settled by a pamphlet, called A ready and easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth; which was, however, enough considered to be both seriously and ludi­ crously answered. The obstinate enthusiasm of the commonwealthmen99 was very remarkable. When the king was apparently returning, Harrington, with a few associates as fa­ natical as himself, used to meet, with all the gravity of political importance, to settle an equal government by rotation;100 and Milton, kicking when he could strike no longer, was foolish enough to publish, a few weeks before the Restoration, Notes upon a sermon preached by one Griffiths, intituled, The Fear of God and the King.101 To these notes an answer was written by L’Estrange, in a pamphlet petulantly called No blind Guides. But whatever Milton could write, or men of greater activity could do, the king was now about to be restored with the irresistible approbation of the people. He was therefore no longer secretary, and was consequently obliged to quit the house which he held by his office; and, proportioning his sense of danger to his opinion of the importance of his writings, thought it convenient to seek some shelter, and hid himself for a time in Bartholomew Close by West Smithfield. I cannot but remark a kind of respect, perhaps unconsciously, paid to this great man by his biographers: every house in which he resided is historically mentioned, as if it were an injury to neglect naming any place that he honoured by his presence. 96. Richard Cromwell (1626–1712) became Lord Protector on the death of his father in 1658. 97. John Toland (1670–1722) published two such letters in his 1698 edition of Milton’s works. 98. Milton’s “To Mr. Cyriack Skinner Upon His Blindness,” ll. 7–8. 99. Supporters of the parliamentary government. 100. James Harrington (1611–1677), author of the commonwealth treatise Oceana (1656), founded a de­ bating club called the “Rota,” which met frequently in 1659–60. 101. Matthew Griffith (c. 1599–1665) was author of the sermon; Roger L’Estrange (1616–1704) wrote the answer.

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The king, with lenity of which the world has had perhaps no other example, declined to be the judge or avenger of his own or his father’s wrongs; and promised to admit into the Act of Oblivion102 all, except those whom the parliament should except; and the parliament doomed none to capital punishment but the wretches who had immediately co-­operated in the murder of the king. Milton was certainly not one of them; he had only justified what they had done. This justification was indeed sufficiently offensive; and ( June 16) an order was issued to seize Milton’s Defence, and Goodwin’s Obstructors of Justice,103 another book of the same tendency, and burn them by the common hangman. The attorney-­ general was ordered to prosecute the authors; but Milton was not seized, nor per­ haps very diligently pursued. Not long after (August 19) the flutter of innumerable bosoms was stilled by an act, which the king, that his mercy might want no recommendation of elegance, rather called an act of oblivion than of grace.104 Goodwin was named, with nineteen more, as incapacitated for any publick trust; but of Milton there was no exception. Of this tenderness shewn to Milton, the curiosity of mankind has not forborn to enquire the reason. Burnet thinks he was forgotten; but this is another instance which may confirm Dalrymple’s observation, who says, “that whenever Burnet’s narrations are examined, he appears to be mistaken.”105 Forgotten he was not; for his prosecution was ordered; it must be therefore by design that he was included in the general oblivion. He is said to have had friends in the House, such as Marvell, Morrice, and Sir Thomas Clarges;106 and undoubt­ edly a man like him must have had influence. A very particular story of his escape is told by Richardson in his memoirs, which he received from Pope, as delivered by Betterton, who might have heard it from Davenant.107 In the war between the King and Parliament, Davenant was made prisoner, and condemned to die; but was spared at the request of Milton. When the turn of success brought Milton into the like danger, Davenant repaid the benefit by appearing in his favour. Here is a recip­ rocation of generosity and gratitude so pleasing, that the tale makes its own way to credit. But if help were wanted, I know not where to find it. The danger of Davenant is certain from his own relation; but of his escape there is no account. Betterton’s 102. A general pardon issued by King Charles II in 1660 after he ascended the throne. 103. John Goodwin (c. 1594–1665), Hybristodikai: the Obstructours of Justice (1649). 104. The Act of Oblivion was dated 29 August 1660. 105. Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Time, 2 vols. (1724–34), i.163; John Dalrymple, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland (1771–73), pt. i, p. 34n. 106. Andrew Marvell (1621–1678), Sir William Morice (1602–1676), and Sir Thomas Clarges (1617?–­1695). 107. Jonathan Richardson, the elder (1667–1745), Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Milton’s Paradise Lost (1734), in Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, pp. 272–73. Sir William Davenant (1606–1668), poet and play­ wright, was imprisoned from 1650 to 1652. Thomas Betterton (1635–1710), actor and theater manager.



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narration can be traced no higher; it is not known that he had it from Davenant. We are told that the benefit exchanged was life for life; but it seems not certain that Milton’s life ever was in danger. Goodwin, who had committed the same kind of crime, escaped with incapacitation; and as exclusion from publick trust is a pun­ ishment which the power of government can commonly inflict without the help of a particular law, it required no great interest to exempt Milton from a censure little more than verbal. Something may be reasonably ascribed to veneration and com­ passion; to veneration of his abilities, and compassion for his distresses, which made it fit to forgive his malice for his learning. He was now poor and blind; and who would pursue with violence an illustrious enemy, depressed by fortune, and disarmed by nature? The publication of the Act of Oblivion put him in the same condition with his fellow-­subjects. He was, however, upon some pretence not now known, in the cus­ tody of the serjeant in December; and, when he was released, upon his refusal of the fees demanded, he and the serjeant were called before the House. He was now safe within the shade of oblivion, and knew himself to be as much out of the power of a griping officer as any other man. How the question was determined is not known. Milton would hardly have contended, but that he knew himself to have right on his side. He then removed to Jewin-­street, near Aldersgate-­street; and being blind, and by no means wealthy, wanted a domestick companion and attendant; and therefore, by the recommendation of Dr. Paget, married Elizabeth Minshul, of a gentleman’s family in Cheshire, probably without a fortune.108 All his wives were virgins; for he has declared that he thought it gross and indelicate to be a second husband:109 upon what other principles his choice was made, cannot now be known; but marriage af­ forded not much of his happiness. The first wife left him in disgust, and was brought back only by terror; the second, indeed, seems to have been more a favourite, but her life was short. The third, as Phillips relates, oppressed his children in his life-time, and cheated them at his death.110 Soon after his marriage, according to an obscure story, he was offered the con­ tinuance of his employment; and being pressed by his wife to accept it, answered, “You, like other women, want to ride in your coach; my wish is to live and die an honest man.”111 If he considered the Latin secretary as exercising any of the powers 108. Milton married Elizabeth Minshull in February 1663. His friend Nathan Paget was probably his physician. 109. Apology for Symectymnuus, in Milton, Complete Prose Works, i.929. 110. The source of this information is Thomas Birch, not Phillips. Birch, “Historical and Critical Ac­ count,” i.lxii. 111. The source is Richardson, Explanatory Notes, in Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, p. 280.

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of government, he that had shared authority either with the parliament or Cromwell, might have forborn to talk very loudly of his honesty; and if he thought the office purely ministerial, he certainly might have honestly retained it under the king. But this tale has too little evidence to deserve a disquisition; large offers and sturdy re­ jections are among the most common topicks of falsehood. He had so much either of prudence or gratitude, that he forbore to disturb the new settlement with any of his political or ecclesiastical opinions, and from this time devoted himself to poetry and literature. Of his zeal for learning, in all its parts, he gave a proof by publishing, the next year (1661) Accidence commenced Grammar;112 a little book which has nothing remarkable, but that its author, who had been lately defending the supreme powers of his country, and was then writing Paradise Lost, could descend from his elevation to rescue children from the perplexity of gram­ matical confusion, and the trouble of lessons unnecessarily repeated. About this time Elwood the quaker being recommended to him, as one who would read Latin to him, for the advantage of his conversation; attended him every afternoon, except on Sundays.113 Milton, who, in his letter to Hartlib, had declared, that “to read Latin with an English mouth is as ill a hearing as Law French,”114 re­ quired that Elwood should learn and practise the Italian pronunciation, which, he said, was necessary, if he would talk with foreigners. This seems to have been a task troublesome without use. There is little reason for preferring the Italian pronuncia­ tion to our own, except that it is more general; and to teach it to an Englishman is only to make him a foreigner at home. He who travels, if he speaks Latin, may so soon learn the sounds which every native gives it, that he need make no provision before his journey; and if strangers visit us, it is their business to practise such con­ formity to our modes as they expect from us in their own countries. Elwood com­ plied with the directions, and improved himself by his attendance; for he relates, that Milton, having a curious ear, knew by his voice when he read what he did not understand, and would stop him, and “open the most difficult passages.” In a short time he took a house in the Artillery Walk, leading to Bunhill Fields;115 the mention of which concludes the register of Milton’s removals and habitations. He lived longer in this place than in any other. He was now busied by Paradise Lost. Whence he drew the original design has been variously conjectured, by men who cannot bear to think themselves ignorant of that which, at last, neither diligence nor sagacity can discover. Some find the hint 112. Milton’s Accedence Commenced Grammar was published in 1669. SJ’s sources had the date wrong. 113. Thomas Ellwood (1639–1713). 114. Milton addressed his treatise Of Education to Samuel Hartlib (c. 1600–1662), educational reformer. See Milton, Complete Prose Works, iii.383. 115. Bunhill Fields was the burial ground in London for dissenters.



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in an Italian tragedy. Voltaire tells a wild and unauthorised story of a farce seen by Milton in Italy, which opened thus: “Let the rainbow be the fiddlestick of the fiddle of heaven.”116 It has been already shewn, that the first conception was of a tragedy or mystery, not of a narrative, but a dramatick work, which he is supposed to have begun to reduce to its present form about the time (1655) when he finished his dis­ pute with the defenders of the king. He long before had promised to adorn his native country by some great per­ formance, while he had yet perhaps no settled design, and was stimulated only by such expectations as naturally arose from the survey of his attainments, and the con­ sciousness of his powers. What he should undertake, it was difficult to determine. He was “long chusing, and began late.”117 While he was obliged to divide his time between his private studies and affairs of state, his poetical labour must have been often interrupted; and perhaps he did little more in that busy time than construct the narrative, adjust the episodes, pro­ portion the parts, accumulate images and sentiments, and treasure in his memory, or preserve in writing, such hints as books or meditation would supply. Nothing par­ ticular is known of his intellectual operations while he was a statesman; for, having every help and accommodation at hand, he had no need of uncommon expedients. Being driven from all publick stations, he is yet too great not to be traced by curiosity to his retirement; where he has been found by Mr. Richardson, the fond­ est of his admirers, sitting “before his door in a grey coat of coarse cloth, in warm sultry weather, to enjoy the fresh air; and so, as well as in his own room, receiving the visits of people of distinguished parts as well as quality.”118 His visiters of high quality must now be imagined to be few; but men of parts might reasonably court the conversation of a man so generally illustrious, that foreigners are reported, by Wood,119 to have visited the house in Bread-­street where he was born. According to another account, he was seen in a small house, “neatly enough dressed in black cloaths, sitting in a room hung with rusty green; pale but not cadav­ erous, with chalkstones in his hands. He said, that if it were not for the gout, his blindness would be tolerable.”120 In the intervals of his pain, being made unable to use the common exercises, he used to swing in a chair, and sometimes played upon an organ. 116. Voltaire, Essay on Epic Poetry, in Complete Works of Voltaire, Vol. IIIB, The English Essays of 1727, ed. David Williams (1996), 371–72. The farce quoted is L’Adamo (1613) by Giovan Battista Andreini (1571– 1654). 117. Paradise Lost, ix.26. 118. Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, p. 203. 119. Anthony à Wood, in Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, p. 48. 120. Richardson, in Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, pp. 203–4.

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He was now confessedly and visibly employed upon his poem, of which the progress might be noted by those with whom he was familiar; for he was obliged, when he had composed as many lines as his memory would conveniently retain, to employ some friend in writing them, having, at least for part of the time, no regular attendant. This gave opportunity to observations and reports. Mr. Phillips observes, that there was a very remarkable circumstance in the composure of Paradise Lost, “which I have a particular reason,” says he, “to remem­ ber; for whereas I had the perusal of it from the very beginning, for some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, in parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time (which, being written by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correc­ tion as to the orthography and pointing), having, as the summer came on, not been shewed any for a considerable while; and desiring the reason thereof, was answered, that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal; and that whatever he attempted at other times was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much; so that, in all the years he was about this poem, he may be said to have spent half his time therein.”121 Upon this relation Toland remarks, that in his opinion Phillips has mistaken the time of the year; for Milton, in his elegies, declares that with the advance of the spring he feels the increase of his poetical force, redeunt in carmina vires.122 To this it is answered, that Phillips could hardly mistake time so well marked; and it may be added, that Milton might find different times of the year favourable to different parts of life. Mr. Richardson conceives it impossible that “such a work should be suspended for six months, or for one. It may go on faster or slower, but it must go on.”123 By what necessity it must continually go on, or why it might not be laid aside and resumed, it is not easy to discover. This dependance of the soul upon the seasons, those temporary and periodi­ cal ebbs and flows of intellect, may, I suppose, justly be derided as the fumes of vain imagination. Sapiens dominabitur astris.124 The author that thinks himself weather-­ bound will find, with a little help from hellebore,125 that he is only idle or exhausted. But while this notion has possession of the head, it produces the inability which it supposes. Our powers owe much of their energy to our hopes; possunt quia posse

121. Edward Phillips, in Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, p. 73. 122. SJ excerpts John Toland’s quotation of Milton’s Elegia quinta: his “poetic powers returned” (Darbi­ shire, Early Lives of Milton, p. 178). 123. Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, p. 291. 124. “The wise man has power over the stars”; see Robert Burton (1577–1640), The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Thomas C. Faulkner et al. (1989–2000), i.199. 125. A medicinal herb used to palliate mental disorders.



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videntur.126 When success seems attainable, diligence is enforced; but when it is ad­ mitted that the faculties are suppressed by a cross wind, or a cloudy sky, the day is given up without resistance; for who can contend with the course of nature? From such prepossessions Milton seems not to have been free. There prevailed in his time an opinion that the world was in its decay, and that we have had the mis­ fortune to be produced in the decrepitude of nature. It was suspected that the whole creation languished, that neither trees nor animals had the height or bulk of their predecessors, and that every thing was daily sinking by gradual diminution. Milton appears to suspect that souls partake of the general degeneracy, and is not without some fear that his book is to be written in “an age too late” for heroick poesy.127 Another opinion wanders about the world, and sometimes finds reception among wise men; an opinion that restrains the operations of the mind to particu­ lar regions, and supposes that a luckless mortal may be born in a degree of latitude too high or too low for wisdom or for wit. From this fancy, wild as it is, he had not wholly cleared his head, when he feared lest the “climate” of his country might be “too cold” for flights of imagination.128 Into a mind already occupied by such fancies, another not more reasonable might easily find its way. He that could fear lest his genius had fallen upon too old a world, or too chill a climate, might consistently magnify to himself the influences of the seasons, and believe his faculties to be vigorous only half the year. His submission to the seasons was at least more reasonable than his dread of decaying nature, or a frigid zone; for general causes must operate uniformly in a general abatement of mental power: if less could be performed by the writer, less likewise would content the judges of his work. Among this lagging race of frosty grovellers he might still have risen into eminence by producing something which “they should not willingly let die.”129 However inferior to the heroes who were born in better ages, he might still be great among his contemporaries, with the hope of growing every day greater in the dwindle of posterity. He might still be the giant of the pygmies, the one-­eyed monarch of the blind. Of his artifices of study, or particular hours of composition, we have little ac­ count, and there was perhaps little to be told. Richardson, who seems to have been very diligent in his enquiries, but discovers always a wish to find Milton discrimi­ nated from other men, relates, that “he would sometimes lie awake whole nights, but not a verse could he make; and on a sudden his poetical faculty would rush upon

126. Aeneid, v.231: “strong are they, for strong they deem themselves” (Loeb edition, trans. Fairclough and Goold [2001]). 127. See Paradise Lost, ix.44–46. 128. Ibid. 129. See above, p. 648 and n. 28.

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him with an impetus, or oestrum, and his daughter was immediately called to secure what came. At other times he would dictate perhaps forty lines in a breath, and then reduce them to half the number.”130 These bursts of light, and involutions of darkness; these transient and invol­ untary excursions and retrocessions of invention, having some appearance of devia­ tion from the common train of nature, are eagerly caught by the lovers of a wonder. Yet something of this inequality happens to every man in every mode of exertion, manual or mental. The mechanick cannot handle his hammer and his file at all times with equal dexterity; there are hours, he knows not why, when “his hand is out.” By Mr. Richardson’s relation, casually conveyed, much regard cannot be claimed. That, in his intellectual hour, Milton called for his daughter “to secure what came,” may be questioned; for unluckily it happens to be known that his daughters were never taught to write; nor would he have been obliged, as is universally confessed, to have employed any casual visiter in disburthening his memory, if his daughter could have performed the office. The story of reducing his exuberance has been told of other authors, and though doubtless true of every fertile and copious mind, seems to have been gratu­ itously transferred to Milton. What he has told us, and we cannot now know more, is, that he composed much of his poem in the night and morning, I suppose before his mind was dis­ turbed with common business; and that he poured out with great fluency his “un­ premeditated verse.”131 Versification, free, like his, from the distresses of rhyme, must, by a work so long, be made prompt and habitual; and, when his thoughts were once adjusted, the words would come at his command. At what particular times of his life the parts of his work were written, cannot often be known. The beginning of the third book shews that he had lost his sight; and the introduction to the seventh, that the return of the king had clouded him with discountenance; and that he was offended by the licentious festivity of the Res­ toration. There are no other internal notes of time. Milton, being now cleared from all effects of his disloyalty, had nothing required from him but the common duty of living in quiet, to be rewarded with the common right of protection: but this, which, when he sculked from the approach of his king, was perhaps more than he hoped, seems not to have satisfied him; for no sooner is he safe than he finds him­ self in danger, “fallen on evil days and evil tongues, and with darkness and with danger compass’d round.”132 This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly deserved compassion; but to add the mention of danger was ungrate­ 130. Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, p. 291. 131. Paradise Lost, ix.24. See also Paradise Lost, iii.29–32 and vii.28–30. 132. See Paradise Lost, vii.25–27.



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ful and unjust. He was fallen indeed on “evil days”; the time was come in which regicides could no longer boast their wickedness. But of “evil tongues” for Milton to complain, required impudence at least equal to his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow, that he never spared any asperity of reproach or bru­ tality of insolence. But the charge itself seems to be false; for it would be hard to recollect any re­ proach cast upon him, either serious or ludicrous, through the whole remaining part of his life. He persued his studies, or his amusements, without persecution, moles­ tation, or insult. Such is the reverence paid to great abilities, however misused: they who contemplated in Milton the scholar and the wit, were contented to forget the reviler of his king. When the plague (1665) raged in London, Milton took refuge at Chalfont in Bucks; where Elwood, who had taken the house for him, first saw a complete copy of Paradise Lost, and, having perused it, said to him, “Thou hast said a great deal upon Paradise Lost; what hast thou to say upon Paradise Found?”133 Next year, when the danger of infection had ceased, he returned to Bunhill-­ fields, and designed the publication of his poem. A license was necessary, and he could expect no great kindness from a chaplain of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He seems, however, to have been treated with tenderness; for though objections were made to particular passages, and among them to the simile of the sun eclipsed in the first book,134 yet the license was granted; and he sold his copy, April 27, 1667, to Samuel Simmons for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation to receive five pounds more when thirteen hundred should be sold of the first edition; and again, five pounds after the sale of the same number of the second edition, and another five pounds after the same sale of the third. None of the three editions were to be extended beyond fifteen hundred copies. The first edition was of ten books, in a small quarto. The titles were varied from year to year; and an advertisement and the arguments of the books were omitted in some copies, and inserted in others.135 The sale gave him in two years a right to his second payment, for which the receipt was signed April 26, 1669. The second edition was not given till 1674; it was printed in small octavo; and the number of books was encreased to twelve, by a divi­ sion of the seventh and twelfth;136 and some other small improvements were made. 133. The History of the Life of Ellwood (1714), ed. Joseph Wyeth, p. 234. Chalfont St. Giles, Buckingham­ shire, is about twenty-­five miles west of London. 134. Paradise Lost, i.594–99. 135. There were six issues of the first edition between 1667 and 1669. The “arguments” are the plot sum­ maries that Milton added in 1669. 136. “Twelfth” is a mistake for “tenth.”

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The third edition was published in 1678; and the widow, to whom the copy137 was then to devolve, sold all her claims to Simmons for eight pounds, according to her receipt given Dec. 21, 1680. Simmons had already agreed to transfer the whole right to Brabazon Aylmer for twenty-­five pounds; and Aylmer sold to Jacob Tonson138 half, August 17, 1683, and half, March 24, 1690, at a price considerably enlarged. In the history of Paradise Lost a deduction thus minute will rather gratify than fatigue. The slow sale and tardy reputation of this poem, have been always mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of literary fame; and en­ quiries have been made, and conjectures offered, about the causes of its long ob­ scurity and late reception. But has the case been truly stated? Have not lamentation and wonder been lavished on an evil that was never felt? That in the reigns of Charles and James the Paradise Lost received no publick acclamations is readily confessed. Wit and literature were on the side of the Court: and who that solicited favour or fashion would venture to praise the defender of the regicides? All that he himself could think his due, from “evil tongues” in “evil days,” was that reverential silence which was generously preserved. But it cannot be inferred that his poem was not read, or not, however unwillingly, admired. The sale, if it be considered, will justify the publick. Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions. The call for books was not in Milton’s age what it is in the present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves dis­ graced by ignorance. The women had not then aspired to literature, nor was every house supplied with a closet of knowledge. Those indeed, who professed learning, were not less learned than at any other time; but of that middle race of students who read for pleasure or accomplishment, and who buy the numerous products of mod­ ern typography, the number was then comparatively small. To prove the paucity of readers, it may be sufficient to remark, that the nation had been satisfied, from 1623 to 1664, that is, forty-­one years, with only two editions of the works of Shakespeare, which probably did not together make one thousand copies. The sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in opposition to so much re­ cent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all and disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius. The demand did not immediately encrease; for many more readers than were supplied at first the nation did not af­ ford. Only three thousand were sold in eleven years; for it forced its way without assistance: its admirers did not dare to publish their opinion; and the opportunities now given of attracting notice by advertisements were then very few; the means of 137. Copyright. 138. Jacob Tonson, the elder (1655/56–1736).



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proclaiming the publication of new books have been produced by that general lit­ erature which now pervades the nation through all its ranks. But the reputation and price of the copy still advanced, till the Revolution139 put an end to the secrecy of love, and Paradise Lost broke into open view with suf­ ficient security of kind reception. Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked his reputation stealing its way in a kind of subterraneous current through fear and silence. I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and waiting, without impatience, the vicissitudes of opinion, and the impartiality of a future generation. In the mean time he continued his studies, and supplied the want of sight by a very odd expedient, of which Phillips gives the following account: Mr. Phillips tells us, that though our author had daily about him one or other to read, some per­ sons of man’s estate, who, of their own accord, greedily catched at the op­ portunity of being his readers, that they might as well reap the benefit of what they read to him, as oblige him by the benefit of their reading; and others of younger years were sent by their parents to the same end: yet ex­ cusing only the eldest daughter, by reason of her bodily infirmity, and dif­ ficult utterance of speech, (which, to say truth, I doubt was the principal cause of excusing her), the other two were condemned to the performance of reading, and exactly pronouncing of all the languages of whatever book he should, at one time or other, think fit to peruse, viz. the Hebrew (and I think the Syriac), the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, Spanish, and French. All which sorts of books to be confined to read, without understanding one word, must needs be a trial of patience almost beyond endurance. Yet it was endured by both for a long time, though the irksomeness of this employment could not be always concealed, but broke out more and more into expressions of un­ easiness; so that at length they were all, even the eldest also, sent out to learn some curious and ingenious sorts of manufacture, that are proper for women to learn; particularly embroideries in gold or silver.140

In the scene of misery which this mode of intellectual labour sets before our eyes, it is hard to determine whether the daughters or the father are most to be la­ 139. The Glorious Revolution (1688–89), in which James II was deposed in favor of William III and Mary II. 140. Phillips in Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, pp. 77–78.

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mented. A language not understood can never be so read as to give pleasure, and very seldom so as to convey meaning. If few men would have had resolution to write books with such embarrassments, few likewise would have wanted ability to find some better expedient. Three years after his Paradise Lost (1670),141 he published his History of England, comprising the whole fable of Geoffry of Monmouth, and continued to the Norman invasion. Why he should have given the first part, which he seems not to believe, and which is universally rejected, it is difficult to conjecture.142 The stile is harsh; but it has something of rough vigour, which perhaps may often strike, though it cannot please. On this history the licenser again fixed his claws, and before he would transmit it to the press tore out several parts. Some censures of the Saxon monks were taken away, lest they should be applied to the modern clergy; and a character of the Long Parliament, and Assembly of Divines, was excluded; of which the author gave a copy to the Earl of Anglesea, and which, being afterwards published, has been since in­ serted in its proper place. The same year were printed Paradise Regained, and Sampson Agonistes, a tragedy written in imitation of the ancients, and never designed by the author for the stage. As these poems were published by another bookseller, it has been asked, whether Simmons was discouraged from receiving them by the slow sale of the former. Why a writer changed his bookseller a hundred years ago, I am far from hoping to discover. Certainly, he who in two years sells thirteen hundred copies of a volume in quarto, bought for two payments of five pounds each, has no reason to repent his purchase. When Milton shewed Paradise Regained to Elwood, “This,” said he, “is owing to you; for you put it in my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, which otherwise I had not thought of.”143 His last poetical offspring was his favourite. He could not, as Elwood relates, endure to hear Paradise Lost preferred to Paradise Regained. Many causes may viti­ ate a writer’s judgement of his own works. On that which has cost him much labour he sets a high value, because he is unwilling to think that he has been diligent in vain; what has been produced without toilsome efforts is considered with delight, as a proof of vigorous faculties and fertile invention; and the last work, whatever it be, has necessarily most of the grace of novelty. Milton, however it happened, had this prejudice, and had it to himself. 141. The year 1670 refers to the publication date of Milton’s History, three years after the publication of Paradise Lost. 142. In the fable, Brut, the grandson of Aeneas, founds Britain. 143. Wyeth, Life of Ellwood, p. 234.



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To that multiplicity of attainments, and extent of comprehension, that entitle this great author to our veneration, may be added a kind of humble dignity, which did not disdain the meanest services to literature. The epick poet, the controvertist, the politician, having already descended to accommodate children with a book of rudiments, now, in the last years of his life, composed a book of logick, for the initia­ tion of students in philosophy; and published (1672) Artis Logicae plenior Institutio ad Petri Rami methodum concinnata: that is, “A new Scheme of Logick, according to the Method of Ramus.”144 I know not whether, even in this book, he did not in­ tend an act of hostility against the universities; for Ramus was one of the first oppug­ ners of the old philosophy, who disturbed with innovations the quiet of the schools. His polemical disposition again revived. He had now been safe so long, that he forgot his fears, and published a Treatise of true Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the best Means to prevent the Growth of Popery. But this little tract is modestly written, with respectful mention of the Church of England, and an appeal to the Thirty-­nine Articles.145 His principle of toleration is, agreement in the sufficiency of the Scriptures; and he extends it to all who, what­ ever their opinions are, profess to derive them from the sacred books. The papists appeal to other testimonies, and are therefore in his opinion not to be permitted the liberty of either publick or private worship; for though they plead conscience, “we have no warrant,” he says, “to regard conscience which is not grounded in Scripture.”146 Those who are not convinced by his reasons, may be perhaps delighted with his wit. The term “Roman catholick” is, he says, “one of the Pope’s bulls;147 it is par­ ticular universal,” or “catholick schismatick.” He has, however, something better. As the best preservative against popery, he recommends the diligent perusal of the Scriptures; a duty, from which he warns the busy part of mankind not to think themselves excused. He now reprinted his juvenile poems, with some additions. In the last year of his life he sent to the press, seeming to take delight in pub­ lication, a collection of familiar epistles in Latin; to which, being too few to make a volume, he added some academical exercises, which perhaps he perused with plea­ sure, as they recalled to his memory the days of youth; but for which nothing but veneration for his name could now procure a reader. 144. Petrus Ramus (1515–1572), a French philosopher and educational reformer, attempted to make gram­ mar and logic conform to experience, rather than scholastic categories. Though published in 1672, Milton’s work may have been written as early as the 1640s. 145. The thirty-­nine articles of faith in the Church of England were finalized in 1571. 146. Treatise of True Religion (1673), in Milton, Complete Prose Works, viii.432. 147. Bull is a pun because the word can mean either a papal edict or any unintentionally self-­contradictory statement.

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When he had attained his sixty-­sixth year, the gout, with which he had been long tormented, prevailed over the enfeebled powers of nature. He died by a quiet and silent expiration, about the tenth of November 1674, at his house in Bunhill-­ fields; and was buried next his father in the chancel of St. Giles at Cripplegate. His funeral was very splendidly and numerously attended. Upon his grave there is supposed to have been no memorial; but in our time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey “To the Author of Paradise Lost,” by Mr. Benson, who has in the inscription bestowed more words upon him­ self than upon Milton.148 When the inscription for the monument of Philips,149 in which he was said to be soli Miltono secundus, was exhibited to Dr. Sprat, then dean of Westminster, he refused to admit it; the name of Milton was, in his opinion, too detestable to be read on the wall of a building dedicated to devotion. Atterbury, who succeeded him, being author of the inscription, permitted its reception.150 “And such has been the change of publick opinion,” said Dr. Gregory, from whom I heard this account, “that I have seen erected in the church a statue of that man, whose name I once knew con­ sidered as a pollution of its walls.”151 Milton has the reputation of having been in his youth eminently beautiful, so as to have been called the Lady of his college. His hair, which was of a light brown, parted at the foretop, and hung down upon his shoulders, according to the pic­ ture which he has given of Adam.152 He was, however, not of the heroick stature, but rather below the middle size, according to Mr. Richardson, who mentions him as having narrowly escaped from being “short and thick.”153 He was vigorous and active, and delighted in the exercise of the sword, in which he is related to have been eminently skilful. His weapon was, I believe, not the rapier, but the backsword,154 of which he recommends the use in his book on education. His eyes are said never to have been bright; but, if he was a dexterous fencer, they must have been once quick. His domestick habits, so far as they are known, were those of a severe student. He drank little strong drink of any kind, and fed without excess in quantity, and in his earlier years without delicacy of choice. In his youth he studied late at night; but 148. William Benson (1682–1754), politician and architect, raised the monument in 1737. SJ alludes to the bust of Milton, which is part of the monument, in The Vanity of Human Wishes, ll. 161–62. 149. John Philips (1676–1709), the author of mock epics in imitation of Milton; he is said to be “second only to Milton” in the inscription. 150. Thomas Sprat (1635–1713) and Francis Atterbury (1663–1732), both bishops of Rochester. 151. Possibly Dr. David Gregory (1696–1767), Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. 152. See Paradise Lost, iv.301–3. 153. Richardson in Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, p. 201. 154. “A sword with one sharp edge” (Dictionary), thicker and heavier than a rapier.



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afterwards changed his hours, and rested in bed from nine to four in the summer, and five in winter. The course of his day was best known after he was blind. When he first rose he heard a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and then studied till twelve; then took some exercise for an hour; then dined; then plaid on the organ, and sung, or heard another sing; then studied to six; then entertained his visiters, till eight; then supped, and, after a pipe of tobacco and a glass of water, went to bed. So is his life described; but this even tenour appears attainable only in colleges. He that lives in the world will sometimes have the succession of his practice broken and confused. Visiters, of whom Milton is represented to have had great numbers, will come and stay unseasonably; business, of which every man has some, must be done when others will do it. When he did not care to rise early, he had something read to him by his bed­ side; perhaps at this time his daughters were employed. He composed much in the morning, and dictated in the day, sitting obliquely in an elbow-­chair, with his leg thrown over the arm. Fortune appears not to have had much of his care. In the civil wars he lent his personal estate to the parliament; but when, after the contest was decided, he so­ licited repayment, he met not only with neglect but “sharp rebuke”;155 and, having tired both himself and his friends, was given up to poverty and hopeless indignation, till he shewed how able he was to do greater service. He was then made Latin secre­ tary, with two hundred pounds a year; and had a thousand pounds for his Defence of the People. His widow, who, after his death, retired to Namptwich in Cheshire, and died about 1729, is said to have reported that he lost two thousand pounds by entrusting it to a scrivener; and that, in the general depredation upon the Church, he had grasped an estate of about sixty pounds a year belonging to Westminster Abbey, which, like other sharers of the plunder of rebellion, he was afterwards obliged to return. Two thousand pounds, which he had placed in the Excise-­office, were also lost. There is yet no reason to believe that he was ever reduced to indigence. His wants being few, were competently supplied. He sold his library before his death, and left his family fifteen hundred pounds, on which his widow laid hold, and only gave one hundred to each of his daughters. His literature was unquestionably great. He read all the languages which are considered either as learned or polite; Hebrew, with its two dialects, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish. In Latin his skill was such as places him in the first rank of writers and criticks; and he appears to have cultivated Italian with uncommon dili­ gence. The books in which his daughter, who used to read to him, represented him as most delighting, after Homer, which he could almost repeat, were Ovid’s Meta155. See Milton’s Character of the Long Parliament, in Milton, Complete Prose Works, v (i).440.

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morphoses and Euripides. His Euripides is, by Mr. Cradock’s kindness,156 now in my hands: the margin is sometimes noted; but I have found nothing remarkable.157 Of the English poets he set most value upon Spenser, Shakespeare, and Cow­ ley.158 Spenser was apparently his favourite: Shakespeare he may easily be supposed to like, with every other skilful reader; but I should not have expected that Cowley, whose ideas of excellence were so different from his own, would have had much of his approbation. His character of Dryden, who sometimes visited him, was, that he was a good rhymist, but no poet. His theological opinions are said to have been first Calvinistical; and afterwards, perhaps when he began to hate the Presbyterians, to have tended towards Arminian­ ism.159 In the mixed questions of theology and government, he never thinks that he can recede far enough from popery, or prelacy; but what Baudius says of Erasmus seems applicable to him, magis habuit quod fugeret, quam quod seque­retur.160 He had deter­ mined rather what to condemn than what to approve. He has not associated himself with any denomination of Protestants: we know rather what he was not, than what he was. He was not of the Church of Rome; he was not of the Church of England. To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example. Milton, who appears to have had full conviction of the truth of Christianity, and to have regarded the Holy Scriptures with the profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by any heretical peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the immediate and occasional agency of Providence, yet grew old without any visible worship. In the distribution of his hours, there was no hour of prayer, either solitary, or with his household; omitting publick prayers, he omitted all. Of this omission the reason has been sought, upon a supposition which ought never to be made, that men live with their own approbation, and justify their con­ duct to themselves. Prayer certainly was not thought superfluous by him, who rep­ resents our first parents as praying acceptably in the state of innocence, and effica­ ciously after their fall.161 That he lived without prayer can hardly be affirmed; his 156. Joseph Cradock (1742–1826), country gentleman and man of letters. 157. Milton’s copy of Euripides, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1602), is now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Arch. A d.36). 158. Cf. “Cowley” (p. 591 above). 159. Jacob Arminius (1560–1609), a follower and critic of Calvin who emphasized the importance of “pre­ venient grace” (see Paradise Lost, xi.3). 160. “He was more disposed to flee than to follow.” SJ noted this passage from Dominic Baudius’s Epistolae in his diary on 7 August 1774 (Yale, i.194). 161. See Paradise Lost, v.153–210 and x.1098–1104.



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studies and meditations were an habitual prayer. The neglect of it in his family was probably a fault for which he condemned himself, and which he intended to correct, but that death, as too often happens, intercepted his reformation. His political notions were those of an acrimonious and surly republican,162 for which it is not known that he gave any better reason than that “a popular govern­ ment was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.”163 It is surely very shallow policy, that supposes money to be the chief good; and even this, without considering that the support and expence of a court is, for the most part, only a particular kind of traffick,164 by which money is circulated, without any national impoverishment. Milton’s republicanism was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of great­ ness, and a sullen desire of independence; in petulance, impatient of controul, and pride disdainful of superiority. He hated monarchs in the state, and prelates in the church; for he hated all whom he was required to obey. It is to be suspected that his predominant desire was to destroy rather than establish, and that he felt not so much the love of liberty as repugnance to authority. It has been observed, that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it. What we know of Milton’s character, in domestick relations, is, that he was severe and arbitrary. His family consisted of women; and there ap­ pears in his books something like a Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferiour beings. That his own daughters might not break the ranks, he suffered them to be depressed by a mean and penurious education. He thought woman made only for obedience, and man only for rebellion. Of his family some account may be expected. His sister, first married to Mr. Phillips, afterwards married Mr. Agar, a friend of her first husband, who succeeded him in the Crown-­office. She had by her first husband Edward and John, the two nephews whom Milton educated; and by her second, two daughters. His brother, Sir Christopher, had two daughters, Mary and Catherine, and a son Thomas, who succeeded Agar in the Crown-­office, and left a daughter, living in 1749 in Grosvenor-­street. Milton had children only by his first wife; Anne, Mary, and Deborah. Anne, though deformed, married a master-­builder, and died of her first child. Mary died single. Deborah married Abraham Clark, a weaver in Spital-­fields, and lived seventy-­ six years, to August 1727. This is the daughter of whom publick mention has been made. She could repeat the first lines of Homer, the Metamorphoses, and some of Euripides, by having often read them. Yet here incredulity is ready to make a stand. 162. “One who thinks a commonwealth without monarchy the best government” (Dictionary). 163. Toland in Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton, p. 186. 164. “Commerce; merchandising” (Dictionary).

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Many repetitions are necessary to fix in the memory lines not understood; and why should Milton wish or want to hear them so often! These lines were at the beginning of the poems. Of a book written in a language not understood, the beginning raises no more attention than the end; and as those that understand it know commonly the be­ ginning best, its rehearsal will seldom be necessary. It is not likely that Milton required any passage to be so much repeated as that his daughter could learn it; nor likely that he desired the initial lines to be read at all; nor that the daughter, weary of the drudgery of pronouncing unideal sounds,165 would voluntarily commit them to memory. To this gentlewoman Addison made a present, and promised some establish­ ment; but died soon after. Queen Caroline sent her fifty guineas. She had seven sons and three daughters; but none of them had any children, except her son Caleb and her daughter Elizabeth. Caleb went to Fort St. George in the East Indies, and had two sons, of whom nothing is now known. Elizabeth married Thomas Foster, a weaver in Spital-­fields, and had seven children, who all died. She kept a petty gro­ cer’s or chandler’s shop, first at Holloway, and afterwards in Cock-­lane near Shore­ ditch Church. She knew little of her grandfather, and that little was not good. She told of his harshness to his daughters, and his refusal to have them taught to write; and, in opposition to other accounts, represented him as delicate, though temper­ ate, in his diet. In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had so little acquain­ tance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what was intended when a benefit was offered her. The profits of the night were only one hundred and thirty pounds, though Dr. Newton brought a large contribution;166 and twenty pounds were given by Tonson, a man who is to be praised as often as he is named.167 Of this sum one hundred pounds was placed in the stocks, after some debate between her and her husband in whose name it should be entered, and the rest augmented their little stock, with which they removed to Islington. This was the greatest benefaction that Paradise Lost ever procured the author’s descendents; and to this he who has now attempted to relate his life, had the honour of contributing a prologue.168 In the examination of Milton’s poetical works, I shall pay so much regard to time as to begin with his juvenile productions. For his early pieces he seems to have had a degree of fondness not very laudable: what he has once written he resolves to preserve, and gives to the publick an unfinished poem, which he broke off be­ 165. “Unideal sounds”: sounds without ideas; meaningless utterances. 166. Thomas Newton (1704–1782), Bishop of Bristol and editor of Paradise Lost (1749). 167. Jacob Tonson, the younger (1714–1767). 168. For SJ’s poem and an account of his involvement in the benefit performance, see Yale, vi.239–41 and xx.198–99.



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cause he was “nothing satisfied with what he had done,”169 supposing his readers less nice than himself. These preludes to his future labours are in Italian, Latin, and English. Of the Italian I cannot pretend to speak as a critic; but I have heard them commended by a man well qualified to decide their merit.170 The Latin pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is rather by the exquisite imi­ tation of the ancient writers, by the purity of the diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of invention, or vigour of sentiment. They are not all of equal value; the elegies excell the odes; and some of the exercises on Gunpowder Treason might have been spared. The English poems, though they make no promises of Paradise Lost, have this evidence of genius, that they have a cast original and unborrowed. But their pecu­ liarity is not excellence: if they differ from the verses of others, they differ for the worse; for they are too often distinguished by repulsive harshness; the combina­ tions of words are new, but they are not pleasing; the rhymes and epithets seem to be laboriously sought, and violently applied. That in the early part of his life he wrote with much care appears from his manuscripts, happily preserved at Cambridge, in which many of his smaller works are found as they were first written, with the subsequent corrections.171 Such rel­ iques shew how excellence is acquired; what we hope ever to do with ease, we may learn first to do with diligence. Those who admire the beauties of this great poet, sometimes force their own judgement into false approbation of his little pieces, and prevail upon themselves to think that admirable which is only singular. All that short compositions can com­ monly attain is neatness and elegance. Milton never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked the milder excellence of suavity and softness; he was a “lion” that had no skill “in dandling the kid.”172 One of the poems on which much praise has been bestowed is Lycidas; of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing. What beauty there is, we must therefore seek in the sentiments and images. It is not to be considered as the effusion of real passion; for passion runs not after remote allu­ sions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of rough “satyrs” and “fauns with cloven heel.”173 Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief. In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is 169. From Milton’s postscript to “The Passion” in Milton, Complete Works, iii (2012), 19. 170. Most likely SJ’s friend Giuseppe Baretti (1719–1789). 171. For the Cambridge manuscripts, see p. 662, n. 93, above. 172. An allusion to Paradise Lost, iv.343–44. 173. SJ refers to Lycidas, ll. 2–3 and 85–86; he quotes l. 34.

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nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting:174 whatever images it can supply, are long ago exhausted; and its inherent improba­ bility always forces dissatisfaction on the mind. When Cowley tells of Hervey that they studied together, it is easy to suppose how much he must miss the companion of his labours, and the partner of his discoveries;175 but what image of tenderness can be excited by these lines? We drove a field, and both together heard What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn, Batt’ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night.176

We know that they never drove a field, and that they had no flocks to batten; and though it be allowed that the representation may be allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote, that it is never sought, because it cannot be known when it is found. Among the flocks, and copses, and flowers, appear the heathen deities; Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and Aeolus, with a long train of mythological imagery, such as a college easily supplies. Nothing can less display knowledge, or less exercise in­ vention, than to tell how a shepherd has lost his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, without any judge of his skill in piping; and how one god asks another god what is become of Lycidas, and how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves will excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour. This poem has yet a grosser fault. With these trifling fictions are mingled the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought never to be polluted with such irrever­ end combinations. The shepherd likewise is now a feeder of sheep, and afterwards an ecclesiastical pastor, a superintendent of a Christian flock. Such equivocations are always unskilful, but here they are indecent, and at least approach to impiety, of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been conscious. Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its blaze drives away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man could have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known its author. Of the two pieces, L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, I believe opinion is uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with pleasure. The author’s design is not, what Theobald has remarked,177 merely to shew how objects derive their colours 174. See Ramblers 36 and 37, on pastoral poetry (pp. 123–31 above). 175. “On the Death of Mr. William Hervey”; cf. SJ’s evaluation in “Cowley” (p. 621 above). 176. Lycidas, ll. 27–29. 177. Lewis Theobald (1688–1744) commented on Milton in his edition of The Works of Shakespeare, 7 vols. (1733), i.xix–­xx.



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from the mind, by representing the operation of the same things upon the gay and the melancholy temper, or upon the same man as he is differently disposed; but rather how, among the successive variety of appearances, every disposition of mind takes hold on those by which it may be gratified. The chearful man hears the lark in the morning; the pensive man hears the nightingale in the evening. The chearful man sees the cock strut, and hears the horn and hounds echo in the wood; then walks “not unseen” to observe the glory of the rising sun, or listen to the singing milk-­maid, and view the labours of the plowman and the mower; then casts his eyes about him over scenes of smiling plenty, and looks up to the distant tower, the residence of some fair inhabitant; thus he pursues rural gaiety through a day of labour or of play, and delights himself at night with the fanciful narratives of superstitious ignorance. The pensive man, at one time, walks “unseen” to muse at midnight; and at another hears the sullen curfew. If the weather drives him home, he sits in a room lighted only by “glowing embers”; or by a lonely lamp outwatches the North Star, to discover the habitation of separate souls, and varies the shades of meditation, by con­ templating the magnificent or pathetick scenes of tragick and epic poetry. When the morning comes, a morning gloomy with rain and wind, he walks into the dark track­ less woods, falls asleep by some murmuring water, and with melancholy enthusiasm expects some dream of prognostication, or some musick plaid by aerial performers. Both Mirth and Melancholy are solitary, silent inhabitants of the breast that neither receive nor transmit communication; no mention is therefore made of a philosophical friend, or a pleasant companion. The seriousness does not arise from any participation of calamity, nor the gaiety from the pleasures of the bottle. The man of chearfulness, having exhausted the country, tries what “towered cities” will afford, and mingles with scenes of splendor, gay assemblies, and nuptial festivities; but he mingles a mere spectator, as when the learned comedies of Jonson, or the wild dramas of Shakespeare, are exhibited, he attends the theatre. The pensive man never loses himself in crowds, but walks the cloister, or fre­ quents the cathedral. Milton probably had not yet forsaken the Church. Both his characters delight in musick; but he seems to think that chearful notes would have obtained from Pluto a compleat dismission of Eurydice, of whom solemn sounds only procured a conditional release.178 For the old age of Chearfulness he makes no provision; but Melancholy he con­ ducts with great dignity to the close of life. His Chearfulness is without levity, and his Pensiveness without asperity. Through these two poems the images are properly selected, and nicely distin­ 178. See L’Allegro, ll. 147–50, and Il Penseroso, ll. 106–8.

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guished; but the colours of the diction seem not sufficiently discriminated. I know not whether the characters are kept sufficiently apart. No mirth can, indeed, be found in his melancholy; but I am afraid that I always meet some melancholy in his mirth. They are two noble efforts of imagination. The greatest of his juvenile performances is the Mask of Comus; in which may very plainly be discovered the dawn or twilight of Paradise Lost. Milton appears to have formed very early that system of diction, and mode of verse, which his maturer judgement approved, and from which he never endeavoured nor desired to deviate. Nor does Comus afford only a specimen of his language; it exhibits likewise his power of description, and his vigour of sentiment, employed in the praise and defence of virtue. A work more truely poetical is rarely found; allusions, images, and descriptive epithets, embellish almost every period with lavish decoration. As a series of lines, therefore, it may be considered as worthy of all the admiration with which the votaries have received it. As a drama it is deficient. The action is not probable. A masque, in those parts where supernatural intervention is admitted, must indeed be given up to all the freaks of imagination; but, so far as the action is merely human, it ought to be rea­ sonable, which can hardly be said of the conduct of the two brothers; who, when their sister sinks with fatigue in a pathless wilderness, wander both away together in search of berries too far to find their way back, and leave a helpless lady to all the sadness and danger of solitude. This however is a defect over-­balanced by its con­ venience. What deserves more reprehension is, that the prologue spoken in the wild wood by the attendant Spirit is addressed to the audience; a mode of communica­ tion so contrary to the nature of dramatick representation, that no precedents can support it. The discourse of the Spirit is too long; an objection that may be made to almost all the following speeches: they have not the spriteliness of a dialogue animated by reciprocal contention, but seem rather declamations deliberately composed, and formally repeated, on a moral question. The auditor therefore listens as to a lecture, without passion, without anxiety. The song of Comus has airiness and jollity; but, what may recommend Milton’s morals as well as his poetry, the invitations to pleasure are so general, that they excite no distinct images of corrupt enjoyment, and take no dangerous hold on the fancy. The following soliloquies of Comus and the Lady are elegant, but tedious. The song must owe much to the voice, if it ever can delight. At last the Brothers enter, with too much tranquillity; and when they have feared lest their sister should be in danger, and hoped that she is not in danger, the Elder makes a speech in praise of chastity, and the Younger finds how fine it is to be a philosopher.



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Then descends the Spirit in form of a shepherd; and the Brother, instead of being in haste to ask his help, praises his singing, and enquires his business in that place. It is remarkable, that at this interview the Brother is taken with a short fit of rhyming. The Spirit relates that the Lady is in the power of Comus; the Brother moralises again; and the Spirit makes a long narration, of no use because it is false, and therefore unsuitable to a good Being. In all these parts the language is poetical, and the sentiments are generous;179 but there is something wanting to allure attention. The dispute between the Lady and Comus is the most animated and affecting scene of the drama, and wants nothing but a brisker reciprocation of objections and replies to invite attention, and detain it. The songs are vigorous, and full of imagery; but they are harsh in their diction, and not very musical in their numbers. Throughout the whole, the figures are too bold, and the language too luxuri­ ant for dialogue. It is a drama in the epic stile, inelegantly splendid, and tediously instructive. The Sonnets were written in different parts of Milton’s life, upon different occa­ sions. They deserve not any particular criticism; for of the best it can only be said, that they are not bad; and perhaps only the eighth and the twenty-­first are truly en­ titled to this slender commendation.180 The fabrick of a sonnet, however adapted to the Italian language, has never succeeded in ours, which, having greater variety of termination, requires the rhymes to be often changed. Those little pieces may be dispatched without much anxiety; a greater work calls for greater care.181 I am now to examine Paradise Lost; a poem, which, consid­ ered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and with respect to perfor­ mance the second among the productions of the human mind. By the general consent of criticks, the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions. Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason. Epick poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by the most pleasing precepts, and therefore relates some great event in the most affecting manner. History must supply the writer with the rudi­ ments of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art, must animate by dramatick energy, and diversify by retrospection and anticipation; morality must 179. “Noble of mind; magnanimous; open of heart” (Dictionary). 180. Sonnet VIII begins, “Captain or Colonel or Knight in Arms”; Sonnet XXI is “To Cyriac Skinner.” SJ knew Milton’s sonnets well (see Yale, xxi.182, n. 8, and Lonsdale, Lives of the Eminent Poets, notes to par. 206). 181. SJ’s critique of Paradise Lost is the longest sustained discussion of any poem in all of his critical writings.

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teach him the exact bounds, and different shades, of vice and virtue; from policy, and the practice of life, he has to learn the discriminations of character, and the ten­ dency of the passions, either single or combined; and physiology must supply him with illustrations and images. To put these materials to poetical use, is required an imagination capable of painting nature, and realizing fiction. Nor is he yet a poet till he has attained the whole extension of his language, distinguished all the delica­ cies of phrase, and all the colours of words,182 and learned to adjust their different sounds to all the varieties of metrical modulation.183 Bossu is of opinion that the poet’s first work is to find a moral, which his fable is afterwards to illustrate and establish.184 This seems to have been the process only of Milton; the moral of other poems is incidental and consequent; in Milton’s only it is essential and intrinsick. His purpose was the most useful and the most arduous; “to vindicate the ways of God to man”;185 to shew the reasonableness of religion, and the necessity of obedience to the Divine Law. To convey this moral there must be a fable, a narration artfully constructed, so as to excite curiosity, and surprise expectation. In this part of his work, Milton must be confessed to have equalled every other poet. He has involved in his account of the Fall of Man the events which preceded, and those that were to follow it: he has inter­ woven the whole system of theology with such propriety, that every part appears to be necessary; and scarcely any recital is wished shorter for the sake of quickening the progress of the main action. The subject of an epick poem is naturally an event of great importance. That of Milton is not the destruction of a city, the conduct of a colony, or the foundation of an empire. His subject is the fate of worlds, the revolutions of heaven and of earth; rebellion against the Supreme King, raised by the highest order of created beings; the overthrow of their host, and the punishment of their crime; the creation of a new race of reasonable creatures; their original happiness and innocence, their forfeiture of immortality, and their restoration to hope and peace. Great events can be hastened or retarded only by persons of elevated dignity. Before the greatness displayed in Milton’s poem, all other greatness shrinks away. The weakest of his agents are the highest and noblest of human beings, the original parents of mankind; with whose actions the elements consented; on whose recti­ 182. Shades of meaning. 183. The epic poet described here bears striking similarities to the ideal poet Imlac imagines in Chapter X of Rasselas (see pp. 185–87 above). 184. René Le Bossu (1631–1680), Traité du poème épique (1675), Book 1, Chapter 7. 185. SJ quotes Pope’s imitation of Milton in Essay on Man (i.16); Milton wrote, “And justify the ways of God to men” (Paradise Lost, i.26). SJ also misquotes Milton’s line in Rambler 94 (see p. 146 above) and under vindicate in Dictionary.



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tude, or deviation of will, depended the state of terrestrial nature, and the condition of all the future inhabitants of the globe. Of the other agents in the poem, the chief are such as it is irreverence to name on slight occasions. The rest were lower powers;    —of which the least could wield Those elements, and arm him with the force Of all their regions;186

powers, which only the controul of Omnipotence restrains from laying creation waste, and filling the vast expanse of space with ruin and confusion. To display the motives and actions of beings thus superiour, so far as human reason can examine them, or human imagination represent them, is the task which this mighty poet has undertaken and performed. In the examination of epick poems much speculation is commonly employed upon the characters. The characters in the Paradise Lost, which admit of examina­ tion, are those of angels and of man; of angels good and evil; of man in his innocent and sinful state. Among the angels, the virtue187 of Raphael is mild and placid, of easy conde­ scension and free communication; that of Michael is regal and lofty, and, as may seem, attentive to the dignity of his own nature. Abdiel and Gabriel appear occa­ sionally, and act as every incident requires; the solitary fidelity of Abdiel is very ami­ ably painted. Of the evil angels the characters are more diversified. To Satan, as Addison observes, such sentiments are given as suit “the most exalted and most depraved being.”188 Milton has been censured, by Clarke,189 for the impiety which sometimes breaks from Satan’s mouth. For there are thoughts, as he justly remarks, which no observation of character can justify, because no good man would willingly permit them to pass, however transiently, through his own mind. To make Satan speak as a rebel, without any such expressions as might taint the reader’s imagination, was in­ deed one of the great difficulties in Milton’s undertaking, and I cannot but think that he has extricated himself with great happiness. There is in Satan’s speeches little that can give pain to a pious ear. The language of rebellion cannot be the same with that of obedience. The malignity of Satan foams in haughtiness and obstinacy; but his ex­ pressions are commonly general, and no otherwise offensive than as they are wicked. 186. Paradise Lost, vi.221–23. 187. “The power or operative influence inherent in a supernatural or divine being” (OED, sense 3a). 188. Spectator 303 (The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond, 5 vols. [1965], iii.86). 189. [SJ’s note] Essay on Study [ John Clarke, Essay Upon Study (1731), pp. 204–7].

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The other chiefs of the celestial rebellion are very judiciously discriminated in the first and second books; and the ferocious character of Moloch appears, both in the battle and the council, with exact consistency. To Adam and to Eve are given, during their innocence, such sentiments as innocence can generate and utter. Their love is pure benevolence and mutual ven­ eration; their repasts are without luxury, and their diligence without toil. Their ad­ dresses to their Maker have little more than the voice of admiration and gratitude. Fruition left them nothing to ask, and innocence left them nothing to fear. But with guilt enter distrust and discord, mutual accusation, and stubborn self-­defence; they regard each other with alienated minds, and dread their Creator as the avenger of their transgression. At last they seek shelter in his mercy, soften to repentance, and melt in supplication. Both before and after the Fall, the superiority of Adam is diligently sustained. Of the probable and the marvellous, two parts of a vulgar190 epick poem, which immerge the critick in deep consideration, the Paradise Lost requires little to be said. It contains the history of a miracle, of Creation and Redemption; it displays the power and the mercy of the Supreme Being; the probable therefore is marvellous, and the marvellous is probable. The substance of the narrative is truth; and as truth allows no choice, it is, like necessity, superior to rule. To the accidental or adventi­ tious parts, as to every thing human, some slight exceptions may be made. But the main fabrick191 is immovably supported. It is justly remarked by Addison, that this poem has, by the nature of its sub­ ject, the advantage above all others, that it is universally and perpetually interesting. All mankind will, through all ages, bear the same relation to Adam and to Eve, and must partake of that good and evil which extend to themselves.192 Of the machinery, so called from Θεὸς ἀπὸ μηχανῆς,193 by which is meant the occasional interposition of supernatural power, another fertile topick of critical re­ marks, here is no room to speak, because every thing is done under the immediate and visible direction of Heaven; but the rule is so far observed, that no part of the action could have been accomplished by any other means. Of episodes,194 I think there are only two, contained in Raphael’s relation of the war in heaven, and Michael’s prophetick account of the changes to happen in this world. Both are closely connected with the great action; one was necessary to Adam as a warning, the other as a consolation. 190. “Mean; low; being of the common rate” (Dictionary, sense 2). 191. Structure. 192. Spectator 273 (Bond, ii.565). 193. Deus ex machina (Aristotle, Poetics, xv). 194. “Incidental narrative, or digression in a poem” (Dictionary).



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To the compleatness or integrity of the design nothing can be objected; it has distinctly and clearly what Aristotle requires, a beginning, a middle, and an end.195 There is perhaps no poem, of the same length, from which so little can be taken without apparent mutilation. Here are no funeral games, nor is there any long de­ scription of a shield. The short digressions at the beginning of the third, seventh, and ninth books, might doubtless be spared; but superfluities so beautiful, who would take away? or who does not wish that the author of the Iliad had gratified succeeding ages with a little knowledge of himself ? Perhaps no passages are more frequently or more attentively read than those extrinsick paragraphs; and, since the end of poetry is pleasure, that cannot be unpoetical with which all are pleased. The questions, whether the action of the poem be strictly one, whether the poem can be properly termed heroick, and who is the hero, are raised by such readers as draw their principles of judgement rather from books than from reason. Milton, though he intituled Paradise Lost only a “poem,” yet calls it himself “heroick song.”196 Dryden, petulantly and indecently, denies the heroism of Adam, because he was over­ come; but there is no reason why the hero should not be unfortunate, except estab­ lished practice, since success and virtue do not go necessarily together. Cato is the hero of Lucan; but Lucan’s authority will not be suffered by Quintilian to decide.197 However, if success be necessary, Adam’s deceiver was at last crushed; Adam was restored to his Maker’s favour, and therefore may securely resume his human rank. After the scheme and fabrick of the poem, must be considered its component parts, the sentiments and the diction. The sentiments, as expressive of manners, or appropriated to characters, are, for the greater part, unexceptionably just. Splendid passages, containing lessons of morality, or precepts of prudence, occur seldom. Such is the original formation of this poem, that, as it admits no human manners till the Fall, it can give little assistance to human conduct. Its end is to raise the thoughts above sublunary cares or pleasures. Yet the praise of that for­ titude, with which Abdiel maintained his singularity of virtue against the scorn of multitudes, may be accommodated to all times; and Raphael’s reproof of Adam’s curiosity after the planetary motions, with the answer returned by Adam, may be confidently opposed to any rule of life which any poet has delivered.198 The thoughts which are occasionally called forth in the progress, are such as 195. Poetics, vii. 196. Paradise Lost, ix.25. 197. The references are to Lucan’s first-­century CE poem on the Roman civil war, Pharsalia (Book IX), and to Quintilian’s slightly later treatise on rhetoric, Institutio Oratoria (x.i.90). 198. See Paradise Lost, v.803 ff. and viii.66–197, part of which SJ quotes under life in Dictionary, “Neither love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv’st / Live well, how long or short permit to heav’n.”

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could only be produced by an imagination in the highest degree fervid and active, to which materials were supplied by incessant study and unlimited curiosity. The heat of Milton’s mind might be said to sublimate199 his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of science, unmingled with its grosser parts. He had considered creation in its whole extent, and his descriptions are there­ fore learned. He had accustomed his imagination to unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions therefore were extensive. The characteristick quality of his poem is sublimity. He sometimes descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is gigantick lofti­ ness.200 He can please when pleasure is required; but it is his peculiar power to astonish. He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon others; the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful, darken­ ing the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful: he therefore chose a subject on which too much could not be said, on which he might tire his fancy without the censure of extravagance. The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not satiate his appetite of greatness. To paint things as they are, requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. Milton’s delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility; reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superior beings, to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven. But he could not be always in other worlds: he must sometimes revisit earth, and tell of things visible and known. When he cannot raise wonder by the sublimity of his mind, he gives delight by its fertility. Whatever be his subject, he never fails to fill the imagination. But his images and descriptions of the scenes or operations of nature do not seem to be always copied from original form, nor to have the freshness, raciness, and energy of im­ mediate observation. He saw nature, as Dryden expresses it, “through the spec­ tacles of books”;201 and on most occasions calls learning to his assistance. The gar­ den of Eden brings to his mind the vale of Enna, where Proserpine was gathering flowers.202 Satan makes his way through fighting elements, like Argo between the 199. “To raise by the force of chemical fire” (Dictionary, sense 1); “To exalt; to heighten; to elevate” (Dictionary, sense 2). 200. [SJ’s note] [Francesco] Algarotti [1712–1764] terms it gigantesca sublimità Miltoniana. 201. Cf. SJ’s Preface to Shakespeare, p. 461 above. 202. Paradise Lost, iv.268–69.



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Cyanean rocks, or Ulysses between the two Sicilian whirlpools, when he shunned Charybdis on the “larboard.”203 The mythological allusions have been justly cen­ sured, as not being always used with notice of their vanity; but they contribute variety to the narration, and produce an alternate exercise of the memory and the fancy. His similies are less numerous, and more various, than those of his predeces­ sors. But he does not confine himself within the limits of rigorous comparison: his great excellence is amplitude, and he expands the adventitious image beyond the di­ mensions which the occasion required. Thus, comparing the shield of Satan to the orb of the moon, he crowds the imagination with the discovery of the telescope, and all the wonders which the telescope discovers.204 Of his moral sentiments it is hardly praise to affirm that they excel those of all other poets; for this superiority he was indebted to his acquaintance with the sacred writings. The ancient epick poets, wanting the light of Revelation, were very un­ skilful teachers of virtue: their principal characters may be great, but they are not amiable.205 The reader may rise from their works with a greater degree of active or passive fortitude, and sometimes of prudence; but he will be able to carry away few precepts of justice, and none of mercy. From the Italian writers it appears, that the advantages of even Christian knowledge may be possessed in vain. Ariosto’s pravity206 is generally known; and though the Deliverance of Jerusalem may be considered as a sacred subject, the poet has been very sparing of moral instruction.207 In Milton every line breathes sanctity of thought, and purity of manners, ex­ cept when the train of the narration requires the introduction of the rebellious spirits; and even they are compelled to acknowledge their subjection to God, in such a manner as excites reverence and confirms piety. Of human beings there are but two; but those two are the parents of mankind, venerable before their fall for dignity and innocence, and amiable after it for repen­ tance and submission. In their first state their affection is tender without weakness, and their piety sublime without presumption. When they have sinned, they shew how discord begins in mutual frailty, and how it ought to cease in mutual forbear­ ance; how confidence of the divine favour is forfeited by sin, and how hope of par­ don may be obtained by penitence and prayer. A state of innocence we can only 203. Paradise Lost, ii.1014–20. 204. Paradise Lost, i.283–91. 205. Lovable. 206. “Corruption; badness; malignity” (Dictionary). 207. SJ refers to Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), author of Orlando Furioso, and Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso (1544–1595).

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conceive, if indeed, in our present misery, it be possible to conceive it; but the senti­ ments and worship proper to a fallen and offending being, we have all to learn, as we have all to practise. The poet, whatever be done, is always great. Our progenitors, in their first state, conversed with angels; even when folly and sin had degraded them, they had not in their humiliation “the port of mean suitors”;208 and they rise again to rever­ ential regard, when we find that their prayers were heard. As human passions did not enter the world before the Fall, there is in the Paradise Lost little opportunity for the pathetick;209 but what little there is has not been lost. That passion which is peculiar to rational nature, the anguish arising from the consciousness of transgression, and the horrours attending the sense of the divine displeasure, are very justly described and forcibly impressed. But the passions are moved only on one occasion; sublimity is the general and prevailing quality in this poem; sublimity variously modified, sometimes descriptive, sometimes argumenta­ tive. The defects and faults of Paradise Lost, for faults and defects every work of man must have, it is the business of impartial criticism to discover. As, in displaying the excellence of Milton, I have not made long quotations, because of selecting beau­ ties there had been no end, I shall in the same general manner mention that which seems to deserve censure; for what Englishman can take delight in transcribing pas­ sages, which, if they lessen the reputation of Milton, diminish in some degree the honour of our country? The generality of my scheme does not admit the frequent notice of verbal in­ accuracies; which Bentley, perhaps better skilled in grammar than in poetry, has often found, though he sometimes made them, and which he imputed to the obtru­ sions of a reviser whom the author’s blindness obliged him to employ.210 A supposi­ tion rash and groundless, if he thought it true; and vile and pernicious, if, as is said, he in private allowed it to be false. The plan of Paradise Lost has this inconvenience, that it comprises neither human actions nor human manners. The man and woman who act and suffer, are in a state which no other man or woman can ever know. The reader finds no transaction in which he can be engaged; beholds no condition in which he can by any effort of imagination place himself; he has, therefore, little natural curiosity or sympathy.211 We all, indeed, feel the effects of Adam’s disobedience; we all sin like Adam, 208. Paradise Lost, xi.8–9. 209. “Affecting the passions; passionate; moving” (Dictionary, s.v. pathetical). 210. See Richard Bentley’s preface to Milton’s Paradise Lost: A New Edition (1732). Cf. SJ’s Plan of a Dictionary, p. 391 above. 211. Cf. SJ’s remarks on Davideis in “Cowley” (pp. 629–35 above).



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and like him must all bewail our offences; we have restless and insidious enemies in the fallen angels, and in the blessed spirits we have guardians and friends; in the re­ demption of mankind we hope to be included; and in the description of heaven and hell we are surely interested, as we are all to reside hereafter either in the regions of horror or of bliss. But these truths are too important to be new; they have been taught to our in­ fancy; they have mingled with our solitary thoughts and familiar conversation, and are habitually interwoven with the whole texture of life. Being therefore not new, they raise no unaccustomed emotion in the mind; what we knew before we cannot learn; what is not unexpected cannot surprise. Of the ideas suggested by these awful scenes, from some we recede with rever­ ence, except when stated hours require their association; and from others we shrink with horror, or admit them only as salutary inflictions, as counterpoises to our inter­ ests and passions. Such images rather obstruct the career of fancy than incite it. Pleasure and terrour are indeed the genuine sources of poetry; but poetical pleasure must be such as human imagination can at least conceive, and poetical ter­ rour such as human strength and fortitude may combat. The good and evil of eter­ nity are too ponderous for the wings of wit; the mind sinks under them in passive helplessness, content with calm belief and humble adoration. Known truths, however, may take a different appearance, and be conveyed to the mind by a new train of intermediate images. This Milton has undertaken, and performed with pregnancy and vigour of mind peculiar to himself. Whoever con­ siders the few radical212 positions which the Scriptures afforded him, will wonder by what energetick operation he expanded them to such extent, and ramified them to so much variety, restrained as he was by religious reverence from licentiousness of fiction. Here is a full display of the united force of study and genius; of a great accu­ mulation of materials, with judgement to digest, and fancy to combine them: Milton was able to select from nature, or from story, from ancient fable, or from modern science, whatever could illustrate or adorn his thoughts. An accumulation of knowl­ edge impregnated his mind, fermented by study, and exalted by imagination. It has been therefore said, without an indecent hyperbole, by one of his en­ comiasts, that in reading Paradise Lost we read a book of universal knowledge.213 But original deficience cannot be supplied. The want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal 212. Fundamental. 213. Samuel Barrow (1625–1682), In Paradisum Amissum, a poem prefixed to the second edition of Paradise Lost (1674).

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is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, retire harrassed and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions. Another inconvenience of Milton’s design is, that it requires the description of what cannot be described, the agency of spirits. He saw that immateriality supplied no images, and that he could not show angels acting but by instruments of action; he therefore invested them with form and matter. This, being necessary, was therefore defensible; and he should have secured the consistency of his system, by keeping immateriality out of sight, and enticing his reader to drop it from his thoughts. But he has unhappily perplexed his poetry with his philosophy. His infernal and celes­ tial powers are sometimes pure spirit, and sometimes animated body. When Satan walks with his lance upon the “burning marle,” he has a body; when in his passage between hell and the new world, he is in danger of sinking in the vacuity, and is sup­ ported by a gust of rising vapours, he has a body; when he animates the toad, he seems to be mere spirit, that can penetrate matter at pleasure; when he “starts up in his own shape,” he has at least a determined form; and when he is brought before Gabriel, he has “a spear and shield,” which he had the power of hiding in the toad, though the arms of the contending angels are evidently material.214 The vulgar inhabitants of Pandaemonium being “incorporeal spirits,” are “at large, though without number,” in a limited space; yet in the battle, when they were overwhelmed by mountains, their armour hurt them, “crushed in upon their sub­ stance, now grown gross by sinning.” This likewise happened to the uncorrupted angels, who were overthrown “the sooner for their arms,” for “unarmed they might easily as spirits have evaded by contraction, or remove.” Even as spirits they are hardly spiritual; for “contraction” and “remove” are images of matter; but if they could have escaped without their armour, they might have escaped from it, and left only the empty cover to be battered. Uriel, when he rides on a sun-­beam, is material: Satan is material when he is afraid of the prowess of Adam.215 The confusion of spirit and matter which pervades the whole narration of the war of heaven fills it with incongruity; and the book, in which it is related, is, I be­ lieve, the favourite of children, and gradually neglected as knowledge is increased. After the operation of immaterial agents, which cannot be explained, may be considered that of allegorical persons, which have no real existence. To exalt causes into agents, to invest abstract ideas with form, and animate them with activity, has always been the right of poetry. But such airy beings are, for the most part, suffered only to do their natural office; and retire. Thus Fame tells a tale, and Victory hovers 214. SJ refers to Paradise Lost, i.296, ii.927–39, iv.799–809, iv.819, and iv.989–90. 215. In this paragraph SJ refers to Paradise Lost, i.789–91, vi.656–61, vi.595–97, iv.555–56, and ix.482–88.



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over a general, or perches on a standard; but Fame and Victory can do no more. To give them any real employment, or ascribe to them any material agency, is to make them allegorical no longer, but to shock the mind by ascribing effects to non-­entity. In the Prometheus of Aeschylus, we see Violence and Strength, and in the Alcestis of Euripides, we see Death brought upon the stage, all as active persons of the drama; but no precedents can justify absurdity. Milton’s allegory of Sin and Death is undoubtedly faulty. Sin is indeed the mother of Death, and may be allowed to be the portress of hell; but when they stop the journey of Satan, a journey described as real, and when Death offers him battle, the allegory is broken. That Sin and Death should have shewn the way to hell might have been allowed; but they cannot facilitate the passage by building a bridge, be­ cause the difficulty of Satan’s passage is described as real and sensible, and the bridge ought to be only figurative. The hell assigned to the rebellious spirits is de­ scribed as not less local than the residence of man. It is placed in some distant part of space, separated from the regions of harmony and order by a chaotick waste and an unoccupied vacuity; but “Sin” and “Death” worked up a “mole” of “aggregated soil,” cemented with “asphaltus”; a work too bulky for ideal216 architects.217 This unskilful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of the poem; and to this there was no temptation, but the author’s opinion of its beauty. To the conduct of the narrative some objections may be made. Satan is with great expectation brought before Gabriel in Paradise, and is suffered to go away unmolested.218 The creation of man is represented as the consequence of the vacuity left in heaven by the expulsion of the rebels, yet Satan mentions it as a report “rife in heaven” before his departure.219 To find sentiments for the state of innocence, was very difficult; and something of anticipation perhaps is now and then discovered. Adam’s discourse of dreams seems not to be the speculation of a new-­created being.220 I know not whether his answer to the angel’s reproof for curiosity does not want something of propriety: it is the speech of a man acquainted with many other men.221 Some philosophical notions, especially when the philosophy is false, might have been better omitted. The angel, in a comparison, speaks of “timorous deer,”222 before deer were yet timo­ rous, and before Adam could understand the comparison. 216. Unreal; existing only in the mind. 217. See Paradise Lost, x.282 ff. 218. Paradise Lost, iv.866–1015. 219. Paradise Lost, vii.150–61 and i.650–54. 220. Paradise Lost, v.95 ff. 221. Paradise Lost, viii.179 ff. 222. Paradise Lost, vi.856–57 (incorrectly remembered).

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Dryden remarks, that Milton has some flats among his elevations.223 This is only to say that all the parts are not equal. In every work one part must be for the sake of others; a palace must have passages; a poem must have transitions. It is no more to be required that wit should always be blazing, than that the sun should always stand at noon. In a great work there is a vicissitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the world a succession of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in the sky, may be allowed sometimes to revisit earth; for what other author ever soared so high, or sustained his flight so long? Milton, being well versed in the Italian poets, appears to have borrowed often from them; and, as every man catches something from his companions, his desire of imitating Ariosto’s levity has disgraced his work with the “Paradise of Fools”; a fic­ tion not in itself ill-­imagined, but too ludicrous for its place.224 His play on words, in which he delights too often; his equivocations which Bentley endeavours to defend by the example of the ancients; his unnecessary and ungraceful use of terms of art, it is not necessary to mention, because they are easily remarked, and generally censured, and at last bear so little proportion to the whole, that they scarcely deserve the attention of a critick. Such are the faults of that wonderful performance Paradise Lost; which he who can put in balance with its beauties must be considered not as nice225 but as dull, as less to be censured for want of candour226 than pitied for want of sensibility. Of Paradise Regained, the general judgement seems now to be right, that it is in many parts elegant, and every-­where instructive. It was not to be supposed that the writer of Paradise Lost could ever write without great effusions of fancy, and exalted precepts of wisdom. The basis of Paradise Regained is narrow; a dialogue without action can never please like an union of the narrative and dramatick powers. Had this poem been written not by Milton, but by some imitator, it would have claimed and received universal praise. If Paradise Regained has been too much depreciated, Samson Agonistes has in requital been too much admired. It could only be by long prejudice, and the bigotry of learning, that Milton could prefer the ancient tragedies, with their encumbrance of a chorus, to the exhibitions of the French and English stages; and it is only by a blind confidence in the reputation of Milton, that a drama can be praised in which the intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence, neither hasten nor re­ tard the catastrophe. In this tragedy are however many particular beauties, many just sentiments 223. Preface to Sylvae (1685); Dryden, Works, iii.17. 224. Paradise Lost, iii.440–97. 225. “Accurate in judgment to minute exactness; superfluously exact” (Dictionary). 226. “Sweetness of temper” (Dictionary).



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and striking lines; but it wants that power of attracting the attention which a well-­ connected plan produces. Milton would not have excelled in dramatick writing; he knew human nature only in the gross, and had never studied the shades of character, nor the combina­ tions of concurring, or the perplexity of contending passions. He had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little in the world, and was de­ ficient in the knowledge which experience must confer. Through all his greater works there prevails an uniform peculiarity of diction, a mode and cast of expression which bears little resemblance to that of any former writer, and which is so far removed from common use, that an unlearned reader, when he first opens his book, finds himself surprised by a new language. This novelty has been, by those who can find nothing wrong in Milton, im­ puted to his laborious endeavours after words suitable to the grandeur of his ideas. “Our language,” says Addison, “sunk under him.”227 But the truth is, that, both in prose and verse, he had formed his stile by a perverse and pedantick principle. He was desirous to use English words with a foreign idiom. This in all his prose is discovered and condemned; for there judgement operates freely, neither softened by the beauty nor awed by the dignity of his thoughts; but such is the power of his poetry, that his call is obeyed without resistance, the reader feels himself in captivity to a higher and a nobler mind, and criticism sinks in admiration. Milton’s stile was not modified by his subject: what is shown with greater ex­ tent in Paradise Lost, may be found in Comus. One source of his peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tuscan poets: the disposition of his words is, I think, frequently Italian; perhaps sometimes combined with other tongues. Of him, at last, may be said what Jonson says of Spenser, that “he wrote no language,”228 but has formed what Butler calls a “Babylonish dialect,”229 in itself harsh and barbarous; but made by exalted genius, and extensive learning, the vehicle of so much instruction and so much pleasure, that, like other lovers, we find grace in its deformity. Whatever be the faults of his diction, he cannot want the praise of copious­ ness and variety: he was master of his language in its full extent; and has selected the melodious words with such diligence, that from his book alone the Art of English Poetry might be learned. After his diction, something must be said of his versification. “The measure,” he says, “is the English heroick verse without rhyme.”230 Of this mode he had many 227. Spectator 297 (Bond, iii.62–63). 228. Ben Jonson, Timber, or Discoveries, in Ben Jonson, ed C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simp­ son, 11 vols. (1925–52), viii.618. 229. Samuel Butler, Hudibras (i.i.93). 230. From Milton’s note, “The Verse,” which he prefixed to Paradise Lost in 1669.

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examples among the Italians, and some in his own country. The Earl of Surry is said to have translated one of Virgil’s books without rhyme;231 and, besides our trage­ dies, a few short poems had appeared in blank verse; particularly one tending to reconcile the nation to Raleigh’s wild attempt upon Guiana, and probably written by Raleigh himself.232 These petty performances cannot be supposed to have much in­ fluenced Milton, who more probably took his hint from Trisino’s Italia Liberata;233 and, finding blank verse easier than rhyme, was desirous of persuading himself that it is better. “Rhyme,” he says, and says truly, “is no necessary adjunct of true poetry.”234 But perhaps, of poetry as a mental operation, metre or musick is no necessary ad­ junct: it is however by the musick of metre that poetry has been discriminated in all languages; and in languages melodiously constructed with a due proportion of long and short syllables, metre is sufficient. But one language cannot communicate its rules to another: where metre is scanty and imperfect, some help is necessary. The musick of the English heroick line strikes the ear so faintly that it is easily lost, un­ less all the syllables of every line co-­operate together: this co-­operation can be only obtained by the preservation of every verse unmingled with another, as a distinct system of sounds; and this distinctness is obtained and preserved by the artifice of rhyme. The variety of pauses, so much boasted by the lovers of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy readers of Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or begin. “Blank verse,” said an ingenious critick, “seems to be verse only to the eye.”235 Poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will not often please; nor can rhyme ever be safely spared but where the subject is able to support itself. Blank verse makes some approach to that which is called the “lapidary stile”; has neither the easiness of prose, nor the melody of numbers, and therefore tires by long continuance. Of the Italian writers without rhyme, whom Milton alleges as prece­ dents, not one is popular; what reason could urge in its defence, has been confuted by the ear. But, whatever be the advantage of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to be other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than imitated. He that thinks himself 231. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/17–1547), translated two books of the Aeneid into blank verse. 232. The reference is to De Guiana, carmen Epicum (1596), which was probably written by George Chapman. 233. Gian Giorgio Trìssino (1478–1550), L’Italia liberata da’ Gothi. 234. “The Verse” (see p. 700, n. 230, above). 235. William Locke (1732–1810); see Boswell, Life, iv.43.



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capable of astonishing, may write blank verse; but those that hope only to please, must condescend to rhyme. The highest praise of genius is original invention. Milton cannot be said to have contrived the structure of an epick poem, and therefore owes reverence to that vigour and amplitude of mind to which all generations must be indebted for the art of poetical narration, for the texture of the fable, the variation of incidents, the interposition of dialogue, and all the stratagems that surprise and enchain attention. But, of all the borrowers from Homer, Milton is perhaps the least indebted. He was naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and disdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refuse admission to the thoughts or images of his prede­ cessors, but he did not seek them. From his contemporaries he neither courted nor received support; there is in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might be gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praise, nor solicitation of sup­ port. His great works were performed under discountenance, and in blindness, but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born for whatever is arduous, and his work is not the greatest of heroick poems, only because it is not the first.

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LIFE OF POPE Alexander Pope was born in London, May 21, 1688, of parents whose rank or station was never ascertained: we are informed that they were of “gentle blood”; that his father was of a family of which the Earl of Downe was the head, and that his mother was the daughter of William Turner, Esquire, of York, who had likewise three sons, one of whom had the honour of being killed, and the other of dying, in the service of Charles the First; the third was made a general officer in Spain, from whom the sister inherited what sequestrations and forfeitures had left in the family. This, and this only, is told by Pope;1 who is more willing, as I have heard ob­ served, to shew what his father was not, than what he was. It is allowed that he grew rich by trade; but whether in a shop or on the Exchange was never discovered, til Mr. Tyers told, on the authority of Mrs. Racket, that he was a linen-­draper in the Strand.2 Both parents were papists. Pope was from his birth of a constitution tender and delicate; but is said to have shewn remarkable gentleness and sweetness of disposition. The weakness of his body continued through his life, but the mildness of his mind perhaps ended with his childhood. His voice, when he was young, was so pleasing, that he was called in fondness the “little nightingale.” Being not sent early to school, he was taught to read by an aunt; and when he was seven or eight years old became a lover of books. He first learned to write by imi­ tating printed books; a species of penmanship in which he retained great excellence through his whole life, though his ordinary hand was not elegant. When he was about eight, he was placed in Hampshire under Taverner,3 a Romish priest, who, by a method very rarely practised, taught him the Greek and Latin rudiments together. He was now first regularly initiated in poetry by the perusal of Ogylby’s Homer, and Sandys’ Ovid:4 Ogylby’s assistance he never repaid with any praise; but of Sandys he declared, in his notes to the Iliad, that English poetry owed much of its present beauty to his translations.5 Sandys very rarely at­ tempted original composition. From the care of Taverner, under whom his proficiency was considerable, he 1. See Epistle to Arbuthnot, ll. 388–90 and l. 381n. 2. Thomas Tyers, An Historical Rhapsody on Mr. Pope (1782), p. 5. Mrs. Rackett was Pope’s half-­sister. 3. Edward Taverner (a.k.a. John Bannister), a private tutor who also taught at Twyford. 4. John Ogilby (1600–1676) translated the Iliad (1660) and the Odyssey (1665). George Sandys (1578– 1644) translated Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1621–32). 5. Pope’s note to Iliad, xxii.196 (the Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, 10 vols. [1939–68], viii.463).

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was removed to a school at Twyford near Winchester, and again to another school about Hyde-­park Corner; from which he used sometimes to stroll to the playhouse, and was so delighted with theatrical exhibitions, that he formed a kind of play from Ogylby’s Iliad, with some verses of his own intermixed, which he persuaded his school-­fellows to act, with the addition of his master’s gardener, who personated Ajax. At the two last schools he used to represent himself as having lost part of what Taverner had taught him, and on his master at Twyford he had already exercised his poetry in a lampoon. Yet under those masters he translated more than a fourth part of the Metamorphoses. If he kept the same proportion in his other exercises, it can­ not be thought that his loss was great. He tells of himself, in his poems, that “he lisp’d in numbers”;6 and used to say that he could not remember the time when he began to make verses. In the style of fiction it might have been said of him as of Pindar, that when he lay in his cradle “the bees swarmed about his mouth.”7 About the time of the Revolution his father, who was undoubtedly disap­ pointed by the sudden blast of popish prosperity, quitted his trade, and retired to Binfield in Windsor Forest, with about twenty thousand pounds; for which, being conscientiously determined not to intrust it to the government, he found no better use than that of locking it up in a chest, and taking from it what his expences re­ quired; and his life was long enough to consume a great part of it, before his son came to the inheritance. To Binfield Pope was called by his father when he was about twelve years old; and there he had for a few months the assistance of one Deane, another priest,8 of whom he learned only to construe a little of Tully’s Offices. How Mr. Deane could spend, with a boy who had translated so much of Ovid, some months over a small part of Tully’s Offices, it is now vain to enquire. Of a youth so successfully employed, and so conspicuously improved, a minute account must be naturally desired; but curiosity must be contented with confused, imperfect, and sometimes improbable intelligence. Pope, finding little advantage from external help, resolved thenceforward to direct himself, and at twelve formed a plan of study which he completed with little other incitement than the desire of excellence. His primary and principal purpose was to be a poet, with which his father accidentally concurred, by proposing subjects, and obliging him to correct his per­ 6. Epistle to Arbuthnot, ll. 127–28. 7. Pausanias, Description of Greece, ix.xxiii.2–3. 8. Thomas Deane (1651–1735) was probably not Pope’s instructor in Tully (Marcus Tullius Cicero).

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formances by many revisals; after which the old gentleman, when he was satisfied, would say “these are good rhymes.”9 In his perusal of the English poets he soon distinguished the versification of Dryden, which he considered as the model to be studied, and was impressed with such veneration for his instructer, that he persuaded some friend to take him to the coffee-­house which Dryden frequented, and pleased himself with having seen him. Dryden died May 1, 1701,10 some days before Pope was twelve, so early must he therefore have felt the power of harmony, and the zeal of genius. Who does not wish that Dryden could have known the value of the homage that was paid him, and foreseen the greatness of his young admirer? The earliest of Pope’s productions is his Ode on Solitude, written before he was twelve, in which there is nothing more than other forward boys have attained, and which is not equal to Cowley’s performances at the same age. His time was now spent wholly in reading and writing. As he read the clas­ sicks, he amused himself with translating them; and at fourteen made a version of the first book of the Thebais,11 which, with some revision, he afterwards published. He must have been at this time, if he had no help, a considerable proficient in the Latin tongue. By Dryden’s Fables, which had then been not long published, and were much in the hands of poetical readers, he was tempted to try his own skill in giving Chaucer a more fashionable appearance, and put January and May, and the Prologue of the Wife of Bath, into modern English. He translated likewise the Epistle of Sappho to Phaon from Ovid, to complete the version, which was before imperfect; and wrote some other small pieces, which he afterwards printed. He sometimes imitated the English poets, and professed to have written at fourteen his poem upon Silence, after Rochester’s Nothing.12 He had now formed his versification, and in the smoothness of his numbers surpassed his original: but this is but a small part of his praise; he discovers such acquaintance both with human life and publick affairs as is not easily conceived to have been attainable by a boy of fourteen in Windsor Forest. Next year he was desirous of opening to himself new sources of knowledge, by making himself acquainted with modern languages; and removed for a time to London, that he might study French and Italian, which, as he desired nothing more 9. As he often does, SJ here follows Owen Ruffhead’s Life of Alexander Pope (1769), which is not en­ tirely accurate. 10. Dryden died in 1700. 11. Pope translated Book I of Statius’s Thebaid, an epic poem written c. 90 CE. 12. See The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn, 5 vols. (1956), i.87 (hereafter re­ ferred to as “Sherburn”). John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester (1647–1680), poet and courtier.



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than to read them, were by diligent application soon dispatched. Of Italian learning he does not appear to have ever made much use in his subsequent studies. He then returned to Binfield, and delighted himself with his own poetry. He tried all styles, and many subjects. He wrote a comedy, a tragedy, an epick poem, with panegyricks on all the princes of Europe; and, as he confesses, “thought him­ self the greatest genius that ever was.”13 Self-­confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings; he, indeed, who forms his opinion of himself in solitude, without knowing the powers of other men, is very liable to errour; but it was the felicity of Pope to rate himself at his real value. Most of his puerile productions were, by his maturer judgement, afterwards destroyed; Alcander, the epick poem, was burnt by the persuasion of Atterbury.14 The tragedy was founded on the legend of St. Genevieve. Of the comedy there is no account. Concerning his studies it is related, that he translated Tully On Old Age; and that, besides his books of poetry and criticism, he read Temple’s Essays15 and Locke On Human Understanding. His reading, though his favourite authors are not known, appears to have been sufficiently extensive and multifarious; for his early pieces shew, with sufficient evidence, his knowledge of books. He that is pleased with himself, easily imagines that he shall please others. Sir William Trumbal, who had been ambassador at Constantinople, and secretary of state, when he retired from business, fixed his residence in the neighbourhood of Binfield.16 Pope, not yet sixteen, was introduced to the statesman of sixty, and so distinguished himself that their interviews ended in friendship and correspondence. Pope was, through his whole life, ambitious of splendid acquaintance, and he seems to have wanted neither diligence nor success in attracting the notice of the great; for from his first entrance into the world, and his entrance was very early, he was ad­ mitted to familiarity with those whose rank or station made them most conspicuous. From the age of sixteen the life of Pope, as an author, may be properly com­ puted. He now wrote his pastorals, which were shewn to the poets and criticks of that time; as they well deserved, they were read with admiration, and many praises were bestowed upon them and upon the preface, which is both elegant and learned in a high degree: they were, however, not published till five years afterwards. Cowley, Milton, and Pope, are distinguished among the English poets by the 13. Pope’s manuscript for the Preface to his Works (1717), printed in Works (9 vols., ed. William Warbur­ ton, 1751), i.*ix. 14. Francis Atterbury (1663–1732), Bishop of Rochester, politician, and Jacobite. 15. William Temple (1628–1699); SJ said he formed his own prose style on Temple’s (Boswell, Life, i.218–19). 16. William Trumbull (1639–1716), the key intellectual influence on Pope in his youth.

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early exertion of their powers; but the works of Cowley alone were published in his childhood, and therefore of him only can it be certain that his puerile performances received no improvement from his maturer studies. At this time began his acquaintance with Wycherley, a man who seems to have had among his contemporaries his full share of reputation, to have been esteemed without virtue, and caressed without good-­humour.17 Pope was proud of his notice; Wycherley wrote verses in his praise, which he was charged by Dennis with writing to himself,18 and they agreed for a while to flatter one another. It is pleasant to re­ mark how soon Pope learned the cant19 of an author, and began to treat criticks with contempt, though he had yet suffered nothing from them. But the fondness of Wycherley was too violent to last. His esteem of Pope was such, that he submitted some poems to his revision; and when Pope, perhaps proud of such confidence, was sufficiently bold in his criticisms, and liberal in his alter­ ations, the old scribler was angry to see his pages defaced, and felt more pain from the detection than content from the amendment of his faults. They parted; but Pope always considered him with kindness, and visited him a little time before he died. Another of his early correspondents was Mr. Cromwell, of whom I have learned nothing particular but that he used to ride a-­hunting in a tye-­wig.20 He was fond, and perhaps vain, of amusing himself with poetry and criticism; and sometimes sent his performances to Pope, who did not forbear such remarks as were now-­and-­then unwelcome. Pope, in his turn, put the juvenile version of Statius into his hands for correction. Their correspondence afforded the publick its first knowledge of Pope’s epis­ tolary powers; for his letters were given by Cromwell to one Mrs. Thomas,21 and she many years afterwards sold them to Curll, who inserted them in a volume of his Miscellanies.22 Walsh, a name yet preserved among the minor poets, was one of his first encouragers.23 His regard was gained by the Pastorals, and from him Pope received the counsel by which he seems to have regulated his studies. Walsh advised him to correctness,24 which, as he told him, the English poets had hitherto neglected, and which therefore was left to him as a basis of fame; and, being delighted with rural poems, recommended to him to write a pastoral comedy, like those which are read 17. William Wycherly (1641–1716), a rake and playwright, author of The Country-­Wife (1675). 18. John Dennis (1658–1734), literary critic, an antagonist of Pope, Addison, and others. 19. Specialized language or jargon. 20. Henry Cromwell (1659–1728); a tie-­wig has a kind of ponytail. 21. Elizabeth Thomas (1677–1731), poet. 22. Edmund Curll (1683–1747), a publisher in constant conflict with Pope. 23. William Walsh (1662–1708), a poet and critic. 24. Conformity to rules of grammar and prosody.



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so eagerly in Italy; a design which Pope probably did not approve, as he did not fol­ low it. Pope had now declared himself a poet; and, thinking himself entitled to poeti­ cal conversation, began at seventeen to frequent Will’s, a coffee-­house on the north side of Russel-­street in Covent-­garden, where the wits of that time used to assemble, and where Dryden had, when he lived, been accustomed to preside. During this period of his life he was indefatigably diligent, and insatiably curi­ ous; wanting health for violent and money for expensive pleasures, and having cer­ tainly excited in himself very strong desires of intellectual eminence, he spent much of his time over his books; but he read only to store his mind with facts and images, seizing all that his authors presented with undistinguishing voracity, and with an appetite for knowledge too eager to be nice. In a mind like his, however, all the faculties were at once involuntarily improving. Judgement is forced upon us by ex­ perience. He that reads many books must compare one opinion or one style with another, and when he compares must necessarily distinguish, reject, and prefer. But the account given by himself of his studies was, that from fourteen to twenty he read only for amusement, from twenty to twenty-­seven for improvement and instruction; that in the first part of this time he desired only to know, and in the second he en­ deavoured to judge. The Pastorals, which had been for some time handed about among poets and criticks, were at last printed (1709) in Tonson’s Miscellany, in a volume which began with the pastorals of Philips,25 and ended with those of Pope. The same year was written the Essay on Criticism; a work which displays such extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinction, such acquaintance with man­ kind, and such knowledge both of ancient and modern learning, as are not often at­ tained by the maturest age and longest experience. It was published about two years afterwards, and being praised by Addison in the Spectator with sufficient liberality, met with so much favour as enraged Dennis, “who,” he says, found himself attacked, without any manner of provocation on his side, and attacked in his person, instead of his writings, by one who was wholly a stranger to him at a time when all the world knew he was persecuted by for­ tune; and not only saw that this was attempted in a clandestine manner, with the utmost falsehood and calumny, but found that all this was done by a little affected hypocrite, who had nothing in his mouth at the same time but truth, candour, friendship, good-­nature, humanity, and magnanimity.26 25. Ambrose Philips (1674–1749), whom Pope disparaged when Addison lauded his pastorals over Pope’s own performances. 26. Dennis’s attack was not prompted by Addison’s praise. An Essay was published on 15 May, Dennis’s

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How the attack was clandestine is not easily perceived, nor how his person is depreciated; but he seems to have known something of Pope’s character, in whom may be discovered an appetite to talk too frequently of his own virtues. The pamphlet is such as rage might be expected to dictate. He supposes him­ self to be asked two questions; whether the Essay will succeed, and who or what is the author. Its success he admits to be secured by the false opinions then prevalent; the author he concludes to be “young and raw.” First, because he discovers a sufficiency27 beyond his little ability, and hath rashly undertaken a task infinitely above his force. Secondly, while this little author struts, and affects the dictatorian air, he plainly shews that at the same time he is under the rod, and while he pretends to give laws to others is a pedantick slave to authority and opinion. Thirdly, he hath, like school­ boys, borrowed both from living and dead. Fourthly, he knows not his own mind, and frequently contradicts himself. Fifthly, he is almost perpetually in the wrong.28

All these positions he attempts to prove by quotations and remarks; but his desire to do mischief is greater than his power. He has, however, justly criticised some passages. In these lines, There are whom heav’n has bless’d with store of wit, Yet want as much again to manage it; For wit and judgement ever are at strife—29

it is apparent that “wit” has two meanings, and that what is wanted, though called “wit,” is truly judgement. So far Dennis is undoubtedly right; but, not content with argument, he will have a little mirth, and triumphs over the first couplet in terms too elegant to be forgotten. “By the way, what rare numbers are here! Would not one swear that this youngster had espoused some antiquated Muse, who had sued out a divorce on account of impotence from some superannuated sinner; and, having been p-­xed30 by her former spouse, has got the gout in her decrepit age, which Reflections Critical and Satyrical, upon a Late Rhapsody, Call’d, An Essay on Criticism on 20 June, Addison’s Spectator 253 on 20 December. SJ quotes Reflections (Hooker, Critical Works, i.396–97). 27. “[Sufficiency] is used by Temple for that conceit which makes a man think himself equal to things above him” (Dictionary, sense 5). 28. Reflections (Hooker, Critical Works, i.398, 401–2). 29. Essay on Criticism, ll. 80–82, which Pope altered in 1744. 30. Poxed: infected with syphilis.



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makes her hobble so damnably.” This was the man who would reform a nation sink­ ing into barbarity. In another place Pope himself allowed that Dennis had detected one of those blunders which are called “bulls.”31 The first edition had this line: What is this wit— Where wanted, scorn’d, and envied where acquir’d?

“How,” says the critick, “can wit be ‘scorn’d’ where it is not? Is not this a figure fre­ quently employed in Hibernian land? The person that wants this wit may indeed be scorned, but the scorn shews the honour which the contemner has for wit.” Of this remark Pope made the proper use, by correcting the passage. I have preserved, I think, all that is reasonable in Dennis’s criticism; it remains that justice be done to his delicacy. For his acquaintance (says Dennis) he names Mr. Walsh, who had by no means the qualification which this author reckons absolutely necessary to a critick, it being very certain that he was, like this essayer, a very indiffer­ ent poet; he loved to be well-­dressed; and I remember a little young gentle­ man whom Mr. Walsh used to take into his company, as a double foil to his person and capacity.— Enquire between Sunninghill and Oakingham for a young, short, squab gentleman, the very bow of the God of Love, and tell me whether he be a proper author to make personal reflections?— He may extol the antients, but he has reason to thank the gods that he was born a modern; for had he been born of Grecian parents, and his father consequently had by law had the absolute disposal of him, his life had been no longer than that of one of his poems, the life of half a day.— Let the person of a gentleman of his parts be never so contemptible, his inward man is ten times more ridicu­ lous; it being impossible that his outward form, though it be that of down­ right monkey, should differ so much from human shape, as his unthinking immaterial part does from human understanding.32

Thus began the hostility between Pope and Dennis, which, though it was suspended for a short time, never was appeased. Pope seems, at first, to have attacked him wan­ tonly; but though he always professed to despise him, he discovers, by mentioning him very often, that he felt his force or his venom. Of this Essay Pope declared that he did not expect the sale to be quick, because 31. A bull, sometimes called an Irish (Hibernian) bull, is a self-­contradictory statement. 32. Dennis, Reflections (Hooker, Critical Works, i.416–17).

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“not one gentleman in sixty, even of liberal education, could understand it.”33 The gentlemen, and the education of that time, seem to have been of a lower character than they are of this. He mentions a thousand copies as a numerous impression. Dennis was not his only censurer; the zealous papists thought the monks treated with too much contempt, and Erasmus too studiously praised; but to these objections he had not much regard. The Essay has been translated into French by Hamilton, author of the Comte de Grammont, whose version was never printed, by Robotham, secretary to the king for Hanover, and by Resnel;34 and commented by Dr. Warburton,35 who has dis­ covered in it such order and connection as was not perceived by Addison, nor, as is said, intended by the author. Almost every poem, consisting of precepts, is so far arbitrary and immethodi­ cal, that many of the paragraphs may change places with no apparent inconvenience; for of two or more positions, depending upon some remote and general principle, there is seldom any cogent reason why one should precede the other. But for the order in which they stand, whatever it be, a little ingenuity may easily give a reason. “It is possible,” says Hooker, “that by long circumduction, from any one truth all truth may be inferred.”36 Of all homogeneous truths at least, of all truths respect­ ing the same general end, in whatever series they may be produced, a concatenation by intermediate ideas may be formed, such as, when it is once shewn, shall appear natural; but if this order be reversed, another mode of connection equally specious may be found or made. Aristotle is praised for naming fortitude first of the cardi­ nal virtues, as that without which no other virtue can steadily be practised;37 but he might, with equal propriety, have placed prudence and justice before it, since with­ out prudence fortitude is mad; without justice, it is mischievous. As the end of method is perspicuity, that series is sufficiently regular that avoids obscurity; and where there is no obscurity it will not be difficult to discover method. In the Spectator was published the Messiah, which he first submitted to the perusal of Steele, and corrected in compliance with his criticisms.38 It is reasonable to infer, from his letters, that the verses on the Unfortunate 33. Sherburn, i.128. 34. Anthony Hamilton (1644/5–1719), courtier and author; Jean de Robethon (1660–1722), Huguenot, official at the court of George I; Françoise Du Resnel du Bellay (1692–1761), who also translated Pope’s Essay on Man. 35. William Warburton (1698–1779), Bishop of Gloucester, admiring editor of Pope’s Works (1751). 36. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Politie (1594–97), ii.i.2; quoted in Dictionary, s.v. circumduction. 37. Nicomachean Ethics, iii.6–9. 38. Spectator 378, 14 May 1712. Richard Steele (1672–1729) created the Tatler and co-­edited its successor, the Spectator, with Joseph Addison (1672–1719).



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Lady were written about the time when his Essay was published. The lady’s name and adventures I have sought with fruitless enquiry. I can therefore tell no more than I have learned from Mr. Ruffhead, who writes with the confidence of one who could trust his information. She was a woman of eminent rank and large fortune, the ward of an unkle, who, having given her a proper education, expected like other guardians that she should make at least an equal match, and such he proposed to her, but found it rejected in favour of a young gentleman of inferior condition. Having discovered the correspondence between the two lovers, and finding the young lady determined to abide by her own choice, he supposed that separation might do what can rarely be done by arguments, and sent her into a foreign coun­ try, where she was obliged to converse only with those from whom her unkle had nothing to fear. Her lover took care to repeat his vows; but his letters were intercepted and carried to her guardian, who directed her to be watched with still greater vigilance; till of this restraint she grew so impatient, that she bribed a woman-­servant to pro­ cure her a sword, which she directed to her heart. From this account, given with evident intention to raise the lady’s character, it does not appear that she had any claim to praise, nor much to compassion. She seems to have been impatient, violent, and ungovernable. Her unkle’s power could not have lasted long; the hour of liberty and choice would have come in time. But her desires were too hot for delay, and she liked self-­murder better than suspense. Nor is it discovered that the unkle, whoever he was, is with much justice deliv­ ered to posterity as a “false guardian”;39 he seems to have done only that for which a guardian is appointed; he endeavoured to direct his niece till she should be able to direct herself. Poetry has not often been worse employed than in dignifying the amorous fury of a raving girl. Not long after, he wrote the Rape of the Lock, the most airy, the most ingenious, and the most delightful of all his compositions, occasioned by a frolick of gallantry, rather too familiar, in which Lord Petre cut off a lock of Mrs. Arabella Fermor’s hair. This, whether stealth or violence, was so much resented, that the commerce of the two families, before very friendly, was interrupted. Mr. Caryl, a gentleman who, being secretary to King James’s queen, had followed his mistress into France, and who being the author of Sir Solomon Single, a comedy, and some translations, was entitled to the notice of a wit, solicited Pope to endeavour a reconciliation by a ludicrous poem, which might bring both the parties to a better temper.40 In com­ 39. “Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,” l. 29. 40. Following Ruffhead, SJ confuses John Caryll (1626–1711), the Jacobite politician, with his nephew John Caryll (1667–1736), Pope’s correspondent.

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pliance with Caryl’s request, though his name was for a long time marked only by the first and last letters, C–l, a poem of two cantos was written (1711), as is said, in a fortnight, and sent to the offended lady, who liked it well enough to shew it; and, with the usual process of literary transactions, the author, dreading a surreptitious edition, was forced to publish it. The event is said to have been such as was desired; the pacification and diver­ sion of all to whom it related, except Sir George Browne, who complained with some bitterness that, in the character of Sir Plume, he was made to talk nonsense.41 Whether all this be true, I have some doubt; for at Paris, a few years ago, a niece of Mrs. Fermor, who presided in an English convent, mentioned Pope’s work with very little gratitude, rather as an insult than an honour; and she may be supposed to have inherited the opinion of her family.42 At its first appearance it was termed by Addison merum sal.43 Pope, however, saw that it was capable of improvement; and having luckily contrived to borrow his machinery from the Rosicrucians, imparted the scheme with which his head was teeming to Addison, who told him that his work, as it stood, was a “delicious little thing,” and gave him no encouragement to retouch it.44 This has been too hastily considered as an instance of Addison’s jealousy; for as he could not guess the conduct of the new design, or the possibilities of pleasure comprised in a fiction of which there had been no examples, he might very reason­ ably and kindly persuade the author to acquiesce in his own prosperity, and forbear an attempt which he considered as an unnecessary hazard. Addison’s counsel was happily rejected. Pope foresaw the future efflorescence of imagery then budding in his mind, and resolved to spare no art, or industry of cultivation. The soft luxuriance of his fancy was already shooting, and all the gay varieties of diction were ready at his hand to colour and embellish it. His attempt was justified by its success. The Rape of the Lock stands forward, in the classes of literature, as the most exquisite example of ludicrous poetry. Berke­ ley congratulated him upon the display of powers more truly poetical than he had shewn before; with elegance of description and justness of precepts, he had now exhibited boundless fertility of invention.45 He always considered the intermixture of the machinery with the action as his most successful exertion of poetical art. He indeed could never afterward produce 41. Sir Plume is an inarticulate fop in the Rape of the Lock (iv.121–30). 42. For SJ’s notes on meeting Fermor, see Yale, i.236. 43. “Pure wit,” an allusion to Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, iv.1162. For poetic “machinery,” see p. 691 and n. 193 above. 44. See Pope, Works (1751), iv.26n. 45. George Berkeley (1685–1753), philosopher and Bishop of Cloyne, wrote to Pope on 1 May 1714 (Sher­ burn, i.221).



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any thing of such unexampled excellence. Those performances, which strike with wonder, are combinations of skilful genius with happy casualty;46 and it is not likely that any felicity, like the discovery of a new race of preternatural agents, should hap­ pen twice to the same man. Of this poem the author was, I think, allowed to enjoy the praise for a long time without disturbance. Many years afterwards Dennis published some remarks upon it, with very little force, and with no effect;47 for the opinion of the publick was already settled, and it was no longer at the mercy of criticism. About this time he published the Temple of Fame, which, as he tells Steele in their correspondence, he had written two years before; that is, when he was only twenty-­two years old, an early time of life for so much learning and so much obser­ vation as that work exhibits. On this poem Dennis afterwards published some remarks, of which the most reasonable is, that some of the lines represent “motion” as exhibited by “sculpture.”48 Of the Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, I do not know the date.49 His first incli­ nation to attempt a composition of that tender kind arose, as Mr. Savage told me, from his perusal of Prior’s Nut-­brown Maid.50 How much he has surpassed Prior’s work it is not necessary to mention, when perhaps it may be said with justice, that he has excelled every composition of the same kind. The mixture of religious hope and resignation gives an elevation and dignity to disappointed love, which images merely natural cannot bestow. The gloom of a convent strikes the imagination with far greater force than the solitude of a grove. This piece was, however, not much his favourite in his latter years, though I never heard upon what principle he slighted it. In the next year (1713) he published Windsor Forest; of which part was, as he relates, written at sixteen, about the same time as his Pastorals, and the latter part was added afterwards: where the addition begins we are not told.51 The lines re­ lating to the Peace confess their own date.52 It is dedicated to Lord Lansdowne, who was then high in reputation and influence among the Tories; and it is said that the conclusion of the poem gave great pain to Addison, both as a poet and a politician. Reports like this are often spread with boldness very disproportionate to their evi­ dence. Why should Addison receive any particular disturbance from the last lines 46. “Accident; a thing happening by chance, not design” (Dictionary). 47. Remarks on Mr. Pope’s “Rape of the Lock” (1728). 48. Remarks upon Mr. Pope’s Translation of Homer (1717) (Hooker, Critical Works, ii.142–43). 49. Written in 1716, it was published in Pope’s Works (1717). 50. Matthew Prior, “Henry and Emma,” a retelling of the old ballad. 51. Pope said the added lines, written in 1710, begin at l. 288 (Works [1751], i.105n). 52. Ll. 355–422 hail the preliminaries to the Peace of Utrecht (1711).

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of Windsor Forest? If contrariety of opinion could poison a politician, he would not live a day; and, as a poet, he must have felt Pope’s force of genius much more from many other parts of his works. The pain that Addison might feel it is not likely that he would confess; and it is certain that he so well suppressed his discontent, that Pope now thought himself his favourite; for having been consulted in the revisal of Cato, he introduced it by a prologue; and, when Dennis published his Remarks, undertook not indeed to vin­ dicate but to revenge his friend, by a Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis.53 There is reason to believe that Addison gave no encouragement to this disin­ genuous hostility; for, says Pope, in a letter to him, “indeed your opinion, that ’tis entirely to be neglected, would be my own in my own case; but I felt more warmth here than I did when I first saw his book against myself (though indeed in two min­ utes it made me heartily merry).”54 Addison was not a man on whom such cant of sensibility could make much impression. He left the pamphlet to itself, having dis­ owned it to Dennis, and perhaps did not think Pope to have deserved much by his officiousness. This year was printed in the Guardian the ironical comparison between the pastorals of Philips and Pope;55 a composition of artifice, criticism, and literature, to which nothing equal will easily be found. The superiority of Pope is so ingeniously dissembled, and the feeble lines of Philips so skillfully preferred, that Steele, being deceived, was unwilling to print the paper lest Pope should be offended. Addison immediately saw the writer’s design; and, as it seems, had malice enough to con­ ceal his discovery, and to permit a publication which, by making his friend Philips ridiculous, made him for ever an enemy to Pope. It appears that about this time Pope had a strong inclination to unite the art of painting with that of poetry, and put himself under the tuition of Jervas.56 He was near-­sighted, and therefore not formed by nature for a painter: he tried, however, how far he could advance, and sometimes persuaded his friends to sit. A picture of Betterton, supposed to be drawn by him, was in the possession of Lord Mansfield: if this was taken from the life, he must have begun to paint earlier; for Betterton was now dead.57 Pope’s ambition of this new art produced some encomiastick verses to Jervas, which certainly shew his power as a poet, but I have been told that they be­ tray his ignorance of painting. 53. The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, concerning the Strange and Deplorable Frenzy of Mr. John Dennis (1713) was prompted by Dennis’s Remarks upon Cato, a Tragedy (1713). 54. See Sherburn, i.183 and n. 1. 55. Pope’s satire appeared in Guardian 40 (27 April 1713). 56. Charles Jervas (1675–1739) instructed Pope for about six months. 57. The actor Thomas Betterton died in 1710.



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He appears to have regarded Betterton with kindness and esteem; and after his death published, under his name, a version into modern English of Chaucer’s Prologues, and one of his Tales, which, as was related by Mr. Harte, were believed to have been the performance of Pope himself by Fenton, who made him a gay offer of five pounds, if he would shew them in the hand of Betterton.58 The next year (1713) produced a bolder attempt, by which profit was sought as well as praise. The poems which he had hitherto written, however they might have diffused his name, had made very little addition to his fortune. The allowance which his father made him, though, proportioned to what he had, it might be liberal, could not be large; his religion hindered him from the occupation of any civil employment, and he complained that he wanted even money to buy books.59 He therefore resolved to try how far the favour of the publick extended, by soliciting a subscription to a version of the Iliad, with large notes. To print by subscription was, for some time, a practice peculiar to the English. The first considerable work for which this expedient was employed is said to have been Dryden’s Virgil; and it had been tried again with great success when the Tatlers were collected into volumes.60 There was reason to believe that Pope’s attempt would be successful. He was in the full bloom of reputation, and was personally known to almost all whom dignity of employment or splendour of reputation had made eminent; he conversed indif­ ferently with both parties, and never disturbed the publick with his political opin­ ions; and it might be naturally expected, as each faction then boasted its literary zeal, that the great men, who on other occasions practised all the violence of opposition, would emulate each other in their encouragement of a poet who had delighted all, and by whom none had been offended. With those hopes, he offered an English Iliad to subscribers, in six volumes in quarto, for six guineas; a sum, according to the value of money at that time, by no means inconsiderable, and greater than I believe to have been ever asked before. His proposal, however, was very favourably received, and the patrons of literature were busy to recommend his undertaking, and promote his interest. Lord Oxford, indeed, lamented that such a genius should be wasted upon a work not original;61 58. Pope revised Betterton’s versions before publication in Bernard Lintot’s Miscellaneous Poems and Translations. By Several Hands (1712). Walter Harte (1709–1774) and Elijah Fenton (1683–1730) were poets and friends of Pope. 59. [SJ’s note] Spence [ Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, ed. James. M. Osborn, 2 vols. (1966), i.82]. 60. There were several earlier subscription publications, including an edition of Paradise Lost (1688) and Brian Walton’s Polyglot Bible (1657). 61. The remark of Robert Harley (1661–1724), Lord Oxford, is in Pope’s Works (1751), iv.67.

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but proposed no means by which he might live without it: Addison recommended caution and moderation, and advised him not to be content with the praise of half the nation, when he might be universally favoured.62 The greatness of the design, the popularity of the author, and the attention of the literary world, naturally raised such expectations of the future sale, that the book­ sellers made their offers with great eagerness; but the highest bidder was Bernard Lintot, who became proprietor on condition of supplying, at his own expence, all the copies which were to be delivered to subscribers, or presented to friends, and paying two hundred pounds for every volume. Of the quartos it was, I believe, stipulated that none should be printed but for the author, that the subscription might not be depreciated; but Lintot impressed the same pages upon a small folio, and paper perhaps a little thinner; and sold exactly at half the price, for half a guinea each volume, books so little inferior to the quartos, that, by a fraud of trade, those folios, being afterwards shortened by cutting away the top and bottom, were sold as copies printed for the subscribers. Lintot printed two hundred and fifty on royal paper in folio for two guineas a volume; of the small folio, having printed seventeen hundred and fifty copies of the first volume, he reduced the number in the other volumes to a thousand. It is unpleasant to relate that the bookseller, after all his hopes and all his lib­ erality, was, by a very unjust and illegal action, defrauded of his profit. An edition of the English Iliad was printed in Holland in duodecimo, and imported clandes­ tinely for the gratification of those who were impatient to read what they could not yet afford to buy. This fraud could only be counteracted by an edition equally cheap and more commodious; and Lintot was compelled to contract his folio at once into a duodecimo, and lose the advantage of an intermediate gradation. The notes, which in the Dutch copies were placed at the end of each book, as they had been in the large volumes, were now subjoined to the text in the same page, and are therefore more easily consulted. Of this edition two thousand five hundred were first printed, and five thousand a few weeks afterwards; but indeed great numbers were necessary to produce considerable profit. Pope, having now emitted his proposals, and engaged not only his own reputa­ tion, but in some degree that of his friends who patronised his subscription, began to be frighted at his own undertaking; and finding himself at first embarrassed with difficulties, which retarded and oppressed him, he was for a time timorous and un­ easy; had his nights disturbed by dreams of long journeys through unknown ways, and wished, as he said, “that somebody would hang him.”63 62. Addison to Pope, 2 November 1713 (Sherburn, i.196–97). 63. [SJ’s note] Spence [Anecdotes, i.84].



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This misery, however, was not of long continuance; he grew by degrees more acquainted with Homer’s images and expressions, and practice increased his facility of versification. In a short time he represents himself as dispatching regularly fifty verses a day, which would shew him by an easy computation the termination of his labour. His own diffidence was not his only vexation. He that asks a subscription soon finds that he has enemies. All who do not encourage him defame him. He that wants money will rather be thought angry than poor, and he that wishes to save his money conceals his avarice by his malice. Addison had hinted his suspicion that Pope was too much a Tory; and some of the Tories suspected his principles because he had contributed to the Guardian, which was carried on by Steele. To those who censured his politicks were added enemies yet more dangerous, who called in question his knowledge of Greek, and his qualifications for a trans­ lator of Homer. To these he made no publick opposition; but in one of his letters escapes from them as well as he can. At an age like his, for he was not more than twenty-­five, with an irregular education, and a course of life of which much seems to have passed in conversation, it is not very likely that he overflowed with Greek. But when he felt himself deficient he sought assistance, and what man of learning would refuse to help him? Minute enquiries into the force of words are less neces­ sary in translating Homer than other poets, because his positions are general, and his representations natural, with very little dependence on local or temporary cus­ toms, on those changeable scenes of artificial life, which, by mingling original with accidental notions, and crowding the mind with images which time effaces, produce ambiguity in diction, and obscurity in books. To this open display of unadulterated nature it must be ascribed that Homer has fewer passages of doubtful meaning than any other poet either in the learned or in modern languages. I have read of a man, who being, by his ignorance of Greek, compelled to gratify his curiosity with the Latin printed on the opposite page, declared that from the rude simplicity of the lines literally rendered, he formed nobler ideas of the Homeric majesty than from the laboured elegance of polished versions. Those literal translations were always at hand, and from them he could easily obtain his author’s sense with sufficient certainty; and among the readers of Homer the number is very small of those who find much in the Greek more than in the Latin, except the musick of the numbers. If more help was wanting, he had the poetical translation of Eobanus Hessus, an unwearied writer of Latin verses; he had the French Homers of La Valterie and Dacier, and the English of Chapman, Hobbes, and Ogylby. With Chapman, whose work, though now totally neglected, seems to have been popular almost to the end of the last century, he had very frequent consultations, and perhaps never translated

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any passage till he had read his version, which indeed he has been sometimes sus­ pected of using instead of the original.64 Notes were likewise to be provided; for the six volumes would have been very little more than six pamphlets without them. What the mere perusal of the text could suggest, Pope wanted no assistance to collect or methodize; but more was necessary; many pages were to be filled, and learning must supply materials to wit and judge­ ment. Something might be gathered from Dacier; but no man loves to be indebted to his contemporaries, and Dacier was accessible to common readers. Eustathius was therefore necessarily consulted.65 To read Eustathius, of whose work there was then no Latin version, I suspect Pope, if he had been willing, not to have been able; some other was therefore to be found, who had leisure as well as abilities, and he was doubtless most readily employed who would do much work for little money. The history of the notes has never been traced. Broome, in his preface to his poems, declares himself the commentator “in part upon the Iliad”; and it appears from Fenton’s letter, preserved in the Museum, that Broome was at first engaged in consulting Eustathius; but that after a time, whatever was the reason, he desisted: another man of Cambridge was then employed, who soon grew weary of the work; and a third, that was recommended by Thirlby, is now discovered to have been Jor­ tin, a man since well known to the learned world, who complained that Pope having accepted and approved his performance, never testified any curiosity to see him, and who professed to have forgotten the terms on which he worked.66 The terms which Fenton uses are very mercantile: “I think at first sight that his performance is very commendable, and have sent word for him to finish the 17th book, and to send it with his demands for his trouble. I have here enclosed the specimen; if the rest come before the return, I will keep them till I receive your order.”67 Broome then offered his service a second time, which was probably accepted, as they had afterwards a closer correspondence. Parnell contributed the life of Homer,68 which Pope found so harsh, that he took great pains in correcting it; and by his own diligence, with such help as kindness or money could procure him, in

64. George Chapman’s Homer (1598–1615) and Anne Le Fèvre Dacier’s prose Iliad (1699; English trans., 1712) were the most influential. 65. Eustathius of Thessalonica (1115–1195) compiled a Greek commentary on Homer. An incomplete Latin translation appeared in 1730. 66. William Broome (1689–1745), himself a translator of Homer, and John Jortin (1698–1770), author of Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, 5 vols. (1751). For SJ’s notes for a life of Styan Thirlby (1691–1753), see Yale, xix.482–85. 67. Elijah Fenton to Pope, September 1718 (Sherburn, i.496–97), which SJ had seen in the Pope manu­ scripts at the British Museum (see below, p. 736). 68. Thomas Parnell (1679–1718), a member of the Scriblerus Club led by Pope and Swift.



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somewhat more than five years he completed his version of the Iliad, with the notes. He began it in 1712, his twenty-­fifth year, and concluded it in 1718, his thirtieth year. When we find him translating fifty lines a day, it is natural to suppose that he would have brought his work to a more speedy conclusion. The Iliad, containing less than sixteen thousand verses, might have been despatched in less than three hun­ dred and twenty days by fifty verses in a day. The notes, compiled with the assistance of his mercenaries, could not be supposed to require more time than the text. Ac­ cording to this calculation, the progress of Pope may seem to have been slow; but the distance is commonly very great between actual performance and speculative pos­ sibility. It is natural to suppose, that as much as has been done to-­day may be done to-­morrow; but on the morrow some difficulty emerges, or some external impedi­ ment obstructs. Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure, all take their turns of retardation; and every long work is lengthened by a thousand causes that can, and ten thousand that cannot, be recounted. Perhaps no extensive and multifarious per­ formance was ever effected within the term originally fixed in the undertaker’s mind. He that runs against Time, has an antagonist not subject to ­casualties.69 The encouragement given to this translation, though report seems to have over-­ rated it, was such as the world has not often seen. The subscribers were five hundred and seventy-­five. The copies for which subscriptions were given were six hundred and fifty-­four; and only six hundred and sixty were printed. For those copies Pope had nothing to pay; he therefore received, including the two hundred pounds a vol­ ume, five thousand three hundred and twenty pounds four shillings, without deduc­ tion, as the books were supplied by Lintot. By the success of his subscription Pope was relieved from those pecuniary dis­ tresses with which, notwithstanding his popularity, he had hitherto struggled. Lord Oxford had often lamented his disqualification for publick employment, but never proposed a pension. While the translation of Homer was in its progress, Mr. Craggs, then secretary of state, offered to procure him a pension, which, at least during his ministry, might be enjoyed with secrecy. This was not accepted by Pope, who told him, however, that, if he should be pressed with want of money, he would send to him for occasional supplies. Craggs was not long in power, and was never solicited for money by Pope, who disdained to beg what he did not want. With the product of this subscription, which he had too much discretion to squander, he secured his future life from want by considerable annuities. The estate of the Duke of Buckingham was found to have been charged with five hundred pounds a year, payable to Pope, which doubtless his translation enabled him to purchase. 69. SJ was writing from experience. In 1746 he planned to finish his Dictionary in three years, but it took nine; in 1756 he estimated a year and a half to finish his edition of Shakespeare, but it also took nine years (see pp. 373 and 423 above).

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It cannot be unwelcome to literary curiosity, that I deduce thus minutely the history of the English Iliad.70 It is certainly the noblest version of poetry which the world has ever seen; and its publication must therefore be considered as one of the great events in the annals of learning. To those who have skill to estimate the excellence and difficulty of this great work, it must be very desirable to know how it was performed, and by what grada­ tions it advanced to correctness. Of such an intellectual process the knowledge has very rarely been attainable; but happily there remains the original copy of the Iliad, which, being obtained by Bolingbroke as a curiosity, descended from him to Mal­ let, and is now by the solicitation of the late Dr. Maty reposited in the Museum.71 Between this manuscript, which is written upon accidental fragments of paper, and the printed edition, there must have been an intermediate copy, that was per­ haps destroyed as it returned from the press.72 From the first copy I have procured a few transcripts,73 and shall exhibit first the printed lines; then, in a smaller print, those of the manuscripts, with all their variations. Those words in the small print which are given in italicks, are cancelled in the copy, and the words placed under them adopted in their stead. The beginning of the first book stands thus: The wrath of Peleus’ son, the direful spring Of all the Grecian woes, O Goddess, sing; That wrath which hurl’d to Pluto’s gloomy reign The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain. The stern Pelides’ rage, O Goddess, sing, wrath Of all the woes of Greece the fatal spring, Grecian That strew’d with warriors dead the Phrygian plain, heroes And peopled the dark hell with heroes slain, fill’d the shady hell with chiefs untimely

Whose limbs, unburied on the naked shore, Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore, Since great Achilles and Atrides strove; 70. SJ paid similarly close attention to the publication history of Paradise Lost (see pp. 674–76 above). 71. Matthew Maty (1718–1776) was librarian of the British Museum. Pope left the manuscript to Lord Bolingbroke, from whom it passed to David Mallet and then to the British Museum. It is now Add. MSS 4807–8 in the British Library. 72. Part of this copy survives; see Twickenham Edition, vii, plate 7. 73. Hester Thrale and George Steevens (1736–1800) made the transcripts.



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Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove. Whose limbs, unburied on the hostile shore, Devouring dogs and greedy vultures tore, Since first Atrides and Achilles strove; Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove.

Declare, O Muse, in what ill-­fated hour Sprung the fierce strife, from what offended Power! Latona’s son a dire contagion spread, And heap’d the camp with mountains of the dead; The King of Men his reverend priest defy’d, And for the King’s offence the people dy’d. Declare, O Goddess, what offended power Enflam’d their rage, in that ill-­omen’d hour; anger    fatal, hapless Phoebus himself the dire debate procur’d, fierce T’avenge the wrongs his injur’d priest endur’d; For this the God a dire infection spread, And heap’d the camp with millions of the dead: The King of Men the sacred sire defy’d, And for the King’s offence the people dy’d.

For Chryses sought with costly gifts to gain His captive daughter from the victor’s chain; Suppliant the venerable father stands, Apollo’s awful ensigns grace his hands, By these he begs, and, lowly bending down, Extends the sceptre and the laurel crown. For Chryses sought by presents to regain costly gifts to gain His captive daughter from the victor’s chain; Suppliant the venerable father stands, Apollo’s awful ensigns grac’d his hands, By these he begs, and lowly bending down The golden sceptre and the laurel crown, Presents the sceptre For these as ensigns of his God he bare, The God that sends his golden shafts afar; Then low on earth, the venerable man, Suppliant before the brother kings began.

He sued to all, but chief implor’d for grace

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The brother kings of Atreus’ royal race; Ye kings and warriors, may your vows be crown’d, And Troy’s proud walls lie level with the ground; May Jove restore you, when your toils are o’er, Safe to the pleasures of your native shore. To all he sued, but chief implor’d for grace The brother kings of Atreus’ royal race. Ye sons of Atreus, may your vows be crown’d, kings and warriors Your labours, by the Gods be all your labours crown’d; So may the Gods your arms with conquest bless, And Troy’s proud walls lie level with the ground; Till        laid And crown your labours with deserv’d success; May Jove restore you, when your toils are o’er, Safe to the pleasures of your native shore.

But, oh! relieve a wretched parent’s pain, And give Chryseis to these arms again; If mercy fail, yet let my present move, And dread avenging Phoebus, son of Jove. But, oh! relieve a hapless parent’s pain, And give my daughter to these arms again; Receive my gifts; if mercy fails, yet let my present move, And fear the God that deals his darts around, avenging Phoebus, son of Jove.

The Greeks, in shouts, their joint assent declare The priest to reverence, and release the fair. Not so Atrides; he, with kingly pride, Repuls’d the sacred Sire, and thus reply’d. He said, the Greeks their joint assent declare, The father said, the gen’rous Greeks relent, T’accept the ransom, and release the fair: Revere the priest, and speak their joint assent: Not so the tyrant, he, with kingly pride, Atrides Repulsed the sacred Sire, and thus reply’d [Not so the tyrant. Dryden.]74

74. SJ’s interpolation; Dryden’s translation of the Iliad, i.523 (Works of John Dryden, vii.276).



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Of these lines, and of the whole first book, I am told that there was yet a former copy, more varied, and more deformed with interlineations. The beginning of the second book varies very little from the printed page, and is therefore set down without any parallel; the few slight differences do not require to be elaborately displayed. Now pleasing sleep had seal’d each mortal eye; Stretch’d in their tents the Grecian leaders lie; Th’Immortals slumber’d on their thrones above, All but the ever-­watchful eye of Jove. To honour Thetis’ son he bends his care, And plunge the Greeks in all the woes of war. Then bids an empty phantom rise to sight, And thus commands the vision of the night: directs

Fly hence, delusive dream, and, light as air, To Agamemnon’s royal tent repair; Bid him in arms draw forth th’embattled train, March all his legions to the dusty plain. Now tell the King ’tis given him to destroy Declare ev’n now The lofty walls of wide-­extended Troy; tow’rs

For now no more the Gods with Fate contend; At Juno’s suit the heavenly factions end. Destruction hovers o’er yon devoted wall, hangs

And nodding Ilium waits th’impending fall.

Invocation to the Catalogue of Ships.  Say, Virgins, seated round the throne divine, All-­knowing Goddesses! immortal Nine! Since earth’s wide regions, heaven’s unmeasur’d height, And hell’s abyss, hide nothing from your sight, (We, wretched mortals! lost in doubts below, But guess by rumour, and but boast we know) Oh say what heroes, fir’d by thirst of fame, Or urg’d by wrongs, to Troy’s destruction came! To count them all, demands a thousand tongues,

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A throat of brass and adamantine lungs.  Now, Virgin Goddesses, immortal Nine! That round Olympus’ heavenly summit shine, Who see through heaven and earth, and hell profound, And all things know, and all things can resound; Relate what armies sought the Trojan land, What nations follow’d, and what chiefs command; (For doubtful Fame distracts mankind below, And nothing can we tell, and nothing know) Without your aid, to count th’unnumber’d train, A thousand mouths, a thousand tongues were vain.

Book V. v. i.  But Pallas now Tydides’ soul inspires, Fills with her force, and warms with all her fires: Above the Greeks his deathless fame to raise, And crown her hero with distinguish’d praise, High on his helm celestial lightnings play, His beamy shield emits a living ray; Th’unwearied blaze incessant streams supplies, Like the red star that fires th’autumnal skies. But Pallas now Tydides’ soul inspires, Fills with her rage, and warms with all her fires; force O’er all the Greeks decrees his fame to raise, Above the Greeks her warrior’s fame to raise, his deathless And crown her hero with immortal praise: distinguish’d Bright from his beamy crest the lightnings play, High on      helm From his broad buckler flash’d the living ray, High on his helm celestial lightnings play, His beamy shield emits a living ray. The Goddess with her breath the flame supplies, Bright as the star whose fires in autumn rise; Her breath divine thick streaming flames supplies, Bright as the star that fires th’autumnal skies:

When first he rears his radiant orb to sight,



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And bath’d in ocean shoots a keener light. Such glories Pallas on the chief bestow’d, Such from his arms the fierce effulgence flow’d; Onward she drives him furious to engage, Where the fight burns, and where the thickest rage. When fresh he rears his radiant orb to sight, And gilds old Ocean with a blaze of light, Bright as the star that fires th’ autumnal skies, Fresh from the deep, and gilds the seas and skies, Such glories Pallas on her chief bestow’d, Such sparkling rays from his bright armour flow’d. Such from his arms the fierce effulgence flow’d. Onward she drives him headlong to engage, furious Where the war bleeds, and where the fiercest rage, fight burns      thickest

The sons of Dares first the combat sought, A wealthy priest, but rich without a fault; In Vulcan’s fane the father’s days were led, The sons to toils of glorious battle bred; There liv’d a Trojan—Dares was his name, The priest of Vulcan, rich, yet void of blame; The sons of Dares first the combat sought, A wealthy priest, but rich without a fault.

Conclusion of Book VIII. V. 687. As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, O’er heaven’s clear azure spreads her sacred light; When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, And not a cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene; Around her throne the vivid planets roll, And stars unnumber’d gild the glowing pole: O’er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, And tip with silver every mountain’s head; Then shine the vales—the rocks in prospect rise, A flood of glory bursts from all the skies; The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light. So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,

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And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays; The long reflexion of the distant fires Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires: A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild, And shoot a shady lustre o’er the field; Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend, Whose umber’d arms by fits thick flashes send; Loud neigh the coursers o’er their heaps of corn, And ardent warriors wait the rising morn. As when in stillness of the silent night, As when the moon in all her lustre bright, As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, O’er heaven’s clear azure sheds her silver light; pure   spreads  sacred As still in air the trembling lustre stood, And o’er its golden border shoots a flood; When no loose gale disturbs the deep serene, not a breath And no dim cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene; not a Around her silver throne the planets glow, And stars unnumber’d trembling beams bestow; Around her throne the vivid planets roll, And stars unnumber’d gild the glowing pole: Clear gleams of light o’er the dark trees are seen,      o’er the dark trees a yellow sheds, O’er the dark trees a yellower green they shed, gleam verdure And tip with silver all the mountain heads: forest And tip with silver every mountain’s head. The vallies open, and the forests rise, The vales appear, the rocks in prospect rise,  Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, All Nature stands reveal’d before our eyes; A flood of glory bursts from all the skies. The conscious shepherd, joyful at the sight, Eyes the blue vault, and numbers ev’ry light. The conscious swains rejoicing at the sight, shepherds gazing with delight

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Eye the blue vault, and bless the vivid light. glorious useful So many flames before the navy blaze, proud Ilion And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays, Wide o’er the fields to Troy extend the gleams, And tip the distant spires with fainter beams; The long reflexions of the distant fires Gild the high walls, and tremble on the spires, Gleam on the walls, and tremble on the spires; A thousand fires at distant stations bright, Gild the dark prospect, and dispel the night.

Of these specimens every man who has cultivated poetry, or who delights to trace the mind from the rudeness of its first conceptions to the elegance of its last, will naturally desire a greater number; but most other readers are already tired, and I am not writing only to poets and philosophers. The Iliad was published volume by volume, as the translation proceeded; the first four books appeared in 1715. The expectation of this work was undoubtedly high, and every man who had connected his name with criticism, or poetry, was desirous of such intelligence as might enable him to talk upon the popular top­ ick. Halifax, who, by having been first a poet, and then a patron of poetry, had ac­ quired the right of being a judge, was willing to hear some books while they were yet unpublished.75 Of his rehearsal Pope afterwards gave the following account.76 The famous Lord Halifax was rather a pretender to taste than really pos­ sessed of it.—When I had finished the two or three first books of my transla­ tion of the Iliad, that lord desired to have the pleasure of hearing them read at his house.—Addison, Congreve, and Garth,77 were there at the reading. In four or five places, Lord Halifax stopt me very civilly, and with a speech each time, much of the same kind, “I beg your pardon, Mr. Pope; but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me.—Be so good as to mark the place, and consider it a little at your leisure.—I’m sure you can give it a little turn.” I returned from Lord Halifax’s with Dr. Garth, in his chariot; 75. Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax (1661–1715), died before publication of Pope’s first volume of Homer; see Spence, Anecdotes, i.87–88. 76. [SJ’s note] Spence [Anecdotes, i.87–88]. 77. Samuel Garth (1660/61–1719), author of The Dispensary (1699).

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and, as we were going along, was saying to the doctor, that my lord had laid me under a good deal of difficulty by such loose and general observa­ tions; that I had been thinking over the passages almost ever since, and could not guess at what it was that offended his lordship in either of them. Garth laughed heartily at my embarrassment; said, I had not been long enough acquainted with Lord Halifax to know his way yet; that I need not puzzle myself about looking those places over and over, when I got home. “All you need do (says he) is to leave them just as they are; call on Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observations on those pas­ sages, and then read them to him as altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event.” I followed his advice; waited on Lord Halifax some time after; said, I hoped he would find his ob­ jections to those passages removed; read them to him exactly as they were at first: and his lordship was extremely pleased with them, and cried out, “Ay, now they are perfectly right: nothing can be better.”

It is seldom that the great or the wise suspect that they are despised or cheated. Halifax, thinking this a lucky opportunity of securing immortality, made some ad­ vances of favour and some overtures of advantage to Pope, which he seems to have received with sullen coldness. All our knowledge of this transaction is derived from a single letter (Dec. 1, 1714), in which Pope says, I am obliged to you, both for the favours you have done me, and those you intend me. I distrust neither your will nor your memory, when it is to do good; and if I ever become troublesome or solicitous, it must not be out of expectation, but out of gratitude. Your lordship may cause me to live agree­ ably in the town, or contentedly in the country, which is really all the differ­ ence I set between an easy fortune and a small one. It is indeed a high strain of generosity in you to think of making me easy all my life, only because I have been so happy as to divert you some few hours; but, if I may have leave to add it is because you think me no enemy to my native country, there will appear a better reason; for I must of consequence be very much (as I sin­ cerely am) yours &c.78

These voluntary79 offers, and this faint acceptance, ended without effect. The patron was not accustomed to such frigid gratitude, and the poet fed his own pride 78. Pope, Works (1751), vii.295–96; cf. Sherburn, i.271. 79. “Done by design; purposed” (Dictionary, sense 3).



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with the dignity of independence. They probably were suspicious of each other. Pope would not dedicate till he saw at what rate his praise was valued; he would be “troublesome out of gratitude, not expectation.” Halifax thought himself entitled to confidence, and would give nothing, unless he knew what he should receive. Their commerce had its beginning in hope of praise on one side, and of money on the other, and ended because Pope was less eager of money than Halifax of praise. It is not likely that Halifax had any personal benevolence to Pope; it is evident that Pope looked on Halifax with scorn or hatred. The reputation of this great work failed of gaining him a patron; but it deprived him of a friend. Addison and he were now at the head of poetry and criticism; and both in such a state of elevation, that, like the two rivals in the Roman state, one could no longer bear an equal, nor the other a superior. Of the gradual abatement of kindness between friends, the beginning is often scarcely discernible by themselves, and the process is continued by petty provocations, and incivilities sometimes pee­ vishly returned, and sometimes contemptuously neglected, which would escape all attention but that of pride, and drop from any memory but that of resentment. That the quarrel of those two wits should be minutely deduced, is not to be expected from a writer to whom, as Homer says, “nothing but rumour has reached, and who has no personal knowledge.”80 Pope doubtless approached Addison, when the reputation of their wit first brought them together, with the respect due to a man whose abilities were acknowl­ edged, and who, having attained that eminence to which he was himself aspiring, had in his hands the distribution of literary fame. He paid court with sufficient dili­ gence by his prologue to Cato, by his abuse of Dennis, and, with praise yet more direct, by his poem on the Dialogues on Medals, of which the immediate publica­ tion was then intended.81 In all this there was no hypocrisy; for he confessed that he found in Addison something more pleasing than in any other man.82 It may be supposed, that as Pope saw himself favoured by the world, and more frequently compared his own powers with those of others, his confidence increased, and his submission lessened; and that Addison felt no delight from the advances of a young wit, who might soon contend with him for the highest place. Every great man, of whatever kind be his greatness, has among his friends those who officiously, or insidiously, quicken his attention to offences, heighten his disgust, and stimulate his resentment. Of such adherents Addison doubtless had many, and Pope was now too high to be without them. 80. A translation in biographical terms of Iliad, ii.486. 81. It was published in 1720, a year after Addison’s death; see Pope, Twickenham Edition, vi.205–6. 82. Spence, Anecdotes, i.62.

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From the emission and reception of the proposals for the Iliad, the kindness of Addison seems to have abated. Jervas the painter once pleased himself (Aug. 20, 1714) with imagining that he had re-­established their friendship; and wrote to Pope that Addison once suspected him of too close a confederacy with Swift, but was now satisfied with his conduct. To this Pope answered, a week after, that his engagements to Swift were such as his services in regard to the subscription demanded, and that the Tories never put him under the necessity of asking leave to be grateful. “But,” says he, “as Mr. Addison must be the judge in what regards himself, and seems to have [been] no very just one in regard to me, so I must own to you I expect nothing but civility from him.” In the same letter he mentions Philips, as having been busy to kindle animosity between them; but, in a letter to Addison, he expresses some consciousness of behaviour, inattentively deficient in respect.83 Of Swift’s industry in promoting the subscription there remains the testimony of Kennet, no friend to either him or Pope. Nov. 2, 1713, Dr. Swift came into the coffee-­house, and had a bow from every body but me, who, I confess, could not but despise him. When I came to the anti-­chamber to wait, before prayers, Dr. Swift was the principal man of talk and business, and acted as master of requests.—Then he instructed a young nobleman that the “best poet in England” was Mr. Pope (a papist), who had begun a translation of Homer into English verse, for which “he must have them all subscribe”; for, says he, “the author shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him.”84

About this time it is likely that Steele, who was, with all his political fury, good-­ natured and officious,85 procured an interview between these angry rivals, which ended in aggravated malevolence. On this occasion, if the reports be true, Pope made his complaint with frankness and spirit, as a man undeservedly neglected or opposed; and Addison affected a contemptuous unconcern, and, in a calm even voice, reproached Pope with his vanity, and telling him of the improvements which his early works had received from his own remarks and those of Steele, said, that he, being now engaged in publick business, had no longer any care for his poetical reputation; nor had any other desire, with regard to Pope, than that he should not, by too much arrogance, alienate the publick. 83. For the three letters cited here, see Sherburn, i.244–45 and 263–64. 84. The passage is from the diary of White Kennett (1660–1728), Bishop of Peterborough; see The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. David Woolley, 5 vols. (1999–2014), i.544n. 85. “Kind; doing good offices” (Dictionary).



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To this Pope is said to have replied with great keenness and severity, upbraid­ ing Addison with perpetual dependance, and with the abuse of those qualifications which he had obtained at the publick cost, and charging him with mean endeavours to obstruct the progress of rising merit. The contest rose so high, that they parted at last without any interchange of civility. The first volume of Homer was (1715) in time published; and a rival version of the first Iliad, for rivals the time of their appearance inevitably made them, was im­ mediately printed, with the name of Tickell.86 It was soon perceived that, among the followers of Addison, Tickell had the preference, and the criticks and poets divided into factions. “I,” says Pope, “have the town, that is, the mob, on my side, but it is not uncommon for the smaller party to supply by industry what it wants in numbers.—I appeal to the people as my rightful judges, and, while they are not in­ clined to condemn me, shall not fear the high-­flyers at Button’s.”87 This opposition he immediately imputed to Addison, and complained of it in terms sufficiently re­ sentful to Craggs, their common friend. When Addison’s opinion was asked, he declared the versions to be both good, but Tickell’s the best that had ever been written; and sometimes said that they were both good, but that Tickell had more of Homer.88 Pope was now sufficiently irritated; his reputation and his interest were at haz­ ard. He once intended to print together the four versions of Dryden, Maynwaring, Pope, and Tickell, that they might be readily compared, and fairly estimated. This design seems to have been defeated by the refusal of Tonson, who was the propri­ etor of the other three versions. Pope intended at another time a rigorous criticism of Tickell’s translation, and had marked a copy, which I have seen, in all places that appeared defective. But while he was thus meditating defence or revenge, his adversary sunk before him without a blow; the voice of the publick was not long divided, and the preference was universally given to Pope’s performance. He was convinced, by adding one circumstance to another, that the other trans­ lation was the work of Addison himself; but if he knew it in Addison’s life-­time, it does not appear that he told it. He left his illustrious antagonist to be punished by what has been considered as the most painful of all reflections, the remembrance of a crime perpetrated in vain. The other circumstances of their quarrel were thus related by Pope.89 86. Thomas Tickell (1685–1740) agreed to translate the Iliad in 1714, but abandoned the project after publishing Book I only. 87. Pope to James Craggs (1686–1721), 15 July 1715 (Sherburn, i.306). Buttons was the coffeehouse in Covent Garden frequented by Addison and his friends. 88. John Gay to Pope, 8 July 1715 (Sherburn, i.305). 89. [SJ’s note] Spence [Anecdotes, i.71–72].

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Philips seemed to have been encouraged to abuse me in coffee-­houses, and conversations: and Gildon wrote a thing about Wycherley, in which he had abused both me and my relations very grossly. Lord Warwick90 himself told me one day, that it was in vain for me to endeavour to be well with Mr. Addi­ son; that his jealous temper would never admit of a settled friendship be­ tween us: and, to convince me of what he had said, assured me, that Addi­ son had encouraged Gildon to publish those scandals, and had given him ten guineas after they were published. The next day, while I was heated with what I had heard, I wrote a letter to Mr. Addison, to let him know that I was not unacquainted with this behaviour of his; that if I was to speak severely of him, in return for it, it should not be in such a dirty way; that I should rather tell him, himself, fairly of his faults, and allow his good qualities; and that it should be something in the following manner: I then adjoined the first sketch of what has since been called my satire on Addison.91 Mr. Addison used me very civilly ever after.

The verses on Addison, when they were sent to Atterbury, were considered by him as the most excellent of Pope’s performances; and the writer was advised, since he knew where his strength lay, not to suffer it to remain unemployed. This year (1715) being, by the subscription, enabled to live more by choice, having persuaded his father to sell their estate at Binfield, he purchased, I think only for his life, that house at Twickenham to which his residence afterwards procured so much celebration, and removed thither with his father and mother.92 Here he planted the vines and the quincunx which his verses mention:93 and being under the necessity of making a subterraneous passage to a garden on the other side of the road, he adorned it with fossile94 bodies, and dignified it with the title of a grotto; a place of silence and retreat, from which he endeavoured to per­ suade his friends and himself that cares and passions could be excluded. A grotto is not often the wish or pleasure of an Englishman, who has more frequent need to solicit than exclude the sun; but Pope’s excavation was requisite as an entrance to his garden, and, as some men try to be proud of their defects, he extracted an ornament from an inconvenience, and vanity produced a grotto where necessity enforced a passage. It may be frequently remarked of the studious and 90. Addison’s stepson. 91. Epistle to Arbuthnot, ll. 193–214. 92. SJ’s chronology, like that of his source, is inaccurate. Pope’s family left Binfield in 1716, but he did not move to Twickenham until 1720. 93. Imitations of Horace, Satires, ii.i.130, quoted in Dictionary under quincunx, “a plantation . . . con­ sisting of five trees, one at each corner, and a fifth in the middle.” 94. “That which is dug out of the earth” (Dictionary).



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speculative, that they are proud of trifles, and that their amusements seem frivolous and childish; whether it be that men conscious of great reputation think themselves above the reach of censure, and safe in the admission of negligent indulgences, or that mankind expect from elevated genius an uniformity of greatness, and watch its degradation with malicious wonder; like him who having followed with his eye an eagle into the clouds, should lament that she ever descended to a perch. While the volumes of his Homer were annually published, he collected his former works (1717) into one quarto volume, to which he prefixed a preface, writ­ ten with great spriteliness and elegance, which was afterwards reprinted, with some passages subjoined that he at first omitted; other marginal additions of the same kind he made in the later editions of his poems. Waller remarks, that poets lose half their praise, because the reader knows not what they have blotted.95 Pope’s voracity of fame taught him the art of obtaining the accumulated honour both of what he had published, and of what he had suppressed. In this year his father died suddenly, in his seventy-­fifth year,96 having passed twenty-­nine years in privacy. He is not known but by the character which his son has given him. If the money with which he retired was all gotten by himself, he had traded very successfully in times when sudden riches were rarely attainable. The publication of the Iliad was at last completed in 1720. The splendor and success of this work raised Pope many enemies, that endeavoured to depreciate his abilities; Burnet, who was afterwards a judge of no mean reputation, censured him in a piece called Homerides before it was published; Ducket likewise endeavoured to make him ridiculous.97 Dennis was the perpetual persecutor of all his studies. But, whoever his criticks were, their writings are lost, and the names which are pre­ served, are preserved in the Dunciad. In this disastrous year (1720) of national infatuation, when more riches than Peru can boast were expected from the South Sea, when the contagion of avarice tainted every mind, and even poets panted after wealth, Pope was seized with the universal passion, and ventured some of his money. The stock rose in its price; and he for a while thought himself “the lord of thousands.”98 But this dream of happiness did not last long, and he seems to have waked soon enough to get clear with the loss only of what he once thought himself to have won, and perhaps not wholly of that. Next year he published some select poems of his friend Dr. Parnell, with a very 95. “Poets lose half the praise they should have got, / Could it be known what they discreetly blot” (“Upon the Earl of Roscommon’s Translation of Horace, De Arte Poetica,” ll. 41–42). 96. He died in 1717 at seventy-­one. 97. Sir Thomas Burnet (1694–1753) and George Duckett (1684–1732) were co-­authors of Homerides (1715). 98. “In South-­sea days not happier, when surmis’d / The lord of thousands, than if now excis’d” (Imitations of Horace, Satires, ii.ii.133–34).

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elegant dedication to the Earl of Oxford; who, after all his struggles and dangers, then lived in retirement, still under the frown of a victorious faction, who could take no pleasure in hearing his praise.99 He gave the same year (1721) an edition of Shakespeare.100 His name was now of so much authority, that Tonson thought himself entitled, by annexing it, to de­ mand a subscription of six guineas for Shakespeare’s plays in six quarto volumes; nor did his expectation much deceive him; for of seven hundred and fifty which he printed, he dispersed a great number at the price proposed. The reputation of that edition indeed sunk afterwards so low, that one hundred and forty copies were sold at sixteen shillings each. On this undertaking, to which Pope was induced by a reward of two hundred and seventeen pounds twelve shillings, he seems never to have reflected afterwards without vexation; for Theobald, a man of heavy diligence, with very slender powers, first, in a book called Shakespeare Restored, and then in a formal edition, detected his deficiencies with all the insolence of victory; and, as he was now high enough to be feared and hated, Theobald had from others all the help that could be supplied, by the desire of humbling a haughty character.101 From this time Pope became an enemy to editors, collaters, commentators, and verbal criticks; and hoped to persuade the world, that he miscarried in this under­ taking only by having a mind too great for such minute employment. Pope in his edition undoubtedly did many things wrong, and left many things undone; but let him not be defrauded of his due praise. He was the first that knew, at least the first that told, by what helps the text might be improved. If he inspected the early editions negligently, he taught others to be more accurate. In his preface he expanded, with great skill and elegance, the character which had been given of Shakespeare by Dryden;102 and he drew the publick attention upon his works, which, though often mentioned, had been little read. Soon after the appearance of the Iliad, resolving not to let the general kindness cool, he published proposals for a translation of the Odyssey, in five volumes, for five guineas. He was willing, however, now to have associates in his labour, being either weary with toiling upon another’s thoughts, or having heard, as Ruffhead relates, that Fenton and Broome had already begun the work, and liking better to have them confederates than rivals. 99. By this time Robert Harley, once the de facto prime minister, had suffered an assassination attempt; lost his influence to Bolingbroke; been dismissed from government, and finally impeached by the Whigs. 100. The correct date is 1725; SJ again followed an inaccurate source. 101. Lewis Theobald (1688–1744) published his edition of Shakespeare in 1733. See p. 685 and n. 177 above. 102. Of Dramatick Poesie, an Essay (Works of John Dryden, xvii.55–56).



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In the patent, instead of saying that he had “translated” the Odyssey, as he had said of the Iliad, he says that he had “undertaken” a translation; and in the proposals the subscription is said to be not for his own use, but for that of “two of his friends who have assisted him in this work.” In 1723, while he was engaged in this new version, he appeared before the Lords at the memorable trial of Bishop Atterbury,103 with whom he had lived in great familiarity, and frequent correspondence. Atterbury had honestly recommended to him the study of the popish controversy, in hope of his conversion; to which Pope answered in a manner that cannot much recommend his principles, or his judge­ ment. In questions and projects of learning, they agreed better. He was called at the trial to give an account of Atterbury’s domestick life, and private employment, that it might appear how little time he had left for plots. Pope had but few words to utter, and in those few he made several blunders. His letters to Atterbury express the utmost esteem, tenderness, and gratitude: “perhaps,” says he, “it is not only in this world that I may have cause to remember the Bishop of Rochester.” At their last interview in the Tower, Atterbury presented him with a Bible.104 Of the Odyssey Pope translated only twelve books; the rest were the work of Broome and Fenton: the notes were written wholly by Broome, who was not over-­ liberally rewarded. The publick was carefully kept ignorant of the several shares; and an account was subjoined at the conclusion, which is now known not to be true. The first copy of Pope’s books, with those of Fenton, are to be seen in the Mu­ seum. The parts of Pope are less interlined than the Iliad, and the latter books of the Iliad less than the former. He grew dexterous by practice, and every sheet enabled him to write the next with more facility. The books of Fenton have very few alter­ ations by the hand of Pope. Those of Broome have not been found; but Pope com­ plained, as it is reported, that he had much trouble in correcting them. His contract with Lintot was the same as for the Iliad, except that only one hundred pounds were to be paid him for each volume. The number of subscribers was five hundred and seventy-­four, and of copies eight hundred and nineteen; so that his profit, when he had paid his assistants, was still very considerable. The work was finished in 1725, and from that time he resolved to make no more translations. The sale did not answer Lintot’s expectation, and he then pretended to dis­ cover something of fraud in Pope, and commenced, or threatened, a suit in Chan­ cery. On the English Odyssey a criticism was published by Spence, at that time Pre­ lector of Poetry at Oxford; a man whose learning was not very great, and whose 103. Atterbury was tried before the House of Lords in 1723 for conspiring in a Jacobite plot. 104. See Pope to Atterbury, 20 April 1723 (Sherburn, ii.168). Atterbury was found guilty and exiled.

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mind was not very powerful.105 His criticism, however, was commonly just; what he thought, he thought rightly; and his remarks were recommended by his coolness and candour. In him Pope had the first experience of a critick without malevolence, who thought it as much his duty to display beauties as expose faults; who censured with respect, and praised with alacrity. With this criticism Pope was so little offended, that he sought the acquaintance of the writer, who lived with him from that time in great familiarity, attended him in his last hours, and compiled memorials of his conversation. The regard of Pope recommended him to the great and powerful, and he obtained very valuable prefer­ ments in the Church. Not long after, Pope was returning home from a visit in a friend’s coach, which, in passing a bridge, was overturned into the water; the windows were closed, and being unable to force them open, he was in danger of immediate death, when the postilion snatched him out by breaking the glass, of which the fragments cut two of his fingers in such a manner, that he lost their use. Voltaire, who was then in England, sent him a letter of consolation. He had been entertained by Pope at his table, where he talked with so much grossness that Mrs. Pope was driven from the room. Pope discovered, by a trick, that he was a spy for the Court, and never considered him as a man worthy of confidence. He soon afterwards (1727) joined with Swift, who was then in England, to pub­ lish three volumes of Miscellanies, in which amongst other things he inserted the Memoirs of a Parish Clerk, in ridicule of Burnet’s importance in his own history,106 and a Debate upon Black and White Horses, written in all the formalities of a legal process by the assistance, as is said, of Mr. Fortescue, afterwards Master of the Rolls.107 Before these Miscellanies is a preface signed by Swift and Pope, but appar­ ently written by Pope; in which he makes a ridiculous and romantick complaint of the robberies committed upon authors by the clandestine seizure and sale of their papers. He tells, in tragick strains, how “the cabinets of the sick and the closets of the dead have been broke open and ransacked”; as if those violences were often com­ mitted for papers of uncertain and accidental value, which are rarely provoked by real treasures; as if epigrams and essays were in danger where gold and diamonds are safe. A cat, hunted for his musk, is, according to Pope’s account, but the emblem of a wit winded108 by booksellers. His complaint, however, received some attestation; for the same year the letters

105. Joseph Spence (1699–1768), An Essay on Pope’s Odyssey, 2 vols. (1726–27). 106. Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715), Bishop of Salisbury, author of History of His Own Time (1724–34). 107. William Fortescue (1687–1749) became Master of the Rolls, the deputy to the Lord Chancellor (head of the judiciary), in 1741. 108. “To nose; to follow by scent” (Dictionary, sense 5).



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written by him to Mr. Cromwell, in his youth, were sold by Mrs. Thomas to Curll, who printed them.109 In these Miscellanies was first published the Art of Sinking in Poetry, which, by such a train of consequences as usually passes in literary quarrels, gave in a short time, according to Pope’s account, occasion to the Dunciad. In the following year (1728) he began to put Atterbury’s advice in practice; and shewed his satirical powers by publishing the Dunciad, one of his greatest and most elaborate performances, in which he endeavoured to sink into contempt all the writers by whom he had been attacked, and some others whom he thought unable to defend themselves. At the head of the Dunces he placed poor Theobald, whom he accused of in­ gratitude; but whose real crime was supposed to be that of having revised Shake­ speare more happily than himself. This satire had the effect which he intended, by blasting the characters which it touched. Ralph, who, unnecessarily interposing in the quarrel, got a place in a subsequent edition, complained that for a time he was in danger of starving, as the booksellers had no longer any confidence in his capacity.110 The prevalence of this poem was gradual and slow: the plan, if not wholly new, was little understood by common readers. Many of the allusions required illustra­ tion; the names were often expressed only by the initial and final letters, and, if they had been printed at length, were such as few had known or recollected. The subject itself had nothing generally interesting, for whom did it concern to know that one or another scribler was a dunce? If therefore it had been possible for those who were attacked to conceal their pain and their resentment, the Dunciad might have made its way very slowly in the world. This, however, was not to be expected: every man is of importance to himself, and therefore, in his own opinion, to others; and, supposing the world already ac­ quainted with all his pleasures and his pains, is perhaps the first to publish injuries or misfortunes, which had never been known unless related by himself, and at which those that hear them will only laugh; for no man sympathises with the sorrows of vanity. The history of the Dunciad is very minutely related by Pope himself, in a dedi­ cation which he wrote to Lord Middlesex in the name of Savage.111 I will relate the war of the Dunces (for so it has been commonly called), which began in the year 1727, and ended in 1730. 109. See p. 707 above. 110. James Ralph (d. 1762), author of Sawney, an Heroic Poem Occasion’d by the Dunciad (1728). 111. A Collection of Pieces in Verse and Prose . . . on the Occasion of the Dunciad (1732) was dedicated to Charles Sackville, Earl of Middlesex (1711–69), by Richard Savage.

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When Dr. Swift and Mr. Pope thought it proper, for reasons specified in the preface to their Miscellanies, to publish such little pieces of theirs as had casually got abroad, there was added to them the Treatise of the Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry. It happened that in one chapter of this piece the several species of bad poets were ranged in classes, to which were prefixed almost all the letters of the alphabet (the greatest part of them at random); but such was the number of poets eminent in that art, that some one or other took every letter to himself: all fell into so violent a fury, that, for half a year or more, the common newspapers (in most of which they had some prop­ erty, as being hired writers) were filled with the most abusive falshoods and scurrilities they could possibly devise. A liberty no way to be wondered at in those people, and in those papers, that for many years, during the uncon­ trouled license of the press, had aspersed almost all the great characters of the age; and this with impunity, their own persons and names being utterly secret and obscure. This gave Mr. Pope the thought, that he had now some opportunity of doing good, by detecting and dragging into light these common enemies of mankind; since, to invalidate this universal slander, it sufficed to shew what contemptible men were the authors of it. He was not without hopes, that, by manifesting the dullness of those who had only malice to recommend them, either the booksellers would not find their account in employing them, or the men themselves, when discovered, want courage to proceed in so unlawful an occupation. This it was that gave birth to the Dunciad; and he thought it an happiness, that, by the late flood of slander on himself, he had acquired such a peculiar right over their names as was necessary to this design. On the 12th of March, 1729, at St. James’s, that poem was presented to the king and queen (who had before been pleased to read it) by the right hon­ ourable Sir Robert Walpole; and some days after, the whole impression was taken and dispersed by several noblemen and persons of the first distinction. It is certainly a true observation, that no people are so impatient of cen­ sure as those who are the greatest slanderers, which was wonderfully ex­ emplified on this occasion. On the day the book was first vended, a crowd of authors besieged the shop; intreaties, advices, threats of law and battery, nay cries of treason, were all employed to hinder the coming-­out of the Dunciad: on the other side, the booksellers and hawkers made as great efforts to pro­ cure it. What could a few poor authors do against so great a majority as the publick? There was no stopping a torrent with a finger, so out it came. Many ludicrous circumstances attended it. The Dunces (for by this name they were called) held weekly clubs, to consult of hostilities against the au­ thor: one wrote a letter to a great minister, assuring him Mr. Pope was the



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greatest enemy the government had; and another bought his image in clay, to execute him in effigy, with which sad sort of satisfaction the gentlemen were a little comforted. Some false editions of the book having an owl in their frontispiece, the true one, to distinguish it, fixed in its stead an ass laden with authors. Then another surreptitious one being printed with the same ass, the new edition in octavo returned for distinction to the owl again. Hence arose a great con­ test of booksellers against booksellers, and advertisements against advertise­ ments; some recommending the edition of the owl, and others the edition of the ass; by which names they came to be distinguished, to the great honour also of the gentlemen of the Dunciad.

Pope appears by this narrative to have contemplated his victory over the Dunces with great exultation; and such was his delight in the tumult which he had raised, that for a while his natural sensibility was suspended, and he read reproaches and invectives without emotion, considering them only as the necessary effects of that pain which he rejoiced in having given. It cannot however be concealed that, by his own confession, he was the aggres­ sor; for nobody believes that the letters in the Bathos were placed at random; and it may be discovered that, when he thinks himself concealed, he indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs in those distinctions which he had affected to despise. He is proud that his book was presented to the king and queen by the right honourable Sir Robert Walpole; he is proud that they had read it before; he is proud that the edition was taken off by the nobility and persons of the first distinction. The edition of which he speaks was, I believe, that, which by telling in the text the names and in the notes the characters of those whom he had satirised, was made intelligible and diverting. The criticks had now declared their approbation of the plan, and the common reader began to like it without fear; those who were strangers to petty literature, and therefore unable to decipher initials and blanks, had now names and persons brought within their view; and delighted in the visible effect of those shafts of malice, which they had hitherto contemplated, as shot into the air. Dennis, upon the fresh provocation now given him, renewed the enmity which had for a time been appeased by mutual civilities; and published remarks, which he had till then suppressed, upon the Rape of the Lock.112 Many more grumbled in secret, or vented their resentment in the newspapers by epigrams or invectives. Ducket, indeed, being mentioned as loving Burnet with “pious passion,” pre­ tended that his moral character was injured, and for some time declared his resolu­ tion to take vengeance with a cudgel. But Pope appeased him, by changing “pious 112. Remarks on Mr. Pope’s Rape of the Lock (1728).

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passion” to “cordial friendship,” and by a note, in which he vehemently disclaims the malignity of meaning imputed to the first expression.113 Aaron Hill, who was represented as diving for the prize,114 expostulated with Pope in a manner so much superior to all mean solicitation, that Pope was reduced to sneak and shuffle, sometimes to deny, and sometimes to apologize; he first en­ deavours to wound, and is then afraid to own that he meant a blow. The Dunciad, in the complete edition,115 is addressed to Dr. Swift: of the notes, part was written by Dr. Arbuthnot, and an apologetical letter was prefixed, signed by Cleland,116 but supposed to have been written by Pope. After this general war upon dulness, he seems to have indulged himself awhile in tranquillity; but his subsequent productions prove that he was not idle. He pub­ lished (1731) a poem on Taste, in which he very particularly and severely criticises the house, the furniture, the gardens, and the entertainments of Timon, a man of great wealth and little taste.117 By Timon he was universally supposed, and by the Earl of Burlington, to whom the poem is addressed, was privately said, to mean the Duke of Chandos; a man perhaps too much delighted with pomp and show, but of a temper kind and beneficent, and who had consequently the voice of the publick in his favour.118 A violent outcry was therefore raised against the ingratitude and treachery of Pope, who was said to have been indebted to the patronage of Chandos for a present of a thousand pounds, and who gained the opportunity of insulting him by the kind­ ness of his invitation. The receipt of the thousand pounds Pope publickly denied; but from the re­ proach which the attack on a character so amiable brought upon him, he tried all means of escaping. The name of Cleland was again employed in an apology, by which no man was satisfied; and he was at last reduced to shelter his temerity be­ hind dissimulation, and endeavour to make that disbelieved which he never had confidence openly to deny. He wrote an exculpatory letter to the duke, which was answered with great magnanimity, as by a man who accepted his excuse without believing his professions. He said, that to have ridiculed his taste, or his buildings,

113. See Twickenham Edition, v.169 and 438–39. 114. Diving in filth is one of the events in which the heroes compete in Dunciad II. Aaron Hill (1685– 1750), represented as H— in some editions and in others as **, takes a dive (A version: i.283–86). 115. The Dunciad Variorum (1729). 116. John Arbuthnot (1667–1735), physician and Scriblerian. William Cleland (1673/4–1741), father of the notorious novelist, John (1710–1789). 117. “Of the Use of Riches,” Epistle IV. To Richard Boyle [1694–1753], [third] Earl of Burlington, ll. 99–168. 118. James Brydges (1673–1744), Duke of Chandos, famous for Cannons, his estate near Edgware in northwest Greater London.



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had been an indifferent action in another man; but that in Pope, after the reciprocal kindness that had been exchanged between them, it had been less easily excused. Pope, in one of his letters, complaining of the treatment which his poem had found, “owns that such criticks can intimidate him, nay almost persuade him to write no more, which is a compliment this age deserves.”119 The man who threatens the world is always ridiculous; for the world can easily go on without him, and in a short time will cease to miss him. I have heard of an ideot, who used to revenge his vexations by lying all night upon the bridge.120 “There is nothing,” says Juve­ nal, “that a man will not believe in his own favour.”121 Pope had been flattered till he thought himself one of the moving powers in the system of life. When he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him intreated and implored, and self-­love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and laughed. The following year deprived him of Gay,122 a man whom he had known early, and whom he seemed to love with more tenderness than any other of his literary friends. Pope was now forty-­four years old; an age at which the mind begins less easily to admit new confidence, and the will to grow less flexible, and when there­ fore the departure of an old friend is very acutely felt. In the next year he lost his mother, not by an unexpected death, for she had lasted to the age of ninety-­three; but she did not die unlamented. The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree amiable and exemplary; his parents had the happi­ ness of living till he was at the summit of poetical reputation, till he was at ease in his fortune, and without a rival in his fame, and found no diminution of his respect or tenderness. Whatever was his pride, to them he was obedient; and whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle. Life has, among its soothing and quiet comforts, few things better to give than such a son. One of the passages of Pope’s life, which seems to deserve some enquiry, was a publication of letters between him and many of his friends, which falling into the hands of Curll, a rapacious bookseller of no good fame, were by him printed and sold. This volume containing some letters from noblemen, Pope incited a prosecu­ tion against him in the House of Lords for breach of privilege, and attended himself to stimulate the resentment of his friends. Curll appeared at the bar, and, knowing himself in no great danger, spoke of Pope with very little reverence. “He has,” said Curll, “a knack at versifying, but in prose I think myself a match for him.” When the orders of the House were examined, none of them appeared to have been infringed; Curll went away triumphant, and Pope was left to seek some other remedy. 119. SJ loosely paraphrases Pope to Burlington, January 1731/2 (Sherburn, iii.266). 120. “The bridge” is London Bridge. 121. Juvenal, Satires, iv.70–71, which SJ used as the motto for Rambler 104. 122. John Gay (1685–1732), author of The Beggar’s Opera.

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Curll’s account was, that one evening a man in a clergyman’s gown, but with a lawyer’s band,123 brought and offered to sale a number of printed volumes, which he found to be Pope’s epistolary correspondence; that he asked no name, and was told none, but gave the price demanded, and thought himself authorised to use his purchase to his own advantage. That Curll gave a true account of the transaction, it is reasonable to believe, be­ cause no falshood was ever detected; and when some years afterwards I mentioned it to Lintot, the son of Bernard,124 he declared his opinion to be, that Pope knew better than any body else how Curll obtained the copies, because another parcel was at the same time sent to himself, for which no price had ever been demanded, as he made known his resolution not to pay a porter, and consequently not to deal with a nameless agent. Such care had been taken to make them publick, that they were sent at once to two booksellers; to Curll, who was likely to seize them as a prey, and to Lintot, who might be expected to give Pope information of the seeming injury. Lintot, I believe, did nothing; and Curll did what was expected. That to make them publick was the only purpose may be reasonably supposed, because the numbers offered to sale by the private messengers shewed that hope of gain could not have been the motive of the impression.125 It seems that Pope, being desirous of printing his letters, and not knowing how to do, without imputation of vanity, what has in this country been done very rarely, contrived an appearance of compulsion; that when he could complain that his letters were surreptitiously published, he might decently and defensively pub­ lish them himself. Pope’s private correspondence, thus promulgated, filled the nation with praises of his candour, tenderness, and benevolence, the purity of his purposes, and the fidelity of his friendship. There were some letters which a very good or a very wise man would wish suppressed; but, as they had been already exposed, it was im­ practicable now to retract them. From the perusal of those letters, Mr. Allen first conceived the desire of know­ ing him;126 and with so much zeal did he cultivate the friendship which he had newly formed, that when Pope told his purpose of vindicating his own property by a genu­ ine edition, he offered to pay the cost. This however Pope did not accept; but in time solicited a subscription for a

123. “Something worn about the neck; a neckcloth. It is now restrained to a neckcloth of a particular form worn by clergymen, lawyers, and students in colleges” (Dictionary, sense 4). 124. Henry Lintot (1703–1758), son of Bernard (1675–1736), inherited his father’s publishing business. 125. Six hundred and fifty copies were offered. 126. Ralph Allen (1694–1764) of Bath, entrepreneur and philanthropist.



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quarto volume, which appeared (1737), I believe, with sufficient profit. In the pref­ ace he tells that his letters were reposited in a friend’s library, said to be the Earl of Oxford’s,127 and that the copy thence stolen was sent to the press. The story was doubtless received with different degrees of credit. It may be suspected that the preface to the Miscellanies was written to prepare the publick for such an incident; and to strengthen this opinion, James Worsdale, a painter, who was employed in clandestine negotiations, but whose veracity was very doubtful, declared that he was the messenger who carried, by Pope’s direction, the books to Curll. When they were thus published and avowed, as they had relation to recent facts, and persons either then living or not yet forgotten, they may be supposed to have found readers; but as the facts were minute, and the characters being either private or literary, were little known, or little regarded, they awakened no popular kindness or resentment: the book never became much the subject of conversation; some read it as contemporary history, and some perhaps as a model of epistolary language; but those who read it did not talk of it. Not much therefore was added by it to fame or envy; nor do I remember that it produced either publick praise, or publick censure. It had however, in some degree, the recommendation of novelty. Our language has few letters, except those of statesmen. Howel indeed, about a century ago, pub­ lished his letters, which are commended by Morhoff, and which alone of his hun­ dred volumes continue his memory.128 Loveday’s letters were printed only once; those of Herbert and Suckling are hardly known.129 Mrs. Philips’s (Orinda’s) are equally neglected; and those of Walsh seem written as exercises, and were never sent to any living mistress or friend.130 Pope’s epistolary excellence had an open field; he had no English rival, living or dead. Pope is seen in this collection as connected with the other contemporary wits, and certainly suffers no disgrace in the comparison; but it must be remembered that he had the power of favouring himself: he might have originally had publication in his mind, and have written with care, or have afterwards selected those which he had most happily conceived, or most diligently laboured; and I know not whether there does not appear something more studied and artificial in his productions than the rest, except one long letter by Bolingbroke, composed with all the skill and industry

127. Edward Harley (1689–1741), second Earl of Oxford, collector of the great Harleian Library. 128. James Howell (1594?–­1666), Epistolae Ho-­Elianae. Familiar Letters (1645–55), was praised by the German scholar Daniel George Morhoff (1631–1691) in a book on letter writing. 129. Robert Loveday (1620?–­1656), Letters Domestick and Forrein (1659), reprinted at least seven times. George Herbert’s letters appear in Izaac Walton’s biography (1670); Sir John Suckling’s in his Last Remains (1659). 130. Katherine Philips, Letters from Orinda (1705); William Walsh, Letters Amorous and Gallant (1692).

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of a professed author.131 It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously formed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease. Pope may be said to write always with his reputation in his head; Swift perhaps like a man who remembered that he was writing to Pope; but Arbuthnot like one who lets his thoughts drop from his pen as they rise into his mind. Before these letters appeared, he published the first part of what he persuaded himself to think a system of ethicks, under the title of an Essay on Man; which, if his letter to Swift (of Sept. 14, 1725) be rightly explained by the commentator, had been eight years under his consideration, and of which he seems to have desired the success with great solicitude.132 He had now many open and doubtless many secret enemies. The Dunces were yet smarting with the war; and the superiority which he publickly arrogated, disposed the world to wish his humiliation. All this he knew, and against all this he provided. His own name, and that of his friend to whom the work is inscribed,133 were in the first editions carefully sup­ pressed; and the poem, being of a new kind, was ascribed to one or another, as favour determined, or conjecture wandered; it was given, says Warburton, to every man, except him only who could write it. Those who like only when they like the author, and who are under the dominion of a name, condemned it; and those ad­ mired it who are willing to scatter praise at random, which while it is unappropri­ ated excites no envy. Those friends of Pope, that were trusted with the secret, went about lavishing honours on the new-­born poet, and hinting that Pope was never so much in danger from any former rival. To those authors whom he had personally offended, and to those whose opin­ ion the world considered as decisive, and whom he suspected of envy or malevo­ lence, he sent his essay as a present before publication, that they might defeat their own enmity by praises, which they could not afterwards decently retract. With these precautions, in 1733 was published the first part of the Essay on Man. There had been for some time a report that Pope was busy upon a system of morality; but this design was not discovered in the new poem, which had a form and a title with which its readers were unacquainted. Its reception was not uniform; some thought it a very imperfect piece, though not without good lines. While the author was unknown, some, as will always happen, favoured him as an adventurer, and some censured him as an intruder; but all thought him above neglect; the sale increased, and editions were multiplied. The subsequent editions of the first epistle exhibited two memorable correc­ tions. At first, the poet and his friend 131. Bolingbroke to Swift, August 1723 (Sherburn, ii.186–89). 132. The commentator is Warburton (Pope, Works [1751], ix.51); Sherburn, ii.321. 133. Pope’s Essay on Man is addressed to Bolingbroke.



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Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man, A mighty maze of walks without a plan.

For which he wrote afterwards, A mighty maze, but not without a plan:

for, if there were no plan, it was vain to describe or to trace the maze. The other alteration was of these lines; And spite of pride, and in thy reason’s spite, One truth is clear, whatever is, is right:

but having afterwards discovered, or been shewn, that the “truth” which subsisted “in spite of reason” could not be very “clear,” he substituted And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite.

To such oversights will the most vigorous mind be liable, when it is employed at once upon argument and poetry. The second and third epistles were published; and Pope was, I believe, more and more suspected of writing them; at last, in 1734, he avowed the fourth, and claimed the honour of a moral poet. In the conclusion it is sufficiently acknowledged, that the doctrine of the Essay on Man was received from Bolingbroke, who is said to have ridiculed Pope, among those who enjoyed his confidence, as having adopted and advanced principles of which he did not perceive the consequence, and as blindly propagating opin­ ions contrary to his own. That those communications had been consolidated into a scheme regularly drawn, and delivered to Pope, from whom it returned only trans­ formed from prose to verse, has been reported, but hardly can be true. The Essay plainly appears the fabrick134 of a poet: what Bolingbroke supplied could be only the first principles; the order, illustration, and embellishments must all be Pope’s. These principles it is not my business to clear from obscurity, dogmatism, or falsehood; but they were not immediately examined; philosophy and poetry have not often the same readers; and the Essay abounded in splendid amplifications and sparkling sentences, which were read and admired, with no great attention to their ultimate purpose; its flowers caught the eye, which did not see what the gay foliage concealed, and for a time flourished in the sunshine of universal approbation. So 134. Construction.

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little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as innocence is unsuspicious, many read it for a manual of piety. Its reputation soon invited a translator. It was first turned into French prose, and afterwards by Resnel into verse.135 Both translations fell into the hands of Crousaz, who first, when he had the version in prose, wrote a general censure, and afterwards reprinted Resnel’s version, with particular remarks upon every para­ graph.136 Crousaz was a professor of Switzerland, eminent for his treatise Of Logick, and his Examen de Pyrrhonisme, and, however little known or regarded here, was no mean antagonist. His mind was one of those in which philosophy and piety are happily united. He was accustomed to argument and disquisition, and perhaps was grown too desirous of detecting faults; but his intentions were always right, his opin­ ions were solid, and his religion pure. His incessant vigilance for the promotion of piety disposed him to look with distrust upon all metaphysical systems of theology, and all schemes of virtue and happiness purely rational, and therefore it was not long before he was persuaded that the positions of Pope, as they terminated for the most part in natural religion,137 were intended to draw mankind away from revelation, and to represent the whole course of things as a necessary concatenation of indissoluble fatality; and it is un­ deniable, that in many passages a religious eye may easily discover expressions not very favourable to morals, or to liberty. About his time Warburton began to make his appearance in the first ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited enquiry, with wonderful extent and variety of knowl­ edge, which yet had not oppressed his imagination, nor clouded his perspicacity. To every work he brought a memory full fraught together with a fancy fertile of origi­ nal combinations, and at once exerted the powers of the scholar, the reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be always exact, and his pursuits were too eager to be always cautious. His abilities gave him an haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal or mollify; and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his adversaries with such contemptuous superiority as made his readers commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes of some who favoured his cause. He seems to have adopted the Roman emperor’s determination, 135. Étienne de Silhouette, Essai sur l’homme (1736); François Du Resnel du Bellay, Les principes de la morale et du gout (1737). 136. The “general censure” was Jean Pierre de Crousaz (1663–1750), Examen de l’essai de Monsieur Pope (1737), translated by Elizabeth Carter (1738); see SJ’s translation of Crousaz, Commentaire sur le traduction en vers . . . de l’essai de M. Pope sur l’homme (1739); for confusion about the date of publication, see Yale, xvii. xxxiv–­xxxv. 137. Religious principles derived from observing God’s design in nature; closely related to Deism.



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oderint dum metuant;138 he used no allurements of gentle language, but wished to compel rather than persuade. His style is copious without selection, and forcible without neatness; he took the words that presented themselves: his diction is coarse and impure, and his sen­ tences are unmeasured. He had, in the early part of his life, pleased himself with the notice of inferior wits, and corresponded with the enemies of Pope. A letter was produced, when he had perhaps himself forgotten it, in which he tells Concanen, “Dryden I observe borrows for want of leasure, and Pope for want of genius: Milton out of pride, and Addison out of modesty.”139 And when Theobald published Shakespeare in oppo­ sition to Pope, the best notes were supplied by Warburton. But the time was now come when Warburton was to change his opinion, and Pope was to find a defender in him who had contributed so much to the exaltation of his rival. The arrogance of Warburton excited against him every artifice of offence, and therefore it may be supposed that his union with Pope was censured as hypocritical inconstancy; but surely to think differently, at different times, of poetical merit, may be easily allowed. Such opinions are often admitted, and dismissed, without nice examination. Who is there that has not found reason for changing his mind about questions of greater importance? Warburton, whatever was his motive, undertook, without solicitation, to rescue Pope from the talons of Crousaz, by freeing him from the imputation of favouring fatality, or rejecting revelation; and from month to month continued a vindication of the Essay on Man, in the literary journal of that time called the Republick of Letters.140 Pope, who probably began to doubt the tendency of his own work, was glad that the positions, of which he perceived himself not to know the full meaning, could by any mode of interpretation be made to mean well. How much he was pleased with his gratuitous defender, the following letter evidently shews: Sir,             March 24, 1743.141 I have just received from Mr. R.142 two more of your letters. It is in the greatest hurry imaginable that I write this; but I cannot help thanking you 138. “Let them hate me, as long as they fear me,” a line in a play by Lucius Accius, said by Suetonius to have been often repeated by Caligula (Lives of the Caesars, iv.xxx.1); cf. Rambler 4 (p. 122 above). 139. The letter to Matthew Concanen (1701–1749) of 2 January 1727 was known to several of SJ’s friends, though not published until 1780. 140. In 1738–39, when Warburton’s articles appeared, the journal was called The History of the Works of the Learned (see Boswell, Life, v.491). 141. The letter is correctly dated 11 April 1739 in Pope’s Works (1751), ix.324. 142. Jacob Robinson (d. 1759), a publisher of Works of the Learned.

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in particular for your third letter, which is so extremely clear, short, and full, that I think Mr. Crousaz ought never to have another answer, and deserved not so good an one. I can only say, you do him too much honour, and me too much right, so odd as the expression seems; for you have made my system as clear as I ought to have done, and could not. It is indeed the same system as mine, but illustrated with a ray of your own, as they say our natural body is the same still when it is glorified. I am sure I like it better than I did be­ fore, and so will every man else. I know I meant just what you explain; but I did not explain my own meaning so well as you. You understand me as well as I do myself; but you express me better than I could express myself. Pray accept the sincerest acknowledgements. I cannot but wish these letters were put together in one book, and intend (with your leave) to procure a transla­ tion of part, at least, of all of them into French; but I shall not proceed a step without your consent and opinion, &c.

By this fond and eager acceptance of an exculpatory comment, Pope testified that, whatever might be the seeming or real import of the principles which he had received from Bolingbroke, he had not intentionally attacked religion; and Boling­ broke, if he meant to make him without his own consent an instrument of mischief, found him now engaged with his eyes open on the side of truth. It is known that Bolingbroke concealed from Pope his real opinions. He once discovered them to Mr. Hooke, who related them again to Pope, and was told by him that he must have mistaken the meaning of what he heard; and Bolingbroke, when Pope’s uneasiness incited him to desire an explanation declared that Hooke had misunderstood him.143 Bolingbroke hated Warburton, who had drawn his pupil from him; and a little before Pope’s death they had a dispute, from which they parted with mutual aversion. From this time Pope lived in the closest intimacy with his commentator, and amply rewarded his kindness and his zeal; for he introduced him to Mr. Murray,144 by whose interest he became preacher at Lincoln’s Inn, and to Mr. Allen, who gave him his niece and his estate, and by consequence a bishoprick. When he died, he left him the property of his works; a legacy which may be reasonably estimated at four thousand pounds. Pope’s fondness for the Essay on Man appeared by his desire of its propaga­ tion. Dobson, who had gained reputation by his version of Prior’s Solomon,145 was 143. Nathaniel Hooke (d. 1763), translator and friend of Pope. 144. William Murray, later Lord Chief Justice and first Earl of Mansfield (1705–1793). 145. William Dobson wrote a Latin translation of Matthew Prior’s long poem Solomon on the Vanity of the World, 3 vols. (1734–36). William Benson (1682–1754) paid him £1,000 to translate Paradise Lost.



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employed by him to translate it into Latin verse, and was for that purpose some time at Twickenham; but he left his work, whatever was the reason, unfinished; and, by Benson’s invitation, undertook the longer task of Paradise Lost. Pope then desired his friend to find a scholar who should turn his Essay into Latin prose; but no such performance has ever appeared. Pope lived at this time “among the great,”146 with that reception and respect to which his works entitled him, and which he had not impaired by any private miscon­ duct or factious partiality. Though Bolingbroke was his friend, Walpole was not his enemy; but treated him with so much consideration as, at his request, to solicit and obtain from the French minister an abbey for Mr. Southcot, whom he considered himself as obliged to reward, by this exertion of his interest, for the benefit which he had received from his attendance in a long illness.147 It was said, that, when the Court was at Richmond, Queen Caroline had de­ clared her intention to visit him. This may have been only a careless effusion, thought on no more: the report of such notice, however, was soon in many mouths; and, if I do not forget or misapprehend Savage’s account, Pope, pretending to decline what was not yet offered, left his house for a time, not, I suppose, for any other reason than lest he should be thought to stay at home in expectation of an honour which would not be conferred. He was therefore angry at Swift, who represents him as “refusing the visits of a queen,” because he knew that what had never been offered, had never been refused.148 Beside the general system of morality supposed to be contained in the Essay on Man, it was his intention to write distinct poems upon the different duties or condi­ tions of life; one of which is the epistle to Lord Bathurst (1733) on the Use of Riches, a piece on which he declared great labour to have been bestowed.149 Into this poem some incidents are historically thrown, and some known char­ acters are introduced, with others of which it is difficult to say how far they are real or fictitious; but the praise of Kyrl, the Man of Ross, deserves particular examina­ tion, who, after a long and pompous enumeration of his publick works and private charities, is said to have diffused all those blessings from “five hundred a year.”150 Wonders are willingly told, and willingly heard. The truth is, that Kyrl was a man of known integrity, and active benevolence, by whose solicitation the wealthy were per­ suaded to pay contributions to his charitable schemes; this influence he obtained by 146. “Envy must own, I live among the great” (Pope, Imitations of Horace, Satires ii.i.133). 147. Thomas Southcote (1670–1748) was a Catholic priest. 148. The reference is to Swift’s “Libel on Dr. Delany” (l. 74), which angered Pope (Sherburn, iii.95). 149. [SJ’s note] Spence [Anecdotes, i.139]. 150. John Kyrle (1634–1724) is the “Man of Ross,” a town in Herefordshire, in Pope’s Epistle to Bathurst (ll. 249–80).

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an example of liberality exerted to the utmost extent of his power, and was thus en­ abled to give more than he had. This account Mr. Victor received from the minister of the place, and I have preserved it, that the praise of a good man being made more credible, may be more solid. Narrations of romantick and impracticable virtue will be read with wonder, but that which is unattainable is recommended in vain; that good may be endeavoured, it must be shewn to be possible. This is the only piece in which the author has given a hint of his religion, by ridiculing the ceremony of burning the pope, and by mentioning with some indig­ nation the inscription on the Monument.151 When this poem was first published, the dialogue, having no letters of direc­ tion, was perplexed and obscure. Pope seems to have written with no very distinct idea; for he calls that an Epistle to Bathurst, in which Bathurst is introduced as speaking.152 He afterwards (1734) inscribed to Lord Cobham his Characters of Men,153 writ­ ten with close attention to the operations of the mind and modifications of life. In this poem he has endeavoured to establish and exemplify his favourite theory of the “ruling passion,” by which he means an original direction of desire to some particu­ lar object, an innate affection which gives all action a determinate and invariable ten­ dency, and operates upon the whole system of life, either openly, or more secretly by the intervention of some accidental or subordinate propension. Of any passion, thus innate and irresistible the existence may reasonably be doubted. Human characters are by no means constant; men change by change of place, of fortune, of acquaintance; he who is at one time a lover of pleasure, is at another a lover of money. Those indeed who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms. But to the particular species of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or pre­ dominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some early conversation which they heard, or some accident which excited ardour and emulation.154 It must be at least allowed that this “ruling passion,” antecedent to reason and observation, must have an object independent on human contrivance; for there can be no natural desire of artificial good. No man therefore can be born, in the strict ac­ ceptation, a lover of money; for he may be born where money does not exist; nor can he be born, in a moral sense, a lover of his country; for society, politically regulated, 151. The Pope was burned in effigy to celebrate Elizabeth I’s accession. Until 1831, the Monument, a tower in London commemorating the Great Fire of 1666, had an inscription blaming the fire on Roman Catholics. See Epistle to Bathurst, ll. 213–14 and 339–40. 152. Allen Bathurst, first Earl Bathurst (1684–1775), was a wealthy politician. 153. Richard Temple, first Viscount Cobham (1675–1749), built the great house and gardens at Stowe. 154. Cf. “Cowley” (p. 591 above).



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is a state contradistinguished from a state of nature; and any attention to that coali­ tion of interests which makes the happiness of a country, is possible only to those whom enquiry and reflection have enabled to comprehend it. This doctrine is in itself pernicious as well as false: its tendency is to produce the belief of a kind of moral predestination, or overruling principle which cannot be resisted; he that admits it, is prepared to comply with every desire that caprice or opportunity shall excite, and to flatter himself that he submits only to the lawful dominion of nature, in obeying the resistless authority of his “ruling passion.” Pope has formed his theory with so little skill, that, in the examples by which he illustrates and confirms it, he has confounded passions, appetites, and habits. To the Characters of Men he added soon after, in an epistle supposed to have been addressed to Martha Blount, but which the last edition has taken from her, the Characters of Women.155 This poem, which was laboured with great diligence, and in the author’s opinion with great success, was neglected at its first publication, as the commentator supposes, because the publick was informed by an advertisement, that it contained “no character drawn from the life”;156 an assertion which Pope probably did not expect or wish to have been believed, and which he soon gave his readers sufficient reason to distrust, by telling them in a note, that the work was imperfect, because part of his subject was “vice too high” to be yet exposed.157 The time however soon came, in which it was safe to display the Dutchess of Marlborough under the name of Atossa; and her character was inserted with no great honour to the writer’s gratitude.158 He published from time to time (between 1730 and 1740) imitations of different poems of Horace, generally with his name, and once as was suspected without it. What he was upon moral principles ashamed to own, he ought to have suppressed. Of these pieces it is useless to settle the dates, as they had seldom much relation to the times, and perhaps had been long in his hands. This mode of imitation, in which the ancients are familiarised, by adapting their sentiments to modern topicks, by making Horace say of Shakespeare what he originally said of Ennius, and accommodating his satires on Pantolabus and No­ mentanus to the flatterers and prodigals of our own time, was first practised in the reign of Charles the Second by Oldham and Rochester, at least I remember no in­ stances more ancient. It is a kind of middle composition between translation and 155. Martha Blount (1690–1763), Catholic gentlewoman, Pope’s closest friend, to whom he left a con­ siderable part of his estate. 156. Twickenham Edition, iii(ii):45–46. 157. “Publish the present age, but where my text / Is vice too high, reserve it for the next” (Imitations of Horace, Satires, ii.i.59–60). 158. Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (1660–1744), was taken to be Atossa when that character was added to the poem in 1744.

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original design, which pleases when the thoughts are unexpectedly applicable, and the parallels lucky. It seems to have been Pope’s favourite amusement; for he has carried it further than any former poet. He published likewise a revival, in smoother numbers, of Dr. Donne’s satires, which was recommended to him by the Duke of Shrewsbury and the Earl of Oxford. They made no great impression on the publick. Pope seems to have known their imbecillity,159 and therefore suppressed them while he was yet contending to rise in reputation, but ventured them when he thought their deficiencies more likely to be imputed to Donne than to himself. The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, which seems to be derived in its first design from Boileau’s address à son esprit, was published in January 1735, about a month before the death of him to whom it is inscribed. It is to be regretted that either honour or pleasure should have been missed by Arbuthnot; a man estimable for his learning, amiable for his life, and venerable for his piety.160 Arbuthnot was a man of great comprehension, skilful in his profession, versed in the sciences, acquainted with ancient literature, and able to animate his mass of knowledge by a bright and active imagination; a scholar with great brilliancy of wit; a wit who, in the crowd of life, retained and discovered a noble ardour of religious zeal. In this poem Pope seems to reckon with the publick. He vindicates himself from censures; and with dignity, rather than arrogance, enforces his own claims to kindness and respect. Into this poem are interwoven several paragraphs which had been before printed as a fragment, and among them the satirical lines upon Addison,161 of which the last couplet has been twice corrected. It was at first, Who would not smile if such a man there be? Who would not laugh if Addison were he?

Then, Who would not grieve if such a man there be? Who would not laugh if Addison were he?

At last it is, 159. “Weakness; feebleness of mind or body” (Dictionary). 160. The contradiction in this paragraph is the result of hasty corrections in the proof pages. The Epistle was published after Arbuthnot’s death. For details, see Yale, xxiii.1143, n. 1. 161. Ll. 193–214.



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Who but must laugh if such a man there be? Who would not weep if Atticus were he?

He was at this time at open war with Lord Hervey, who had distinguished him­ self as a steady adherent to the ministry, and, being offended with a contemptuous answer to one of his pamphlets, had summoned Pulteney to a duel. Whether he or Pope made the first attack, perhaps cannot now be easily known: he had written an invective against Pope, whom he calls, “Hard as thy heart and as thy birth obscure”; and hints that his father was a “hatter.”162 To this Pope wrote a reply in verse and prose: the verses are in this poem; and the prose, though it was never sent, is printed among his letters,163 but to a cool reader of the present time exhibits nothing but tedious malignity. His last satires, of the general kind, were two Dialogues, named from the year in which they were published Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-­eight. In these poems many are praised, and many are reproached. Pope was then entangled in the oppo­ sition; a follower of the Prince of Wales, who dined at his house, and the friend of many who obstructed and censured the conduct of the ministers. His political par­ tiality was too plainly shewn; he forgot the prudence with which he passed, in his earlier years, uninjured and unoffending through much more violent conflicts of faction. In the first Dialogue, having an opportunity of praising Allen of Bath, he asked his leave to mention him as a man not illustrious by any merit of his ancestors, and called him in his verses “low-­born Allen.” Men are seldom satisfied with praise introduced or followed by any mention of defect. Allen seems not to have taken any pleasure in his epithet, which was afterwards softened into “humble Allen.”164 In the second Dialogue he took some liberty with one of the Foxes, among others; which Fox, in a reply to Lyttelton, took an opportunity of repaying, by re­ proaching him with the friendship of a lampooner, who scattered his ink without fear or decency, and against whom he hoped the resentment of the legislature would quickly be discharged.165 About this time Paul Whitehead, a small poet, was summoned before the Lords 162. John Hervey, Baron (1696–1743), politician, attacked Pope as an unoriginal rhymer in Epistle from a Nobleman to a Doctor of Divinity (1733), which includes a joke about a hatter. With Lady Mary Wortley Mon­ tagu, he wrote the equally critical Verses Address’d to the Imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace (1733), which SJ quotes (p. 4). Pope brutally satirizes Hervey as the hermaphrodite Sporus in his Epistle to Arbuthnot, ll. 305–33. 163. A Letter to a Noble Lord appeared in Pope, Works (1751), viii.253–80. 164. Epilogue to the Satires (formerly called One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight), Dialogue 1, l. 135. 165. Henry Fox, first Baron Holland (1705–1774), denounced the association of Lord Lyttelton (1709– 1773) with Pope in the House of Commons (Lonsdale, Lives of the Eminent Poets, iv.186n).

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for a poem called Manners, together with Dodsley his publisher.166 Whitehead, who hung loose upon society, sculked and escaped; but Dodsley’s shop and family made his appearance necessary. He was, however, soon dismissed; and the whole process was probably intended rather to intimidate Pope than to punish Whitehead. Pope never afterwards attempted to join the patriot167 with the poet, nor drew his pen upon statesmen. That he desisted from his attempts of reformation is im­ puted, by his commentator, to his despair of prevailing over the corruption of the time. He was not likely to have been ever of opinion that the dread of his satire would countervail the love of power or of money; he pleased himself with being important and formidable, and gratified sometimes his pride, and sometimes his resentment; till at last he began to think he should be more safe, if he were less busy. The Memoirs of Scriblerus, published about this time, extend only to the first book of a work, projected in concert by Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, who used to meet in the time of Queen Anne, and denominated themselves the Scriblerus Club. Their purpose was to censure the abuses of learning by a fictitious life of an infatu­ ated scholar. They were dispersed; the design was never completed; and Warburton laments its miscarriage, as an event very disastrous to polite letters.168 If the whole may be estimated by this specimen, which seems to be the pro­ duction of Arbuthnot, with a few touches perhaps by Pope, the want of more will not be much lamented; for the follies which the writer ridicules are so little prac­ tised, that they are not known; nor can the satire be understood but by the learned: he raises phantoms of absurdity, and then drives them away. He cures diseases that were never felt. For this reason the joint production of three great writers has never obtained any notice from mankind; it has been little read, or when read has been forgotten, as no man could be wiser, better, or merrier, by remembering it. The design cannot boast of much originality; for, besides its general resem­ blance to Don Quixote, there will be found in it particular imitations of the History of Mr. Oufle.169 Swift carried so much of it into Ireland as supplied him with hints for his Travels; and with those the world might have been contented, though the rest had been suppressed. Pope had sought for images and sentiments in a region not known to have been explored by many other of the English writers; he had consulted the modern writers of Latin poetry, a class of authors whom Boileau endeavoured to bring into 166. Paul Whitehead (1710–1774) attacked Walpole in Manners (1739), published by Robert Dodsley (1703–1764), Pope’s publisher and SJ’s. 167. A name adopted by those who opposed the Walpole ministry. 168. Pope, Works (1751), vi.112n. 169. See Laurent Bordelon, Histoire des imaginations extravagantes de M. Oufle (1710; trans. 1711).



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contempt, and who are too generally neglected. Pope, however, was not ashamed of their acquaintance, nor ungrateful for the advantages which he might have derived from it. A small selection from the Italians who wrote in Latin had been published at London, about the latter end of the last century, by a man who concealed his name, but whom his preface shews to have been well qualified for his undertaking.170 This collection Pope amplified by more than half, and (1740) published it in two volumes, but injuriously omitted his predecessor’s preface. To these books, which had noth­ ing but the mere text, no regard was paid, the authors were still neglected, and the editor was neither praised nor censured. He did not sink into idleness; he had planned a work, which he considered as subsequent to his Essay on Man, of which he has given this account to Dr. Swift. March 25, 1736.171 If ever I write any more epistles in verse, one of them shall be addressed to you. I have long concerted it, and begun it; but I would make what bears your name as finished as my last work ought to be, that is to say, more fin­ ished than any of the rest. The subject is large, and will divide into four epistles, which naturally follow the Essay on Man, viz. 1. Of the extent and limits of human reason and science. 2. A view of the useful and therefore attainable, and of the unuseful and therefore unattainable arts. 3. Of the nature, ends, application, and use of different capacities. 4. Of the use of learning, of the science of the world, and of wit. It will conclude with a satire against the misapplication of all these, exemplified by pictures, characters, and examples.

This work in its full extent, being now afflicted with an asthma, and finding the powers of life gradually declining, he had no longer courage to undertake; but, from the materials which he had provided, he added, at Warburton’s request, another book to the Dunciad, of which the design is to ridicule such studies as are either hopeless or useless, as either pursue what is unattainable, or what, if it be attained, is of no use. When this book was printed (1742) the laurel had been for some time upon the head of Cibber;172 a man whom it cannot be supposed that Pope could regard with much kindness or esteem, though in one of the Imitations of Horace he has liberally enough praised the Careless Husband.173 In the Dunciad, among other worthless 170. Anthology, or a Selection of Latin Poems Written by Italians, ed. Francis Atterbury (1684). Pope’s collection is entitled Selecta poemata Italorum qui Latine scripserunt. 171. See Sherburn, iv.5. 172. Colley Cibber (1671–1757) became Poet Laureate in 1730. 173. Imitations of Horace, Epistles, ii.i.91–94.

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scribblers, he had mentioned Cibber; who, in his Apology, complains of the great poet’s unkindness as more injurious, “because,” says he, “I never have offended him.”174 It might have been expected that Pope should have been, in some degree, mol­ lified by this submissive gentleness; but no such consequence appeared. Though he condescended to commend Cibber once, he mentioned him afterwards contemp­ tuously in one of his satires, and again in his Epistle to Arbuthnot; and in the fourth book of the Dunciad attacked him with acrimony, to which the provocation is not easily discoverable.175 Perhaps he imagined that in ridiculing the laureat, he satirised those by whom the laurel had been given, and gratified that ambitious petulance with which he affected to insult the great. The severity of this satire left Cibber no longer any patience. He had confi­ dence enough in his own powers to believe that he could disturb the quiet of his adversary, and doubtless did not want instigators, who, without any care about the victory, desired to amuse themselves by looking on the contest. He therefore gave the town a pamphlet, in which he declares his resolution from that time never to bear another blow without returning it, and to tire out his adversary by perseverance, if he cannot conquer him by strength.176 The incessant and unappeasable malignity of Pope he imputes to a very distant cause. After the Three Hours after Marriage177 had been driven off the stage, by the offence which the mummy and crocodile gave the audience, while the exploded178 scene was yet fresh in memory, it happened that Cibber played Bayes in the Rehearsal; and, as it had been usual to enliven the part by the mention of any recent theatrical transactions, he said, that he once thought to have introduced his lovers disguised in a mummy and a crocodile. This, says he, was received with loud claps, which indicated the proportionable contempt of the play. Pope, who was behind the scenes, meeting him as he left the stage, attacked him, as he says, with all the viru­ lence of a “wit out of his senses”; to which he replied, that he would take no other notice of what was said by so particular179 a man than to declare, that, as often as he played that part, he would repeat the same provocation.

174. An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber (1740), p. 22. 175. The references are to Imitations of Horace, Satires, ii.i.33–36; Epistle to Arbuthnot, ll. 97, 373; and Dunciad, iv.20n. 176. See A Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope (1742). 177. The play by Pope, Gay, and Arbuthnot, first performed on 16 January 1717, included a scene with a mummy and a crocodile to mock the natural historian Dr. Woodward (Lonsdale, Lives of the Eminent Poets, iii.96n). 178. “To drive out disgracefully with some noise of contempt” (Dictionary, sense 1). 179. “Odd; having something that eminently distinguishes him from others. This is commonly used in a sense of contempt” (Dictionary, sense 6).



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He shews his opinion to be, that Pope was one of the authors of the play which he so zealously defended; and adds an idle story of Pope’s behaviour at a tavern.180 The pamphlet was written with little power of thought or language, and, if suffered to remain without notice, would have been very soon forgotten. Pope had now been enough acquainted with human life to know, if his passion had not been too powerful for his understanding, that, from a contention like his with Cibber, the world seeks nothing but diversion, which is given at the expence of the higher char­ acter. When Cibber lampooned Pope, curiosity was excited; what Pope would say of Cibber nobody enquired, but in hope that Pope’s asperity might betray his pain and lessen his dignity. He should therefore have suffered the pamphlet to flutter and die, without con­ fessing that it stung him. The dishonour of being shewn as Cibber’s antagonist could never be compensated by the victory. Cibber had nothing to lose; when Pope had exhausted all his malignity upon him, he would rise in the esteem both of his friends and his enemies. Silence only could have made him despicable; the blow which did not appear to be felt, would have been struck in vain. But Pope’s irascibility prevailed, and he resolved to tell the whole English world that he was at war with Cibber; and to shew that he thought him no common adversary, he prepared no common vengeance; he published a new edition of the Dunciad, in which he degraded Theobald from his painful preeminence,181 and en­ throned Cibber in his stead. Unhappily the two heroes were of opposite characters, and Pope was unwilling to lose what he had already written; he has therefore de­ praved his poem by giving to Cibber the old books, the cold pedantry and sluggish pertinacity of Theobald. Pope was ignorant enough of his own interest to make another change, and introduced Osborne contending for the prize among the booksellers. Osborne was a man intirely destitute of shame, without sense of any disgrace but that of poverty. He told me, when he was doing that which raised Pope’s resentment, that he should be put into the Dunciad;182 but he had the fate of Cassandra; I gave no credit to his pre­ diction, till in time I saw it accomplished. The shafts of satire were directed equally in vain against Cibber and Osborne; being repelled by the impenetrable impudence of one, and deadened by the impassive dulness of the other. Pope confessed his own 180. Cibber mentions not a tavern, but “a certain house of carnal recreation, near the Hay-­Market” (A Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope, p. 47). 181. The phrase “painful preeminence” appears in Addison’s Cato, iii.v.23, and Pope’s Essay on Man, iv.267. SJ used it earlier in a letter to Hester Thrale of 3 June 1776 (SJ Letters, ii.339). 182. Thomas Osborne (1704?–­1767), the bookseller for whom SJ worked on the Harleian Catalogue (1742–45), raised Pope’s ire by selling cut-­down folios of Pope’s Iliad as more expensive quartos (Lonsdale, Lives of the Eminent Poets, iv.50n).

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pain by his anger; but he gave no pain to those who had provoked him. He was able to hurt none but himself; by transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he destroyed its efficacy; for by shewing that what he had said of one he was ready to say of another, he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own magpye, who from his cage calls cuckold at a venture.183 Cibber, according to his engagement, repaid the Dunciad with another pam­ phlet, which, Pope said, “would be as good as a dose of hartshorn to him”;184 but his tongue and his heart were at variance. I have heard Mr. Richardson185 relate, that he attended his father the painter on a visit, when one of Cibber’s pamphlets came into the hands of Pope, who said, “These things are my diversion.” They sat by him while he perused it, and saw his features writhen with anguish; and young Richard­ son said to his father, when they returned, that he hoped to be preserved from such diversion as had been that day the lot of Pope. From this time, finding his diseases more oppressive, and his vital powers gradually declining, he no longer strained his faculties with any original composi­ tion, nor proposed any other employment for his remaining life than the revisal and correction of his former works; in which he received advice and assistance from Warburton, whom he appears to have trusted and honoured in the highest degree. He laid aside his epick poem, perhaps without much loss to mankind; for his hero was Brutus the Trojan, who, according to a ridiculous fiction, established a colony in Britain. The subject therefore was of the fabulous age; the actors were a race upon whom imagination has been exhausted, and attention wearied, and to whom the mind will not easily be recalled, when it is invited in blank verse, which Pope had adopted with great imprudence, and, I think, without due con­ sideration of the nature of our language. The sketch is, at least in part, preserved by Ruffhead;186 by which it appears, that Pope was thoughtless enough to model the names of his heroes with terminations not consistent with the time or country in which he places them. He lingered through the next year; but perceived himself, as he expresses it, “going down the hill.” He had for at least five years been afflicted with an asthma, and other disorders, which his physicians were unable to relieve. Towards the end of his life he consulted Dr. Thomson, a man who had, by large promises, and free cen­ sures of the common practice of physick, forced himself up into sudden reputation. Thomson declared his distemper to be a dropsy, and evacuated part of the water by 183. See Pope, Epistle to Cobham, ll. 5–8. 184. Pope, Letters, iv.492; hartshorn “is used to bring people out of faintings by its pungency” (Dictionary). 185. Jonathan Richardson, the younger (1694–1771), printer and author. 186. Ruffhead, Life of Pope, pp. 410–23.



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tincture of jalap; but confessed that his belly did not subside. Thomson had many enemies, and Pope was persuaded to dismiss him. While he was yet capable of amusement and conversation, as he was one day sitting in the air with Lord Bolingbroke and Lord Marchmont, he saw his favourite Martha Blount at the bottom of the terrace, and asked Lord Bolingbroke to go and hand her up. Bolingbroke, not liking his errand, crossed his legs, and sat still; but Lord Marchmont, who was younger and less captious, waited on the lady; who, when he came to her, asked, “What, is he not dead yet?” She is said to have ne­ glected him, with shameful unkindness, in the latter time of his decay; yet, of the little which he had to leave, she had a very great part. Their acquaintance began early; the life of each was pictured on the other’s mind; their conversation therefore was endearing, for when they met, there was an immediate coalition of congenial notions. Perhaps he considered her unwillingness to approach the chamber of sick­ ness as female weakness, or human frailty; perhaps he was conscious to himself of peevishness and impatience, or, though he was offended by her inattention, might yet consider her merit as overbalancing her fault; and, if he had suffered his heart to be alienated from her, he could have found nothing that might fill her place; he could have only shrunk within himself; it was too late to transfer his confidence or fondness. In May 1744, his death was approaching; on the sixth, he was all day delirious, which he mentioned four days afterwards as a sufficient humiliation of the vanity of man; he afterwards complained of seeing things as through a curtain, and in false colours; and one day, in the presence of Dodsley, asked what arm it was that came out from the wall. He said that his greatest inconvenience was inability to think. Bolingbroke sometimes wept over him in this state of helpless decay; and being told by Spence, that Pope, at the intermission of his deliriousness, was always saying something kind either of his present or absent friends, and that his humanity seemed to have survived his understanding, answered, “It has so.” And added, “I never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or more gen­ eral friendship for mankind.” At another time he said, “I have known Pope these thirty years, and value myself more in his friendship than”—his grief then sup­ pressed his voice.187 Pope expressed undoubting confidence of a future state. Being asked by his friend Mr. Hooke, a papist, whether he would not die like his father and mother, and whether a priest should not be called, he answered, “I do not think it essential, but it will be very right; and I thank you for putting me in mind of it.” In the morning, after the priest had given him the last sacraments, he said, 187. See Spence, Anecdotes, i.259–69.

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“There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship, and indeed friend­ ship itself is only a part of virtue.”188 He died in the evening of the thirtieth day of May, 1744, so placidly, that the at­ tendants did not discern the exact time of his expiration. He was buried at Twicken­ ham, near his father and mother, where a monument has been since erected to him by his commentator, the Bishop of Gloucester. He left the care of his papers to his executors, first to Lord Bolingbroke, and if he should not be living to the Earl of Marchmont, undoubtedly expecting them to be proud of the trust, and eager to extend his fame. But let no man dream of in­ fluence beyond his life. After a decent time Dodsley the bookseller went to solicit preference as the publisher, and was told that the parcel had not been yet inspected; and, whatever was the reason, the world has been disappointed of what was “re­ served for the next age.”189 He lost, indeed, the favour of Bolingbroke by a kind of posthumous offence. The political pamphlet called the Patriot King had been put into his hands that he might procure the impression of a very few copies, to be distributed according to the author’s direction among his friends, and Pope assured him that no more had been printed than were allowed; but, soon after his death, the printer brought and resigned a complete edition of fifteen hundred copies, which Pope had ordered him to print, and to retain in secret. He kept, as was observed, his engagement to Pope better than Pope had kept it to his friend; and nothing was known of the transaction, till, upon the death of his employer, he thought himself obliged to deliver the books to the right owner, who, with great indignation, made a fire in his yard, and deliv­ ered the whole impression to the flames. Hitherto nothing had been done which was not naturally dictated by resent­ ment of violated faith; resentment more acrimonious, as the violator had been more loved or more trusted. But here the anger might have stopped; the injury was pri­ vate, and there was little danger from the example. Bolingbroke, however, was not yet satisfied; his thirst of vengeance incited him to blast the memory of the man over whom he had wept in his last struggles; and he employed Mallet, another friend of Pope, to tell the tale to the publick, with all its aggravations.190 Warburton, whose heart was warm with his legacy, and tender by the recent separation, thought it proper for him to interpose; and undertook, not in­ 188. Spence, Anecdotes, i.268. 189. See p. 770, n. 4, below. 190. In “Mallet,” SJ tells the story of his ignominious service to Bolingbroke (Yale, xxiii.1436), includ­ ing assignment of the lord’s copyright for the pirated work. Boswell reported SJ’s “just indignation” concern­ ing the affair; SJ characterized Bolingbroke as a “scoundrel” and Mallet as a “beggarly Scotchman” (Boswell, Life, i.268).



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deed to vindicate the action, for breach of trust has always something criminal, but to extenuate it by an apology.191 Having advanced, what cannot be denied, that moral obliquity is made more or less excusable by the motives that produce it, he enquires what evil purpose could have induced Pope to break his promise. He could not de­ light his vanity by usurping the work, which, though not sold in shops, had been shewn to a number more than sufficient to preserve the author’s claim; he could not gratify his avarice; for he could not sell his plunder till Bolingbroke was dead; and even then, if the copy was left to another, his fraud would be defeated, and if left to himself, would be useless. Warburton therefore supposes, with great appearance of reason, that the ir­ regularity of his conduct proceeded wholly from his zeal for Bolingbroke, who might perhaps have destroyed the pamphlet, which Pope thought it his duty to pre­ serve, even without its author’s approbation. To this apology an answer was written in a Letter to the Most Impudent Man Living.192 He brought some reproach upon his own memory by the petulant and con­ temptuous mention made in his will of Mr. Allen, and an affected repayment of his benefactions. Mrs. Blount, as the known friend and favourite of Pope, had been in­ vited to the house of Allen, where she comported herself with such indecent arro­ gance, that she parted from Mrs. Allen in a state of irreconcileable dislike, and the door was for ever barred against her. This exclusion she resented with so much bit­ terness as to refuse any legacy from Pope, unless he left the world with a disavowal of obligation to Allen. Having been long under her dominion, now tottering in the decline of life, and unable to resist the violence of her temper, or, perhaps with the prejudice of a lover, persuaded that she had suffered improper treatment, he com­ plied with her demand, and polluted his will with female resentment. Allen accepted the legacy, which he gave to the Hospital at Bath; observing that Pope was always a bad accomptant, and that if to £150 he had put a cypher more, he had come nearer to the truth. The person of Pope is well known not to have been formed by the nicest model. He has, in his account of the “Little Club,” compared himself to a spider, and by another is described as protuberant behind and before.193 He is said to have been beautiful in his infancy; but he was of a constitution originally feeble and weak; and as bodies of a tender frame are easily distorted, his deformity was probably in part the effect of his application. His stature was so low, that, to bring him to a level with 191. A Letter to the Editor of the Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism (1749). 192. A Familiar Epistle to the Most Impudent Man Living (1749) was Bolingbroke’s reply to Warburton. 193. For the Little Club (i.e., a club for little people), see The Guardian, Nos. 91–92 (25–26 June 1713). In his manuscript SJ identified the anonymous “another” as Voltaire.

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common tables, it was necessary to raise his seat. But his face was not displeasing, and his eyes were animated and vivid. By natural deformity, or accidental distortion, his vital functions were so much disordered, that his life was a “long disease.”194 His most frequent assailant was the headach, which he used to relieve by inhaling the steam of coffee, which he very fre­ quently required. Most of what can be told concerning his petty peculiarities was communicated by a female domestick of the Earl of Oxford, who knew him perhaps after the middle of life. He was then so weak as to stand in perpetual need of female attendance; ex­ tremely sensible of cold, so that he wore a kind of fur doublet, under a shirt of very coarse warm linen with fine sleeves. When he rose, he was invested in boddice made of stiff canvass, being scarce able to hold himself erect till they were laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. One side was contracted. His legs were so slender, that he enlarged their bulk with three pair of stockings, which were drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not able to dress or undress himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without help. His weakness made it very difficult for him to be clean. His hair had fallen almost all away; and he used to dine sometimes with Lord Oxford, privately, in a velvet cap. His dress of ceremony was black, with a tye-­wig, and a little sword. The indulgence and accommodation which his sickness required, had taught him all the unpleasing and unsocial qualities of a valetudinary195 man. He expected that every thing should give way to his ease or humour, as a child, whose parents will not hear her cry, has an unresisted dominion in the nursery. C’est que l’enfant toûjours est homme, C’est que l’homme est toûjours enfant.196

When he wanted to sleep, he “nodded in company”;197 and once slumbered at his own table while the Prince of Wales was talking of poetry. The reputation which his friendship gave, procured him many invitations; but he was a very troublesome inmate. He brought no servant, and had so many wants, that a numerous attendance was scarcely able to supply them. Wherever he was, he left no room for another, because he exacted the attention and employed the activity of the whole family. His errands were so frequent and frivolous, that the footmen in time avoided and neglected him; and the Earl of Oxford discharged some of the ser­ 194. From Epistle to Arbuthnot, l. 132. 195. Sickly. 196. An old proverb: “The child is always a man; the man is always a child.” Cf. Sherburn, iii.282. 197. “I nod in company, I wake at night” (Imitations of Horace, Satires, ii.i.13).



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vants for their resolute refusal of his messages. The maids, when they had neglected their business, alleged that they had been employed by Mr. Pope. One of his con­ stant demands was of coffee in the night, and to the woman that waited on him in his chamber he was very burthensome; but he was careful to recompense her want of sleep; and Lord Oxford’s servant declared, that in a house where her business was to answer his call, she would not ask for wages. He had another fault, easily incident to those who, suffering much pain, think themselves entitled to whatever pleasures they can snatch. He was too indulgent to his appetite; he loved meat highly seasoned and of strong taste; and, at the inter­ vals of the table, amused himself with biscuits and dry conserves. If he sat down to a variety of dishes, he would oppress his stomach with repletion, and though he seemed angry when a dram was offered him, did not forbear to drink it. His friends, who knew the avenues to his heart, pampered him with presents of luxury, which he did not suffer to stand neglected. The death of great men is not always propor­ tioned to the lustre of their lives. Hannibal, says Juvenal, did not perish by a javelin or a sword; the slaughters of Cannae were revenged by a ring.198 The death of Pope was imputed by some of his friends to a silver saucepan, in which it was his delight to heat potted lampreys.199 That he loved too well to eat, is certain; but that his sensuality shortened his life will not be hastily concluded, when it is remembered that a conformation so ir­ regular lasted six and fifty years, notwithstanding such pertinacious diligence of study and meditation. In all his intercourse with mankind, he had great delight in artifice, and en­ deavoured to attain all his purposes by indirect and unsuspected methods. “He hardly drank tea without a stratagem.”200 If, at the house of his friends, he wanted any accommodation, he was not willing to ask for it in plain terms, but would men­ tion it remotely as something convenient; though, when it was procured, he soon made it appear for whose sake it had been recommended. Thus he teized Lord Orrery till he obtained a screen. He practised his arts on such small occasions, that Lady Bolingbroke used to say, in a French phrase, that “he plaid the politician about cabbages and turnips.” His unjustifiable impression of the Patriot King,201 as it can be imputed to no particular motive, must have proceeded from his general habit of secrecy and cunning; he caught an opportunity of a sly trick, and pleased himself with the thought of outwitting Bolingbroke. 198. Juvenal, Satires, x.163–66; Hannibal is said to have committed suicide by taking poison that he kept in a ring. 199. A fish resembling an eel. 200. SJ alludes to Edward Young, Love of Fame, vi.188; cf. Idler 36 (Yale, ii.112). 201. See p. 761 above.

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In familiar or convivial conversation, it does not appear that he excelled. He may be said to have resembled Dryden, as being not one that was distinguished by vivacity in company. It is remarkable, that, so near his time, so much should be known of what he has written, and so little of what he has said: traditional memory retains no sallies of raillery, nor sentences of observation; nothing either pointed or solid, either wise or merry. One apophthegm only stands upon record. When an ob­ jection raised against his inscription for Shakspeare was defended by the authority of Patrick,202 he replied—horresco referens203—that “he would allow the publisher of a dictionary to know the meaning of a single word, but not of two words put together.” He was fretful, and easily displeased, and allowed himself to be capriciously re­ sentful. He would sometimes leave Lord Oxford silently, no one could tell why, and was to be courted back by more letters and messages than the footmen were willing to carry. The table was indeed infested by Lady Mary Wortley,204 who was the friend of Lady Oxford, and who, knowing his peevishness, could by no intreaties be re­ strained from contradicting him, till their disputes were sharpened to such asperity, that one or the other quitted the house. He sometimes condescended to be jocular with servants or inferiors; but by no merriment, either of others or his own, was he ever seen excited to laughter. Of his domestick character, frugality was a part eminently remarkable. Having determined not to be dependent, he determined not to be in want, and therefore wisely and magnanimously rejected all temptations to expence unsuitable to his for­ tune. This general care must be universally approved; but it sometimes appeared in petty artifices of parsimony, such as the practice of writing his compositions on the back of letters, as may be seen in the remaining copy of the Iliad, by which perhaps in five years five shillings were saved; or in a niggardly reception of his friends, and scantiness of entertainment, as, when he had two guests in his house, he would set at supper a single pint upon the table; and having himself taken two small glasses would retire, and say, “Gentlemen, I leave you to your wine.” Yet he tells his friends, that “he has a heart for all, a house for all, and, whatever they may think, a fortune for all.”205 He sometimes, however, made a splendid dinner, and is said to have wanted no part of the skill or elegance which such performances require. That this magnifi­ 202. Samuel Patrick (1684–1748) edited the second edition of Robert Ainsworth’s Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (1746), which SJ cited often in his own Dictionary. 203. “Telling it makes me shudder” (Aeneid, ii.204). 204. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), whose friendship with Pope turned to enmity in the 1720s (ODNB). Infest: “To harass; to disturb; to plague” (Dictionary). 205. Paraphrased from Pope’s letter to Swift, 23 March 1736/7 (Sherburn, iv.64).



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cence should be often displayed, that obstinate prudence with which he conducted his affairs would not permit; for his revenue, certain and casual, amounted only to about eight hundred pounds a year, of which however he declares himself able to assign one hundred to charity. Of this fortune, which as it arose from publick approbation was very honour­ ably obtained, his imagination seems to have been too full: it would be hard to find a man, so well entitled to notice by his wit, that ever delighted so much in talking of his money. In his letters, and in his poems, his garden and his grotto, his quincunx and his vines, or some hints of his opulence, are always to be found. The great top­ ick of his ridicule is poverty; the crimes with which he reproaches his antagonists are their debts, their habitation in the Mint,206 and their want of a dinner. He seems to be of an opinion not very uncommon in the world, that to want money is to want every thing. Next to the pleasure of contemplating his possessions, seems to be that of enu­ merating the men of high rank with whom he was acquainted, and whose notice he loudly proclaims not to have been obtained by any practices of meanness or ser­ vility; a boast which was never denied to be true, and to which very few poets have ever aspired. Pope never set his genius to sale; he never flattered those whom he did not love, or praised those whom he did not esteem. Savage however remarked, that he began a little to relax his dignity when he wrote a distich for “his Highness’s dog.”207 His admiration of the great seems to have increased in the advance of life. He passed over peers and statesmen to inscribe his Iliad to Congreve, with a magna­ nimity of which the praise had been compleat, had his friend’s virtue been equal to his wit. Why he was chosen for so great an honour, it is not now possible to know; there is no trace in literary history of any particular intimacy between them. The name of Congreve appears in the letters among those of his other friends, but with­ out any observable distinction or consequence. To his latter works, however, he took care to annex names dignified with titles, but was not very happy in his choice; for, except Lord Bathurst, none of his noble friends were such as that a good man would wish to have his intimacy with them known to posterity: he can derive little honour from the notice of Cobham, Burling­ ton, or Bolingbroke. Of his social qualities, if an estimate be made from his letters, an opinion too favourable cannot easily be formed; they exhibit a perpetual and unclouded efful­ gence of general benevolence, and particular fondness. There is nothing but liber­ 206. A district in Southwark where insolvent debtors were immune from arrest. 207. “I am his Highness’ dog at Kew; / Pray tell me Sir, whose dog are you?” (Pope, Twickenham Edi­ tion, vi.372).

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ality, gratitude, constancy, and tenderness. It has been so long said as to be com­ monly believed, that the true characters of men may be found in their letters, and that he who writes to his friend lays his heart open before him. But the truth is, that such were simple friendships of the Golden Age, and are now the friendships only of children. Very few can boast of hearts which they dare lay open to themselves, and of which, by whatever accident exposed, they do not shun a distinct and continued view; and, certainly, what we hide from ourselves we do not shew to our friends. There is, indeed, no transaction which offers stronger temptations to fallacy and sophistication than epistolary intercourse. In the eagerness of conversation the first emotions of the mind often burst out, before they are considered; in the tumult of business, interest and passion have their genuine effect; but a friendly letter is a calm and deliberate performance, in the cool of leisure, in the stillness of solitude, and surely no man sits down to depreciate by design his own character. Friendship has no tendency to secure veracity; for by whom can a man so much wish to be thought better than he is, as by him whose kindness he desires to gain or keep? Even in writing to the world there is less constraint; the author is not confronted with his reader, and takes his chance of approbation among the differ­ ent dispositions of mankind; but a letter is addressed to a single mind, of which the prejudices and partialities are known; and must therefore please, if not by favouring them, by forbearing to oppose them. To charge those favourable representations, which men give of their own minds, with the guilt of hypocritical falshood, would shew more severity than knowledge. The writer commonly believes himself. Almost every man’s thoughts, while they are general, are right; and most hearts are pure, while temptation is away. It is easy to awaken generous sentiments in privacy; to despise death when there is no danger; to glow with benevolence when there is nothing to be given. While such ideas are formed they are felt, and self-­love does not suspect the gleam of virtue to be the meteor of fancy. If the letters of Pope are considered merely as compositions, they seem to be premeditated and artificial. It is one thing to write because there is something which the mind wishes to discharge, and another, to solicit the imagination because cere­ mony or vanity requires something to be written. Pope confesses his early letters to be vitiated with “affectation and ambition”:208 to know whether he disentangled himself from these perverters of epistolary integrity, his book and his life must be set in comparison. One of his favourite topicks is contempt of his own poetry. For this, if it had been real, he would deserve no commendation, and in this he was certainly not sin­ cere; for his high value of himself was sufficiently observed, and of what could he 208. From Pope’s preface to the 1737 edition of his Letters; see Sherburn, i.xxxvii.



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be proud but of his poetry? He writes, he says, when “he has just nothing else to do”; yet Swift complains that he was never at leisure for conversation, because he “had always some poetical scheme in his head.”209 It was punctually required that his writing-­box should be set upon his bed before he rose; and Lord Oxford’s do­ mestick related, that, in the dreadful winter of Forty, she was called from her bed by him four times in one night, to supply him with paper, lest he should lose a thought. He pretends insensibility to censure and criticism, though it was observed by all who knew him that every pamphlet disturbed his quiet, and that his extreme irri­ tability laid him open to perpetual vexation; but he wished to despise his criticks, and therefore hoped that he did despise them. As he happened to live in two reigns when the Court paid little attention to poetry, he nursed in his mind a foolish disesteem of kings, and proclaims that “he never sees courts.”210 Yet a little regard shewn him by the Prince of Wales melted his obduracy; and he had not much to say when he was asked by his Royal Highness, “how he could love a prince while he disliked kings?” He very frequently professes contempt of the world, and represents himself as looking on mankind, sometimes with gay indifference, as on emmets of a hillock, below his serious attention; and sometimes with gloomy indignation, as on monsters more worthy of hatred than of pity. These were dispositions apparently counter­ feited. How could he despise those whom he lived by pleasing, and on whose ap­ probation his esteem of himself was superstructed? Why should he hate those to whose favour he owed his honour and his ease? Of things that terminate in human life, the world is the proper judge; to despise its sentence, if it were possible, is not just; and if it were just, is not possible. Pope was far enough from this unreasonable temper; he was sufficiently “a fool to fame,”211 and his fault was that he pretended to neglect it. His levity and his sullenness were only in his letters; he passed through common life, sometimes vexed, and sometimes pleased, with the natural emotions of common men. His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises; and as falsehood is always in danger of inconsistency, he makes it his boast at another time that he lives among them. It is evident that his own importance swells often in his mind. He is afraid of writing, lest the clerks of the post-­office should know his secrets; he has many ene­ mies; he considers himself as surrounded by universal jealousy; “after many deaths, 209. Swift to Mrs. Caesar, 30 July 1733 (Woolley, Correspondence, iii.677), responding to one of Pope’s letters (Sherburn, iii.270). 210. “Courts I see not,” Pope to Swift, 20 April 1733 (Sherburn, iii.367). 211. “As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, / I lisp’d in numbers, for the numbers came” (Epistle to Arbuthnot, ll. 127–28).

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and many dispersions, two or three of us,” says he, “may still be brought together, not to plot, but to divert ourselves, and the world too, if it pleases”; and they can live together, and “shew what friends wits may be, in spite of all the fools in the world.”212 All this while it was likely that the clerks did not know his hand; he cer­ tainly had no more enemies than a publick character like his inevitably excites, and with what degree of friendship the wits might live, very few were so much fools as ever to enquire. Some part of this pretended discontent he learned from Swift, and expresses it, I think, most frequently in his correspondence with him. Swift’s resentment was unreasonable, but it was sincere; Pope’s was the mere mimickry of his friend, a ficti­ tious part which he began to play before it became him. When he was only twenty-­ five years old, he related that “a glut of study and retirement had thrown him on the world,” and that there was danger lest “a glut of the world should throw him back upon study and retirement.” To this Swift answered with great propriety, that Pope had not yet either acted or suffered enough in the world to have become weary of it. And, indeed, it must be some very powerful reason that can drive back to solitude him who has once enjoyed the pleasures of society.213 In the letters both of Swift and Pope there appears such narrowness of mind, as makes them insensible of any excellence that has not some affinity with their own, and confines their esteem and approbation to so small a number, that whoever should form his opinion of the age from their representation, would suppose them to have lived amidst ignorance and barbarity, unable to find among their contempo­ raries either virtue or intelligence, and persecuted by those that could not under­ stand them. When Pope murmurs at the world, when he professes contempt of fame, when he speaks of riches and poverty, of success and disappointment, with negligent in­ difference, he certainly does not express his habitual and settled sentiments, but either wilfully disguises his own character, or, what is more likely, invests himself with temporary qualities, and sallies out in the colours of the present moment. His hopes and fears, his joys and sorrows, acted strongly upon his mind; and if he dif­ fered from others, it was not by carelessness; he was irritable and resentful; his ma­ lignity to Philips, whom he had first made ridiculous, and then hated for being angry, continued too long. Of his vain desire to make Bentley contemptible, I never heard any adequate reason. He was sometimes wanton in his attacks; and, before Chandos, Lady Wortley, and Hill, was mean in his retreat. 212. SJ paraphrases Pope’s letters to Swift of 14 September 1725 and 23 March 1736/7 (Sherburn, ii.321, iv.64). 213. From Pope, 11 or 12 August 1723; from Swift, 20 September 1723 (Woolley, Correspondence, ii.462, 469).



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The virtues which seem to have had most of his affection were liberality and fidelity of friendship, in which it does not appear that he was other than he describes himself. His fortune did not suffer his charity to be splendid and conspicuous; but he assisted Dodsley with a hundred pounds, that he might open a shop; and of the subscription of forty pounds a year that he raised for Savage, twenty were paid by himself. He was accused of loving money, but his love was eagerness to gain, not solicitude to keep it. In the duties of friendship he was zealous and constant: his early maturity of mind commonly united him with men older than himself, and therefore, without attaining any considerable length of life, he saw many companions of his youth sink into the grave; but it does not appear that he lost a single friend by coldness or by injury; those who loved him once, continued their kindness. His ungrateful men­ tion of Allen in his will, was the effect of his adherence to one whom he had known much longer, and whom he naturally loved with greater fondness. His violation of the trust reposed in him by Bolingbroke could have no motive inconsistent with the warmest affection; he either thought the action so near to indifferent that he forgot it, or so laudable that he expected his friend to approve it. It was reported, with such confidence as almost to enforce belief, that in the papers intrusted to his executors was found a defamatory life of Swift, which he had prepared as an instrument of vengeance to be used, if any provocation should be ever given. About this I enquired of the Earl of Marchmont, who assured me that no such piece was among his remains.214 The religion in which he lived and died was that of the Church of Rome, to which in his correspondence with Racine he professes himself a sincere adherent. That he was not scrupulously pious in some part of his life, is known by many idle and indecent applications of sentences taken from the Scriptures; a mode of merri­ ment which a good man dreads for its profaneness, and a witty man disdains for its easiness and vulgarity. But to whatever levities he has been betrayed, it does not appear that his principles were ever corrupted, or that he ever lost his belief of reve­ lation. The positions which he transmitted from Bolingbroke he seems not to have understood, and was pleased with an interpretation that made them orthodox. A man of such exalted superiority, and so little moderation, would naturally have all his delinquencies observed and aggravated: those who could not deny that he was excellent, would rejoice to find that he was not perfect. Perhaps it may be imputed to the unwillingness with which the same man is allowed to possess many advantages, that his learning has been depreciated. He cer­ tainly was in his early life a man of great literary curiosity; and when he wrote his 214. At Boswell’s insistence, SJ met Hugh Hume Campbell (1708–94), third Earl of Marchmont, on 1 May 1779 (Boswell, Life, iii.391–92).

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Essay on Criticism had, for his age, a very wide acquaintance with books. When he entered into the living world, it seems to have happened to him as to many others, that he was less attentive to dead masters; he studied in the academy of Paracel­ sus, and made the universe his favourite volume.215 He gathered his notions fresh from reality, not from the copies of authors, but the originals of nature. Yet there is no reason to believe that literature ever lost his esteem; he always professed to love reading; and Dobson,216 who spent some time at his house translating his Essay on Man, when I asked him what learning he found him to possess, answered, “More than I expected.” His frequent references to history, his allusions to various kinds of knowledge, and his images selected from art and nature, with his observations on the operations of the mind and the modes of life, shew an intelligence perpetu­ ally on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and diligent, eager to pursue knowledge, and attentive to retain it. From this curiosity arose the desire of travelling, to which he alludes in his verses to Jervas,217 and which, though he never found an opportunity to gratify it, did not leave him till his life declined. Of his intellectual character, the constituent and fundamental principle was good sense, a prompt and intuitive perception of consonance and propriety. He saw immediately, of his own conceptions, what was to be chosen, and what to be rejected; and, in the works of others, what was to be shunned, and what was to be copied. But good sense alone is a sedate and quiescent quality, which manages its pos­ sessions well, but does not increase them; it collects few materials for its own opera­ tions, and preserves safety, but never gains supremacy. Pope had likewise genius; a mind active, ambitious, and adventurous, always investigating, always aspiring; in its widest searches still longing to go forward, in its highest flights still wishing to be higher; always imagining something greater than it knows, always endeavouring more than it can do. To assist these powers, he is said to have had great strength and exactness of memory. That which he had heard or read was not easily lost; and he had before him not only what his own meditation suggested, but what he had found in other writers that might be accommodated to his present purpose. These benefits of nature he improved by incessant and unwearied diligence; he had recourse to every source of intelligence, and lost no opportunity of information; he consulted the living as well as the dead; he read his compositions to his friends, 215. Paracelsus contrasted knowledge of the world with mere academic learning; see SJ Letters, iii.90–91 (Lonsdale, Lives of the Eminent Poets, iv.462n). 216. See p. 749 and n. 145 above. 217. See Pope, Epistle to Jervas (1716), ll. 23–38.



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and was never content with mediocrity when excellence could be attained. He con­ sidered poetry as the business of his life, and however he might seem to lament his occupation, he followed it with constancy; to make verses was his first labour, and to mend them was his last. From his attention to poetry he was never diverted. If conversation offered any thing that could be improved, he committed it to paper; if a thought, or perhaps an expression more happy than was common, rose to his mind, he was careful to write it; an independent distich was preserved for an opportunity of insertion, and some little fragments have been found containing lines, or parts of lines, to be wrought upon at some other time. He was one of those few whose labour is their pleasure: he was never elevated to negligence, nor wearied to impatience; he never passed a fault unamended by in­ difference, nor quitted it by despair. He laboured his works first to gain reputation, and afterwards to keep it. Of compositions there are different methods. Some employ at once memory and invention, and, with little intermediate use of the pen, form and polish large masses by continued meditation, and write their productions only when, in their own opinion, they have completed them. It is related of Virgil, that his custom was to pour out a great number of verses in the morning, and pass the day in retrenching exuberances and correcting inaccuracies. The method of Pope, as may be collected from his translation, was to write his first thoughts in his first words, and gradually to amplify, decorate, rectify, and refine them. With such faculties, and such dispositions, he excelled every other writer in poetical prudence; he wrote in such a manner as might expose him to few hazards. He used almost always the same fabrick of verse; and, indeed, by those few essays which he made of any other, he did not enlarge his reputation. Of this uniformity the certain consequence was readiness and dexterity. By perpetual practice, language had in his mind a systematical arrangement; having always the same use for words, he had words so selected and combined as to be ready at his call. This increase of facility he confessed himself to have perceived in the progress of his translation. But what was yet of more importance, his effusions were always voluntary, and his subjects chosen by himself. His independence secured him from drudging at a task, and labouring upon a barren topick: he never exchanged praise for money, nor opened a shop of condolence or congratulation. His poems, therefore, were scarce ever temporary. He suffered coronations and royal marriages to pass without a song, and derived no opportunities from recent events, nor any popularity from the acci­ dental disposition of his readers. He was never reduced to the necessity of soliciting the sun to shine upon a birth-­day, of calling the Graces and Virtues to a wedding, or of saying what multitudes have said before him. When he could produce nothing new, he was at liberty to be silent.

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His publications were for the same reason never hasty. He is said to have sent nothing to the press till it had lain two years under his inspection: it is at least cer­ tain, that he ventured nothing without nice examination. He suffered the tumult of imagination to subside, and the novelties of invention to grow familiar. He knew that the mind is always enamoured of its own productions, and did not trust his first fondness. He consulted his friends, and listened with great willingness to criti­ cism; and, what was of more importance, he consulted himself, and let nothing pass against his own judgement. He professed to have learned his poetry from Dryden, whom, whenever an opportunity was presented, he praised through his whole life with unvaried liber­ ality; and perhaps his character may receive some illustration, if he be compared with his master. Integrity of understanding and nicety of discernment were not allotted in a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude of Dryden’s mind was sufficiently shewn by the dismission of his poetical prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts and rugged numbers. But Dryden never desired to apply all the judgement that he had. He wrote, and professed to write, merely for the people; and when he pleased others, he contented himself. He spent no time in struggles to rouse latent powers; he never attempted to make that better which was already good, nor often to mend what he must have known to be faulty. He wrote, as he tells us, with very little consideration; when occasion or necessity called upon him, he poured out what the present moment happened to supply, and, when once it had passed the press, ejected it from his mind; for when he had no pecuniary interest, he had no further solicitude. Pope was not content to satisfy; he desired to excel, and therefore always en­ deavoured to do his best: he did not court the candour, but dared the judgement of his reader, and expecting no indulgence from others, he shewed none to himself. He examined lines and words with minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven. For this reason he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he considered and reconsidered them. The only poems which can be supposed to have been writ­ ten with such regard to the times as might hasten their publication, were the two satires of Thirty-­eight;218 of which Dodsley told me, that they were brought to him by the author, that they might be fairly copied. “Almost every line,” said he, “was then written twice over; I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent some time after­ wards to me for the press, with almost every line written twice over a second time.” His declaration, that his care for his works ceased at their publication, was not strictly true. His parental attention never abandoned them; what he found amiss in 218. The two dialogues published in 1738, constituting the Epilogue to the Satires.



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the first edition, he silently corrected in those that followed. He appears to have re­ vised the Iliad, and freed it from some of its imperfections; and the Essay on Criticism received many improvements after its first appearance. It will seldom be found that he altered without adding clearness, elegance, or vigour. Pope had perhaps the judgement of Dryden; but Dryden certainly wanted the diligence of Pope. In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be allowed to Dryden, whose education was more scholastick, and who before he became an author had been al­ lowed more time for study, with better means of information. His mind has a larger range, and he collects his images and illustrations from a more extensive circumfer­ ence of science. Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of Pope. Poetry was not the sole praise of either; for both excelled likewise in prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The style of Dryden is capricious and varied, that of Pope is cautious and uniform; Dryden obeys the mo­ tions of his own mind, Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden’s page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope’s is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled by the roller. Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgement is cold and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates; the superiority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred that of this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope; and even of Dryden it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not better poems. Dryden’s performances were always hasty, either excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestick necessity; he composed without con­ sideration, and published without correction. What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that study might produce, or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden therefore are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden’s fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope’s the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight. This parallel will, I hope, when it is well considered, be found just; and if the reader should suspect me, as I suspect myself, of some partial fondness for the mem­

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ory of Dryden, let him not too hastily condemn me; for meditation and enquiry may, perhaps, shew him the reasonableness of my determination. The works of Pope are now to be distinctly examined, not so much with atten­ tion to slight faults or petty beauties, as to the general character and effect of each performance. It seems natural for a young poet to initiate himself by pastorals, which, not professing to imitate real life, require no experience, and, exhibiting only the simple operation of unmingled passions, admit no subtle reasoning or deep enquiry.219 Pope’s Pastorals are not however composed but with close thought; they have ref­ erence to the times of the day, the seasons of the year, and the periods of human life. The last, that which turns the attention upon age and death, was the author’s favourite. To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets. His preference was probably just. I wish, however, that his fondness had not overlooked a line in which the Zephyrs are made “to lament in silence.”220 To charge these pastorals with want of invention, is to require what never was intended. The imitations are so ambitiously frequent, that the writer evidently means rather to shew his literature than his wit. It is surely sufficient for an author of six­ teen not only to be able to copy the poems of antiquity with judicious selection, but to have obtained sufficient power of language, and skill in metre, to exhibit a series of versification, which had in English poetry no precedent, nor has since had an imitation. The design of Windsor Forest is evidently derived from Cooper’s Hill, with some attention to Waller’s poem on The Park;221 but Pope cannot be denied to excel his masters in variety and elegance, and the art of interchanging description, nar­ rative, and morality. The objection made by Dennis is the want of plan, of a regular subordination of parts terminating in the principal and original design.222 There is this want in most descriptive poems, because as the scenes, which they must exhibit successively, are all subsisting at the same time, the order in which they are shewn must by necessity be arbitrary, and more is not to be expected from the last part than from the first. The attention, therefore, which cannot be detained by suspense, must be excited by diversity, such as this poem offers to its reader.

219. SJ also discusses pastoral poetry in Ramblers 36 and 37 (pp. 123–31 above). 220. “The balmy Zephyrs, silent since her death, / Lament the ceasing of a sweeter breath” (“Winter,” ll. 49–50). 221. SJ refers to John Denham, Cooper’s Hill (1642), and Edmund Waller, “On St. James’s Park” (1661). 222. Remarks on Pope’s Homer (1717; Hooker, Critical Works, ii.136).



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But the desire of diversity may be too much indulged; the parts of Windsor Forest which deserve least praise, are those which were added to enliven the stillness of the scene, the appearance of Father Thames, and the transformation of Lodona. Addison had in his Campaign derided the “rivers” that “rise from their oozy beds” to tell stories of heroes, and it is therefore strange that Pope should adopt a fiction not only unnatural but lately censured.223 The story of Lodona is told with sweet­ ness; but a new metamorphosis is a ready and puerile expedient; nothing is easier than to tell how a flower was once a blooming virgin, or a rock an obdurate tyrant.224 The Temple of Fame has, as Steele warmly declared, “a thousand beauties.”225 Every part is splendid; there is great luxuriance of ornaments; the original vision of Chaucer was never denied to be much improved; the allegory is very skilfully con­ tinued, the imagery is properly selected, and learnedly displayed: yet, with all this comprehension of excellence, as its scene is laid in remote ages, and its sentiments, if the concluding paragraph be excepted, have little relation to general manners or common life, it never obtained much notice, but is turned silently over, and seldom quoted or mentioned with either praise or blame. That the Messiah excels the Pollio is no great praise, if it be considered from what original the improvements are derived.226 The Verses on the Unfortunate Lady have drawn much attention by the illaud­ able singularity of treating suicide with respect; and they must be allowed to be writ­ ten in some parts with vigorous animation, and in others with gentle tenderness; nor has Pope produced any poem in which the sense predominates more over the dic­ tion. But the tale is not skilfully told; it is not easy to discover the character of either the lady or her guardian. History relates that she was about to disparage herself by a marriage with an inferior; Pope praises her for the dignity of ambition, and yet con­ demns the unkle to detestation for his pride; the ambitious love of a niece may be op­ posed by the interest, malice, or envy of an unkle, but never by his pride. On such an occasion a poet may be allowed to be obscure, but inconsistency never can be right. The Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day was undertaken at the desire of Steele: in this the author is generally confessed to have miscarried, yet he has miscarried only as com­ pared with Dryden; for he has far outgone other competitors. Dryden’s plan is better chosen; history will always take stronger hold of the attention than fable: the pas­ sions excited by Dryden are the pleasures and pains of real life, the scene of Pope is 223. SJ refers to The Campaign, l. 470, and to Windsor Forest, ll. 329–30: “In that blest moment, from his oozy bed, / Old Father Thames advanc’d his rev’rend head.” 224. Ll. 171–210. 225. Steele to Pope, 12 November 1712 (Sherburn, i.152). 226. The “original” is the Book of Isaiah. To Christian commentators, the Pollio, Virgil’s Eclogue IV, seemed to predict the coming of Christ. SJ translated Pope’s Messiah into Latin while at Oxford in 1730.

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laid in imaginary existence; Pope is read with calm acquiescence, Dryden with tur­ bulent delight; Pope hangs upon the ear, and Dryden finds the passes of the mind. Both the odes want the essential constituent of metrical compositions, the stated recurrence of settled numbers. It may be alleged, that Pindar is said by Horace to have written numeris lege solutis;227 but as no such lax performances have been transmitted to us, the meaning of that expression cannot be fixed; and perhaps the like return might properly be made to a modern Pindarist, as Mr. Cobb received from Bentley, who, when he found his criticisms upon a Greek exercise, which Cobb had presented, refuted one after another by Pindar’s authority, cried out at last, “Pindar was a bold fellow, but thou art an impudent one.”228 If Pope’s ode be particularly inspected, it will be found that the first stanza con­ sists of sounds well chosen indeed, but only sounds. The second consists of hyperbolical common-­places, easily to be found, and perhaps without much difficulty to be as well expressed. In the third, however, there are numbers, images, harmony, and vigour, not unworthy the antagonist of Dryden. Had all been like this—but every part cannot be the best. The next stanzas place and detain us in the dark and dismal regions of my­ thology, where neither hope nor fear, neither joy nor sorrow, can be found: the poet however faithfully attends us; we have all that can be performed by elegance of dic­ tion, or sweetness of versification; but what can form avail without better matter? The last stanza recurs again to common places. The conclusion is too evidently modelled by that of Dryden; and it may be remarked that both end with the same fault, the comparison of each is literal on one side, and metaphorical on the other. Poets do not always express their own thoughts; Pope, with all this labour in the praise of musick, was ignorant of its principles, and insensible of its effects. One of his greatest though of his earliest works is the Essay on Criticism, which, if he had written nothing else, would have placed him among the first criticks and the first poets, as it exhibits every mode of excellence that can embellish or dignify didactick composition, selection of matter, novelty of arrangement, justness of pre­ cept, splendour of illustration, and propriety of digression. I know not whether it be pleasing to consider that he produced this piece at twenty, and never afterwards excelled it: he that delights himself with observing that such powers may be so soon attained, cannot but grieve to think that life was ever after at a stand. To mention the particular beauties of the Essay would be unprofitably tedious; but I cannot forbear to observe, that the comparison of a student’s progress in the 227. Odes, iv.ii.11–12: “free unregulated rhythms” (Loeb edition, trans. Niall Rudd, 2004). 228. Samuel Cobb (1675–1713) was at Trinity College, Cambridge, when Bentley was master of the col­ lege (Lonsdale, Lives of the Eminent Poets, iv.68n).



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sciences with the journey of a traveller in the Alps, is perhaps the best that English poetry can shew.229 A simile, to be perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble the sub­ ject; must shew it to the understanding in a clearer view, and display it to the fancy with greater dignity; but either of these qualities may be sufficient to recommend it. In didactick poetry, of which the great purpose is instruction, a simile may be praised which illustrates, though it does not ennoble; in heroicks, that may be ad­ mitted which ennobles, though it does not illustrate. That it may be complete, it is required to exhibit, independently of its reference, a pleasing image; for a simile is said to be a short episode. To this antiquity was so attentive, that circumstances were sometimes added, which, having no parallels, served only to fill the imagination, and produced what Perrault ludicrously called “comparisons with a long tail.”230 In their similies the greatest writers have sometimes failed; the ship-­race, compared with the chariot-­race, is neither illustrated nor aggrandised; land and water make all the difference: when Apollo, running after Daphne, is likened to a greyhound chasing a hare, there is nothing gained; the ideas of pursuit and flight are too plain to be made plainer, and a god and the daughter of a god are not represented much to their advantage by a hare and dog.231 The simile of the Alps has no useless parts, yet affords a striking picture by itself; it makes the foregoing position better under­ stood, and enables it to take faster hold on the attention; it assists the apprehension, and elevates the fancy. Let me likewise dwell a little on the celebrated paragraph,232 in which it is di­ rected that the “sound should seem an echo to the sense”; a precept which Pope is allowed to have observed beyond any other English poet. This notion of representative metre, and the desire of discovering frequent adaptations of the sound to the sense, have produced, in my opinion, many wild conceits and imaginary beauties.233 All that can furnish this representation are the sounds of the words considered singly, and the time in which they are pronounced. Every language has some words framed to exhibit the noises which they express, as “thump,” “rattle,” “growl,” “hiss.” These however are but few, and the poet cannot make them more, nor can they be of any use but when sound is to be mentioned. The time of pronunciation was in the dactylick measures of the learned languages capable of considerable variety; but that variety could be accommodated only to mo­ tion or duration, and different degrees of motion were perhaps expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention of the writer, when the image had full posses­ sion of his fancy; but our language having little flexibility, our verses can differ very 229. SJ refers to ll. 219–32 (cf. Yale, xx.286 and 541); sciences means all branches of knowledge. 230. SJ draws here on Addison’s Spectator 303 (Bond, iii.90–91). 231. These similes are from Aeneid, v.144–47, and Metamorphoses, i.533–39. 232. Ll. 337–83. 233. Cf. Rambler 94 (p. 140 above).

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little in their cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation between a “soft” line and a “soft” couch, or between “hard” syllables and “hard” fortune. Motion, however, may be in some sort exemplified; and yet it may be suspected that even in such resemblances the mind often governs the ear, and the sounds are estimated by their meaning. One of the most successful attempts has been to de­ scribe the labour of Sisyphus: With many a weary step, and many a groan, Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone; The huge round stone, resulting with a bound, Thunders impetuous down, and smoaks along the ground.234

Who does not perceive the stone to move slowly upward, and roll violently back? But set the same numbers to another sense; While many a merry tale, and many a song, Chear’d the rough road, we wish’d the rough road long, The rough road then, returning in a round, Mock’d our impatient steps, for all was fairy ground.

We have now surely lost much of the delay, and much of the rapidity. But to shew how little the greatest master of numbers can fix the principles of representative harmony, it will be sufficient to remark that the poet, who tells us, that When Ajax strives—the words move slow. Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o’er th’unbending corn, and skims along the main;235

when he had enjoyed for about thirty years the praise of Camilla’s lightness of foot, tried another experiment upon “sound” and “time,” and produced this memorable triplet; Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join ⎫ The varying verse, the full resounding line, ⎬ The long majestick march, and energy divine.236⎭ 234. Pope, Odyssey, xi.735–38; cited in Dictionary, svv. to result, to fly back. 235. Essay on Criticism, ll. 370–73. SJ’s first line collapses Pope’s ll. 370–71. 236. Imitations of Horace, Epistles, ii.i.267–69.



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Here are the swiftness of the rapid race, and the march of slow-­paced majesty, ex­ hibited by the same poet in the same sequence of syllables, except that the exact proso­dist will find the line of “swiftness” by one time longer than that of “tardiness.” Beauties of this kind are commonly fancied; and when real, are technical and nugatory, not to be rejected, and not to be solicited. To the praises which have been accumulated on The Rape of the Lock by readers of every class, from the critick to the waiting-­maid, it is difficult to make any addi­ tion. Of that which is universally allowed to be the most attractive of all ludicrous compositions, let it rather be now enquired from what sources the power of pleas­ ing is derived. Dr. Warburton, who excelled in critical perspicacity, has remarked that the preternatural agents are very happily adapted to the purposes of the poem.237 The heathen deities can no longer gain attention: we should have turned away from a contest between Venus and Diana; the employment of allegorical persons always ex­ cites conviction of its own absurdity; they may produce effects, but cannot conduct actions; when the phantom is put in motion it dissolves; thus Discord may raise a mutiny, but Discord cannot conduct a march, nor besiege a town. Pope brought into view a new race of beings, with powers and passions proportionate to their opera­ tion. The sylphs and gnomes act at the toilet and the tea-­table what more terrifick and more powerful phantoms perform on the stormy ocean, or the field of battle; they give their proper help, and do their proper mischief. Pope is said, by an objector, not to have been the inventer of this petty nation; a charge which might with more justice have been brought against the author of the Iliad, who doubtless adopted the religious system of his country; for what is there but the names of his agents which Pope has not invented? Has he not assigned them characters and operations never heard of before? Has he not, at least, given them their first poetical existence? If this is not sufficient to denominate his work original, nothing original ever can be written. In this work are exhibited, in a very high degree, the two most engaging powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new. A race of aerial people, never heard of before, is presented to us in a manner so clear and easy, that the reader seeks for no further information, but immediately mingles with his new acquaintance, adopts their interests, and attends their pursuits, loves a sylph, and detests a gnome. That familiar things are made new, every paragraph will prove. The subject of the poem is an event below the common incidents of common life; nothing real is introduced that is not seen so often as to be no longer regarded, yet the whole detail 237. Pope, Works (1751), i.219–20n.

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of a female-­day is here brought before us invested with so much art of decoration, that, though nothing is disguised, every thing is striking, and we feel all the appetite of curiosity for that from which we have a thousand times turned fastidiously away. The purpose of the poet, is, as he tells us, to laugh at “the little unguarded fol­ lies of the female sex.” It is therefore without justice that Dennis charges the Rape of the Lock with the want of a moral, and for that reason sets it below the Lutrin, which exposes the pride and discord of the clergy.238 Perhaps neither Pope nor Boileau has made the world much better than he found it; but if they had both succeeded, it were easy to tell who would have deserved most from publick gratitude. The freaks, and humours, and spleen, and vanity of women, as they embroil families in discord, and fill houses with disquiet, do more to obstruct the happiness of life in a year than the ambition of the clergy in many centuries. It has been well observed, that the misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated. It is remarked by Dennis likewise, that the machinery is superfluous; that, by all the bustle of preternatural operation, the main event is neither hastened nor retarded.239 To this charge an efficacious answer is not easily made. The sylphs can­ not be said to help or to oppose, and it must be allowed to imply some want of art, that their power has not been sufficiently intermingled with the action. Other parts may likewise be charged with want of connection; the game at ombre might be spared, but if the lady had lost her hair while she was intent upon her cards, it might have been inferred that those who are too fond of play will be in danger of neglect­ ing more important interests. Those perhaps are faults; but what are such faults to so much excellence! The epistle of Eloise to Abelard is one of the most happy productions of human wit: the subject is so judiciously chosen, that it would be difficult, in turning over the annals of the world, to find another which so many circumstances concur to rec­ ommend. We regularly interest ourselves most in the fortune of those who most de­ serve our notice. Abelard and Eloise were conspicuous in their days for eminence of merit. The heart naturally loves truth. The adventures and misfortunes of this illus­ trious pair are known from undisputed history. Their fate does not leave the mind in hopeless dejection; for they both found quiet and consolation in retirement and piety. So new and so affecting is their story, that it supersedes invention, and imagi­ nation ranges at full liberty without straggling into scenes of fable. The story, thus skilfully adopted, has been diligently improved. Pope has left nothing behind him, which seems more the effect of studious perseverance and 238. Remarks on the Rape of the Lock (Hooker, Critical Works, ii.330–31). 239. Ibid., ii.328, 336–67.



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laborious revisal. Here is particularly observable the curiosa felicitas,240 a fruitful soil, and careful cultivation. Here is no crudeness of sense, nor asperity of language. The sources from which sentiments, which have so much vigour and efficacy, have been drawn, are shewn to be the mystick writers by the learned author of the Essay on the Life and Writings of Pope;241 a book which teaches how the brow of Criticism may be smoothed, and how she may be enabled, with all her severity, to attract and to delight. The train of my disquisition has now conducted me to that poetical wonder, the translation of the Iliad; a performance which no age or nation can pretend to equal. To the Greeks translation was almost unknown; it was totally unknown to the inhabitants of Greece. They had no recourse to the barbarians for poetical beauties, but sought for every thing in Homer, where, indeed, there is but little which they might not find. The Italians have been very diligent translators; but I can hear of no version, unless perhaps Anguillara’s Ovid may be excepted, which is read with eagerness. The Iliad of Salvini every reader may discover to be punctiliously exact; but it seems to be the work of a linguist skilfully pedantick, and his countrymen, the proper judges of its power to please, reject it with disgust.242 Their predecessors the Romans have left some specimens of translation behind them, and that employment must have had some credit in which Tully and Ger­ manicus engaged;243 but unless we suppose, what is perhaps true, that the plays of Terence were versions of Menander,244 nothing translated seems ever to have risen to high reputation. The French, in the meridian hour of their learning, were very laudably industrious to enrich their own language with the wisdom of the ancients; but found themselves reduced, by whatever necessity, to turn the Greek and Roman poetry into prose. Whoever could read an author, could translate him. From such rivals little can be feared. The chief help of Pope in this arduous undertaking was drawn from the ver­ sions of Dryden.245 Virgil had borrowed much of his imagery from Homer, and part 240. Applied by Petronius in Satyricon (118) to Horace: “studied Felicity” (Loeb edition, rev. E. H. War­ mington, 1969). 241. Joseph Warton (1722–1800), An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope (Vol. I, 1756; Vol. II, 1782). 242. SJ refers to his friend Giuseppe Baretti’s opinions of Giovanni Andrea dell’ Anguillara, Le Metamorfosi di Ovidio (1561), and Anton Maria Salvini, Iliade (1723), in The Italian Library (1757), pp. 126–27, 135. 243. Cicero, and the Roman general Germanicus (15 BCE–­19 CE), both translated Phaenomena, an ancient Greek work of astronomy by Aratus. 244. Terence, a second-­century BCE Roman playwright, adapted the comedies of Menander, a fourth-­ century BCE author of comedies, most of which are now lost. 245. Dryden translated the Aeneid (1697), Book I of the Iliad (1700), and parts of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1700).

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of the debt was now paid by his translator. Pope searched the pages of Dryden for happy combinations of heroic diction; but it will not be denied that he added much to what he found. He cultivated our language with so much diligence and art, that he has left in his Homer a treasure of poetical elegancies to posterity. His version may be said to have tuned the English tongue; for since its appearance no writer, how­ ever deficient in other powers, has wanted melody. Such a series of lines so elabo­ rately corrected, and so sweetly modulated, took possession of the publick ear, the vulgar246 was enamoured of the poem, and the learned wondered at the translation. But in the most general applause discordant voices will always be heard. It has been objected by some, who wish to be numbered among the sons of learning, that Pope’s version of Homer is not Homerical; that it exhibits no resemblance of the original and characteristick manner of the father of poetry, as it wants his awful sim­ plicity, his artless grandeur, his unaffected majesty. This cannot be totally denied; but it must be remembered that necessitas quod cogit defendit; that may be lawfully done which cannot be forborn. Time and place will always enforce regard. In es­ timating this translation, consideration must be had of the nature of our language, the form of our metre, and, above all, of the change which two thousand years have made in the modes of life and the habits of thought. Virgil wrote in a language of the same general fabrick with that of Homer, in verses of the same measure, and in an age nearer to Homer’s time by eighteen hundred years; yet he found, even then, the state of the world so much altered, and the demand for elegance so much increased, that mere nature would be endured no longer; and perhaps, in the multitude of bor­ rowed passages, very few can be shewn which he has not embellished. There is a time when nations emerging from barbarity, and falling into regu­ lar subordination, gain leisure to grow wise, and feel the shame of ignorance and the craving pain of unsatisfied curiosity. To this hunger of the mind plain sense is grateful; that which fills the void removes uneasiness, and to be free from pain for a while is pleasure; but repletion generates fastidiousness; a saturated intellect soon becomes luxurious, and knowledge finds no willing reception till it is recommended by artificial diction.247 Thus it will be found, in the progress of learning, that in all nations the first writers are simple, and that every age improves in elegance. One re­ finement always makes way for another, and what was expedient to Virgil was nec­ essary to Pope. I suppose many readers of the English Iliad, when they have been touched with some unexpected beauty of the lighter kind, have tried to enjoy it in the origi­ nal, where, alas! it was not to be found. Homer doubtless owes to his translator 246. “The common people” (Dictionary); those who do not read Latin and Greek. 247. Artful language.



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many Ovidian graces not exactly suitable to his character; but to have added can be no great crime, if nothing be taken away. Elegance is surely to be desired, if it be not gained at the expence of dignity. A hero would wish to be loved, as well as to be reverenced. To a thousand cavils one answer is sufficient; the purpose of a writer is to be read, and the criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown aside. Pope wrote for his own age and his own nation: he knew that it was necessary to colour the images and point the sentiments of his author; he therefore made him graceful, but lost him some of his sublimity. The copious notes with which the version is accompanied, and by which it is recommended to many readers, though they were undoubtedly written to swell the volumes, ought not to pass without praise: commentaries which attract the reader by the pleasure of perusal have not often appeared; the notes of others are read to clear difficulties, those of Pope to vary entertainment. It has however been objected, with sufficient reason, that there is in the com­ mentary too much of unseasonable levity and affected gaiety; that too many appeals are made to the ladies, and the ease which is so carefully preserved is sometimes the ease of a trifler. Every art has its terms, and every kind of instruction its proper style; the gravity of common criticks may be tedious, but is less despicable than childish merriment. Of the Odyssey nothing remains to be observed: the same general praise may be given to both translations, and a particular examination of either would require a large volume. The notes were written by Broome, who endeavoured not unsuccess­ fully to imitate his master. Of the Dunciad the hint is confessedly taken from Dryden’s Mac Flecnoe; but the plan is so enlarged and diversified as justly to claim the praise of an original, and affords perhaps the best specimen that has yet appeared of personal satire ludi­ crously pompous. That the design was moral, whatever the author might tell either his readers or himself, I am not convinced. The first motive was the desire of revenging the con­ tempt with which Theobald had treated his Shakespeare, and regaining the honour which he had lost, by crushing his opponent. Theobald was not of bulk enough to fill a poem, and therefore it was necessary to find other enemies with other names, at whose expence he might divert the publick. In this design there was petulance and malignity enough; but I cannot think it very criminal. An author places himself uncalled before the tribunal of criticism, and solicits fame at the hazard of disgrace. Dulness or deformity are not culpable in themselves, but may be very justly reproached when they pretend to the honour of wit or the influence of beauty. If bad writers were to pass without reprehension, what

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should restrain them? impune diem consumpserit ingens Telephus;248 and upon bad writers only will censure have much effect. The satire which brought Theobald and Moore249 into contempt, dropped impotent from Bentley, like the javelin of Priam.250 All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgement; he that refines the publick taste is a pub­ lick benefactor. The beauties of this poem are well known; its chief fault is the grossness of its images. Pope and Swift had an unnatural delight in ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters with unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention. But even this fault, offensive as it is, may be forgiven for the excellence of other passages; such as the formation and dissolution of Moore, the account of the Trav­ eller, the misfortune of the Florist, and the crouded thoughts and stately numbers which dignify the concluding paragraph.251 The alterations which have been made in the Dunciad, not always for the better, require that it should be published, as in the last collection, with all its variations. The Essay on Man was a work of great labour and long consideration, but cer­ tainly not the happiest of Pope’s performances. The subject is perhaps not very proper for poetry, and the poet was not sufficiently master of his subject; metaphysi­ cal morality was to him a new study, he was proud of his acquisitions, and, suppos­ ing himself master of great secrets, was in haste to teach what he had not learned. Thus he tells us, in the first Epistle, that from the nature of the Supreme Being may be deduced an order of beings such as mankind, because Infinite Excellence can do only what is best. He finds out that these beings must be “somewhere,” and that “all the question is whether man be in a wrong place.”252 Surely if, according to the poet’s Leibnitian reasoning, we may infer that man ought to be, only because he is, we may allow that his place is the right place, because he has it. Supreme Wisdom is not less infallible in disposing than in creating. But what is meant by “somewhere” and “place,” and “wrong place,” it had been vain to ask Pope, who probably had never asked himself. Having exalted himself into the chair of wisdom, he tells us much that every man knows, and much that he does not know himself; that we see but little, and that 248. “[Shall I let them get away] with wasting my whole day on an enormous Telephus,” a lost play about a mythical hero; Juvenal, Satires, i.4–5 (Loeb, trans. Susanna Morton Braund, 2004). 249. James Moore Smythe (1702–1734), born James Moore, a foppish playwright. 250. The aged Trojan King Priam could not protect himself against the younger Greek Neoptolemus (Aeneid, ii.544–46). 251. In addition to the conclusion, SJ refers to Dunciad, ii.35–50, 109–20; iv.293–336, 403–36. 252. Essay on Man, i.43–50.



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the order of the universe is beyond our comprehension; an opinion not very un­ common; and that there is a chain of subordinate beings “from infinite to nothing,” of which himself and his readers are equally ignorant. But he gives us one comfort, which, without his help, he supposes unattainable, in the position “that though we are fools, yet God is wise.”253 This Essay affords an egregious254 instance of the predominance of genius, the dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seductive powers of eloquence. Never were penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment so happily disguised. 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. When these wonder-­working sounds sink into sense, and the doctrine of the Essay, disrobed of its ornaments, is left to the powers of its naked excellence, what shall we discover? That we are, in comparison with our Creator, very weak and ignorant; that we do not uphold the chain of existence, and that we could not make one another with more skill than we are made. We may learn yet more; that the arts of human life were copied from the instinctive operations of other animals; that if the world be made for man, it may be said that man was made for geese. To these profound principles of natural knowl­ edge are added some moral instructions equally new; that self-­interest, well under­ stood, will produce social concord; that men are mutual gainers by mutual benefits; that evil is sometimes balanced by good; that human advantages are unstable and fallacious, of uncertain duration, and doubtful effect; that our true honour is not to have a great part, but to act it well; that virtue only is our own; and that happiness is always in our power.255 Surely a man of no very comprehensive search may venture to say that he has heard all this before; but it was never till now recommended by such a blaze of embel­ lishment, or such sweetness of melody. The vigorous contraction of some thoughts, the luxuriant amplification of others, the incidental illustrations, and sometimes the dignity, sometimes the softness of the verses, enchain philosophy, suspend criti­ cism, and oppress judgement by overpowering pleasure.256 This is true of many paragraphs; yet if I had undertaken to exemplify Pope’s felicity of composition before a rigid critick, I should not select the Essay on Man; for it contains more lines unsuccessfully laboured, more harshness of diction, more thoughts imperfectly expressed, more levity without elegance, and more heaviness without strength, than will easily be found in all his other works. 253. SJ refers in this paragraph to Essay on Man, i.60–68, 233–46; ii.293–94. 254. “Remarkable, wonderful” (OED, sense 1b). 255. SJ’s references in this paragraph are, in order, to Essay on Man, i.17–42; iii.169–200, 45–46, 269–82, 318; ii.249–56; iii.112; iv.114, 67–76, 167–94, 309–98. 256. Cf. SJ’s demolition of Pope’s arguments as set forth by Soame Jenyns (Yale, xvii.418).

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The Characters of Men and Women are the product of diligent speculation upon human life; much labour has been bestowed upon them, and Pope very sel­ dom laboured in vain. That his excellence may be properly estimated, I recommend a comparison of his Characters of Women with Boileau’s satire;257 it will then be seen with how much more perspicacity female nature is investigated, and female excellence selected; and he surely is no mean writer to whom Boileau shall be found inferior. The Characters of Men, however, are written with more, if not with deeper, thought, and exhibit many passages exquisitely beautiful. The “Gem and the Flower” will not easily be equalled.258 In the women’s part are some defects; the character of Attossa is not so neatly finished as that of Clodio;259 and some of the female characters may be found perhaps more frequently among men; what is said of Philomede was true of Prior.260 In the Epistles to Lord Bathurst and Lord Burlington, Dr. Warburton has en­ deavoured to find a train of thought which was never in the writer’s head, and, to support his hypothesis, has printed that first which was published last. In one, that most valuable passage is perhaps the elogy261 on good sense, and the other, the end of the Duke of Buckingham.262 The Epistle to Arbuthnot, now arbitrarily called the Prologue to the Satires, is a performance consisting, as it seems, of many fragments wrought into one design, which by this union of scattered beauties contains more striking paragraphs than could probably have been brought together into an occasional work.263 As there is no stronger motive to exertion than self-­defence, no part has more elegance, spirit, or dignity, than the poet’s vindication of his own character. The meanest passage is the satire upon Sporus.264 Of the two poems which derived their names from the year, and which are called the Epilogues to the Satires, it was very justly remarked by Savage, that the second was in the whole more strongly conceived, and more equally supported, but that it had no single passages equal to the contention in the first for the dignity of Vice, and the celebration of the triumph of Corruption.265 The Imitations of Horace seem to have been written as relaxations of his genius. 257. Nicolas Boileau (1636–1711), Satire X. 258. Epistle to Cobham, ll. 93–100. 259. For Atossa, see Epistle to a Lady, ll. 115–50; for Clodio, see Epistle to Cobham, ll. 180–209. 260. Both Philomede in Epistle to a Lady (ll. 83–86) and the poet Matthew Prior had a taste for lowlife mates (see Yale, xxii.720). 261. “Praise; panegyric” (Dictionary). 262. Epistle to Burlington, ll. 39–46, and Epistle to Bathurst, ll. 299–314, respectively. 263. Intended or written for a specific occasion. 264. Epistle to Arbuthnot, ll. 305–33; see p. 754 and n. 162 above. 265. Dialogue I, ll. 113–30 and 141–70.



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This employment became his favourite by its facility; the plan was ready to his hand, and nothing was required but to accommodate as he could the sentiments of an old author to recent facts or familiar images; but what is easy is seldom excellent; such imitations cannot give pleasure to common readers; the man of learning may be sometimes surprised and delighted by an unexpected parallel; but the comparison requires knowledge of the original, which will likewise often detect strained applica­ tions. Between Roman images and English manners there will be an irreconcileable dissimilitude, and the work will be generally uncouth and party-­coloured; neither original nor translated, neither ancient nor modern. Pope had, in proportions very nicely adjusted to each other, all the qualities that constitute genius. He had invention, by which new trains of events are formed, and new scenes of imagery displayed, as in the Rape of the Lock; and by which extrinsick and adventitious embellishments and illustrations are connected with a known subject, as in the Essay on Criticism. He had imagination, which strongly impresses on the writer’s mind, and enables him to convey to the reader the various forms of nature, incidents of life, and energies of passion, as in his Eloisa, Windsor Forest, and the Ethick Epistles. He had judgement, which selects from life or nature what the present purpose requires, and by separating the essence of things from its concomitants often makes the representation more powerful than the reality: and he had colours of language always before him, ready to decorate his matter with every grace of elegant expression, as when he accommodates his diction to the wonderful multiplicity of Homer’s sentiments and descriptions. Poetical expression includes sound as well as meaning; “Musick,” says Dryden, “is inarticulate poetry”;266 among the excellencies of Pope, therefore, must be men­ tioned the melody of his metre. By perusing the works of Dryden, he discovered the most perfect fabrick of English verse, and habituated himself to that only which he found the best; in consequence of which restraint his poetry has been censured as too uniformly musical, and as glutting the ear with unvaried sweetness. I suspect this objection to be the cant of those who judge by principles rather than percep­ tion; and who would even themselves have less pleasure in his works, if he had tried to relieve attention by studied discords, or affected to break his lines and vary his pauses. But though he was thus careful of his versification, he did not oppress his powers with superfluous rigour. He seems to have thought with Boileau, that the practice of writing might be refined till the difficulty should overbalance the advan­ tage.267 The construction of his language is not always strictly grammatical; with 266. Preface to Tyrannick Love (1670), in Works, x.109. 267. See Boileau, L’Art Poétique, i.63–65.

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those rhymes which prescription had conjoined he contented himself, without re­ gard to Swift’s remonstrances, though there was no striking consonance; nor was he very careful to vary his terminations, or to refuse admission at a small distance to the same rhymes.268 To Swift’s edict for the exclusion of alexandrines and triplets he paid little re­ gard; he admitted them, but, in the opinion of Fenton, too rarely; he uses them more liberally in his translation than his poems. He has a few double rhymes; and always, I think, unsuccessfully, except once in the Rape of the Lock.269 Expletives he very early ejected from his verses; but he now and then admits an epithet rather commodious than important. Each of the six first lines of the Iliad might lose two syllables with very little diminution of the meaning; and sometimes, after all his art and labour, one verse seems to be made for the sake of another. In his latter productions the diction is sometimes vitiated by French idioms, with which Bolingbroke had perhaps infected him. I have been told that the couplet by which he declared his own ear to be most gratified was this: Lo, where Mœotis sleeps, and hardly flows The freezing Tanais through a waste of snows.270

But the reason of this preference I cannot discover. It is remarked by Watts,271 that there is scarcely a happy combination of words, or a phrase poetically elegant in the English language, which Pope has not inserted into his version of Homer. How he obtained possession of so many beauties of speech, it were desirable to know. That he gleaned from authors, obscure as well as eminent, what he thought brilliant or useful, and preserved it all in a regular col­ lection, is not unlikely. When, in his last years, Hall’s Satires were shewn him, he wished that he had seen them sooner.272 New sentiments and new images others may produce; but to attempt any fur­ ther improvement of versification will be dangerous. Art and diligence have now 268. Swift to Pope, 28 June 1715 (Sherburn, i.301). 269. “The meeting points the sacred hair dissever / From the fair head, for ever and for ever!” (iii.153–54). 270. Dunciad, iii.87–88. 271. Isaac Watts (1674–1748), independent minister, self-­help writer, and poet, whose life SJ added to those he was instructed to write by the booksellers who commissioned the Lives of the Poets. SJ refers to The Improvement of the Mind (1741), p. 358. 272. Joseph Hall (1574–1656), Bishop of Norwich, was author of Virgidemiarum: three books of “Tooth-­ lesse Satyrs” and three of “Byting Satyres” (1597–98). Pope annotated two copies of Hall’s works (see Lonsdale, Lives of the Eminent Poets, iv.79n).



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done their best, and what shall be added will be the effort of tedious toil and need­ less curiosity.273 After all this, it is surely superfluous to answer the question that has once been asked, Whether Pope was a poet?274 otherwise than by asking in return, If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found? To circumscribe poetry by a definition will only shew the narrowness of the definer, though a definition which shall exclude Pope will not easily be made. Let us look round upon the present time, and back upon the past; let us enquire to whom the voice of mankind has decreed the wreath of poetry; let their productions be examined, and their claims stated, and the pre­ tensions of Pope will be no more disputed. Had he given the world only his version, the name of poet must have been allowed him: if the writer of the Iliad were to class his successors, he would assign a very high place to his translator, without requiring any other evidence of genius.275

273. Boswell reports SJ saying, “Sir, a thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to that of Pope” (Boswell, Life, iv.46). 274. The questioner was Joseph Warton, in the Dedication (to Edward Young) of his Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, Vol. I (1756). 275. As addenda to “Pope,” SJ directed his publisher to add a letter from Pope to Ralph Bridges, 5 April 1708, concerning Pope’s translation of Homer (Sherburn, i.43–45); and SJ’s “Dissertation on the Epitaphs writ­ ten by Pope,” published in The Universal Visiter and Monthly Memorialist for May 1756 (v.207–19). For these addenda, see Yale, xxiii.1228–49. Also included in Yale, xxiii, are SJ’s Rough Notes for the Life of Pope (pp. 1250–70).

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L I F E O F G R AY Thomas Gray, the son of Mr. Philip Gray, a scrivener of London, was born in Cornhill, November 26, 1716.1 His grammatical education he received at Eton under the care of Mr. Antrobus, his mother’s brother; then assistant to Dr. George; and when he left school, in 1734, entered a pensioner2 at Peterhouse in Cambridge. The transition from the school to the college is, to most young scholars, the time from which they date their years of manhood, liberty, and happiness; but Gray seems to have been very little delighted with academical gratifications; he liked at Cambridge neither the mode of life nor the fashion of study, and lived sullenly on to the time when his attendance on lectures was no longer required. As he intended to profess the common law, he took no degree. When he had been at Cambridge about five years, Mr. Horace Walpole,3 whose friendship he had gained at Eton, invited him to travel with him as his companion. They wandered through France into Italy; and Gray’s letters contain a very pleasing account of many parts of their journey. But unequal friendships are easily dissolved: at Florence they quarrelled, and parted;4 and Mr. Walpole is now content to have it told that it was by his fault. If we look however without prejudice on the world, we shall find that men, whose consciousness of their own merit sets them above the compliances of servility, are apt enough in their association with superiors to watch their own dignity with troublesome and punctilious jealousy, and in the fervour of independance to exact that attention which they refuse to pay. Part they did, what­ ever was the quarrel, and the rest of their travels was doubtless more unpleasant to them both. Gray continued his journey in a manner suitable to his own little fortune, with only an occasional servant. He returned to England in September 1741, and in about two months after­ wards buried his father; who had, by an injudicious waste of money upon a new house, so much lessened his fortune, that Gray thought himself too poor to study the law. He therefore retired to Cambridge, where he soon after became Bachelor of Civil Law; and where, without liking the place or its inhabitants, or professing to like them, he passed, except a short residence at London, the rest of his life. About this time he was deprived of Mr. West,5 the son of a chancellor of Ireland, a friend on whom he appears to have set a high value, and who deserved his esteem by 1. He was born 26 December 1716. 2. “Cambridge Univ. An undergraduate student without financial support from his or her college” (OED). 3. Horace Walpole, fourth Earl of Orford (1717–1797), son of the politician Robert Walpole. 4. It was actually at Reggio that they quarreled. 5. Richard West (1716–1742).

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the powers which he shews in his letters, and in the Ode to May, which Mr. Mason6 has preserved, as well as by the sincerity with which, when Gray sent him part of Agrippina, a tragedy that he had just begun, he gave an opinion which probably inter­ cepted the progress of the work, and which the judgement of every reader will con­ firm. It was certainly no loss to the English stage that Agrippina was never finished. In this year (1742) Gray seems first to have applied himself seriously to poetry; for in this year were produced the Ode to Spring, his Prospect of Eton, and his Ode to Adversity. He began likewise a Latin poem, De Principiis Cogitandi.7 It may be collected from the narrative of Mr. Mason, that his first ambition was to have excelled in Latin poetry: perhaps it were reasonable to wish that he had prosecuted his design; for though there is at present some embarrassment in his phrase, and some harshness in his lyrick numbers, his copiousness of language is such as very few possess; and his lines, even when imperfect, discover a writer whom practice would quickly have made skilful. He now lived on at Peterhouse, very little solicitous what others did or thought, and cultivated his mind and enlarged his views without any other purpose than of improving and amusing himself; when Mr. Mason, being elected fellow of Pembroke-­hall, brought him a companion who was afterwards to be his editor, and whose fondness and fidelity has kindled in him a zeal of admiration, which cannot be reasonably expected from the neutrality of a stranger and the coldness of a critick. In this retirement he wrote (1747) an ode on the Death of Mr. Walpole’s Cat; and the year afterwards attempted a poem of more importance, on Government and Education, of which the fragments which remain have many excellent lines. His next production (1750) was his far-­famed Elegy in the Church-­yard, which, finding its way into a magazine, first, I believe, made him known to the publick. An invitation from Lady Cobham8 about this time gave occasion to an odd composition called A Long Story, which adds little to Gray’s character. Several of his pieces were published (1753), with designs, by Mr. Bentley;9 and, that they might in some form or other make a book, only one side of each leaf was printed. I believe the poems and the plates recommended each other so well, that the whole impression was soon bought. This year he lost his mother. Some time afterwards (1756) some young men of the college, whose chambers were near his, diverted themselves with disturbing him by frequent and troublesome noises, and, as is said, by pranks yet more offensive and contemptuous.10 This in­ 6. William Mason (1725–1797), poet and garden designer, published The Poems of Mr. Gray, to which are Prefixed Memoirs of his Life and Writings (1775). 7. “On the Principles of Thinking.” 8. Anne Halsey (d. 1760), wife of Richard Temple, first Viscount Cobham (1675–1749). 9. Richard Bentley (1708–1782), son of the scholar Richard Bentley (1662–1742). 10. “We have heard,” wrote a reviewer of Gray’s Poems in Gentleman’s Magazine ( June 1775, p. 288),

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solence, having endured it a while, he represented to the governors of the society, among whom perhaps he had no friends; and, finding his complaint little regarded, removed himself to Pembroke-­hall. In 1757 he published The Progress of Poetry and The Bard, two compositions at which the readers of poetry were at first content to gaze in mute amazement. Some that tried them confessed their inability to understand them, though Warburton11 said that they were understood as well as the works of Milton and Shakespeare, which it is the fashion to admire. Garrick wrote a few lines in their praise. Some hardy champions undertook to rescue them from neglect, and in a short time many were content to be shewn beauties which they could not see. Gray’s reputation was now so high, that, after the death of Cibber, he had the honour of refusing the laurel, which was then bestowed on Mr. Whitehead.12 His curiosity, not long after, drew him away from Cambridge to a lodging near the Museum, where he resided near three years, reading and transcribing; and, so far as can be discovered, very little affected by two odes on Oblivion and Obscurity, in which his lyrick performances were ridiculed with much contempt and much in­ genuity. When the professor of modern history at Cambridge died, he was, as he says, “cockered and spirited up,” till he asked it of Lord Bute, who sent him a civil refusal; and the place was given to Mr. Brocket, the tutor of Sir James Lowther.13 His constitution was weak, and believing that his health was promoted by exercise and change of place, he undertook (1765) a journey into Scotland, of which his account, so far as it extends, is very curious and elegant; for as his comprehen­ sion was ample, his curiosity extended to all the works of art, all the appearances of nature, and all the monuments of past events. He naturally contracted a friend­ ship with Dr. Beattie, whom he found a poet, a philosopher, and a good man.14 The Mareschal College at Aberdeen offered him the degree of Doctor of Laws, which, having omitted to take it at Cambridge, he thought it decent to refuse. What he had formerly solicited in vain, was at last given him without solicitation. The professorship of history became again vacant, and he received (1768) an offer of it from the Duke of Grafton. He accepted, and retained it to his death; always designing lectures, but never reading them; uneasy at his neglect of duty, and appeasing his un­ “that Mr. Gray being very fearful of fire . . . these very young men were so wantonly inconsiderate (to say no worse), as to alarm him at midnight with the cry of it, that they might see him descend (which he was prepar­ ing to do), perhaps ‘headlong,’ like his Welch bard, by a ladder of ropes, with which he was always furnished.” 11. William Warburton (1698–1779), Bishop of Gloucester and scholar. 12. William Whitehead (1715–1785) succeeded Colley Cibber (1671–1757) as Poet Laureate. 13. John Stuart, third Earl of Bute (1713–1792), Prime Minister under George III, 1761–63. James Low­ ther, Earl of Lonsdale (1736–1802). 14. James Beattie (1735–1803) visited SJ in London in 1771; see Boswell, Life, ii.142.



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easiness with designs of reformation, and with a resolution which he believed himself to have made of resigning the office, if he found himself unable to discharge it. Ill health made another journey necessary, and he visited (1769) Westmoreland and Cumberland. He that reads his epistolary narration wishes, that to travel, and to tell his travels, had been more of his employment; but it is by studying at home that we must obtain the ability of travelling with intelligence and improvement. His travels and his studies were now near their end. The gout, of which he had sustained many weak attacks, fell upon his stomach, and, yielding to no medicines, produced strong convulsions, which ( July 30, 1771) terminated in death. His character, I am willing to adopt, as Mr. Mason has done, from a letter writ­ ten to my friend Mr. Boswell, by the Rev. Mr. Temple, rector of St. Gluvias in Corn­ wall; and am as willing as his warmest well-­wisher to believe it true. Perhaps he was the most learned man in Europe. He was equally ac­ quainted with the elegant and profound parts of science, and that not super­ ficially but thoroughly. He knew every branch of history, both natural and civil; had read all the original historians of England, France, and Italy; and was a great antiquarian. Criticism, metaphysics, morals, politics, made a principal part of his study; voyages and travels of all sorts were his favourite amusements; and he had a fine taste in painting, prints, architecture, and gardening. With such a fund of knowledge, his conversation must have been equally instructing and entertaining; but he was also a good man, a man of virtue and humanity. There is no character without some speck, some imper­ fection; and I think the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiors in science. He also had, in some degree, that weakness which disgusted Voltaire so much in Mr. Congreve: though he seemed to value others chiefly according to the progress they had made in knowledge, yet he could not bear to be considered himself merely as a man of letters; and though without birth, or fortune, or station, his desire was to be looked upon as a private independent gentleman, who read for his amusement. Perhaps it may be said, What signifies so much knowledge, when it produced so little? Is it worth taking so much pains to leave no memorial but a few poems? But let it be considered that Mr. Gray was, to others, at least innocently em­ ployed; to himself, certainly beneficially. His time passed agreeably; he was every day making some new acquisition in science; his mind was enlarged, his heart softened, his virtue strengthened; the world and mankind were shewn to him without a mask; and he was taught to consider every thing as trifling, and unworthy of the attention of a wise man, except the pursuit of knowledge and practice of virtue, in that state wherein God hath placed us.

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To this character Mr. Mason has added a more particular account of Gray’s skill in zoology. He has remarked, that Gray’s effeminacy was affected most “before those whom he did not wish to please”; and that he is unjustly charged with making knowledge his sole reason of preference, as he paid his esteem to none whom he did not likewise believe to be good. What has occurred to me, from the slight inspection of his letters in which my undertaking has engaged me, is, that his mind had a large grasp; that his curiosity was unlimited, and his judgement cultivated; that he was a man likely to love much where he loved at all, but that he was fastidious and hard to please. His contempt however is often employed, where I hope it will be approved, upon scepticism and infidelity. His short account of Shaftesbury15 I will insert. You say you cannot conceive how Lord Shaftesbury came to be a philoso­ pher in vogue; I will tell you: first, he was a lord; secondly, he was as vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very prone to believe what they do not understand; fourthly, they will believe any thing at all, provided they are under no obligation to believe it; fifthly, they love to take a new road, even when that road leads no where; sixthly, he was reckoned a fine writer, and seems always to mean more than he said. Would you have any more reasons? An interval of above forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm. A dead lord ranks with commoners: vanity is no longer interested in the matter; for a new road is become an old one.16

Mr. Mason has added, from his own knowledge, that though Gray was poor, he was not eager of money; and that, out of the little that he had, he was very willing to help the necessitous. As a writer he had this peculiarity, that he did not write his pieces first rudely, and then correct them, but laboured every line as it arose in the train of composition; and he had a notion not very peculiar, that he could not write but at certain times, or at happy moments; a fantastick foppery, to which my kindness for a man of learning and of virtue wishes him to have been superior.17 Gray’s poetry is now to be considered; and I hope not to be looked on as an enemy to his name, if I confess that I contemplate it with less pleasure than his life. His ode on Spring has something poetical, both in the language and the

15. Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), author of Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711), a work containing anti-­clerical sentiments and skepticism about some reli­ gious doctrines. 16. Gray to Richard Stonhewer, 18 August 1758, quoted from Mason, Poems, p. 263. 17. Cf. “Milton” (pp. 671–72 above).



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thought; but the language is too luxuriant, and the thoughts have nothing new. There has of late arisen a practice of giving to adjectives, derived from substantives, the termination of participles; such as the “cultured” plain, the “dasied” bank; but I was sorry to see, in the lines of a scholar like Gray, the “honied” spring. The morality is natural, but too stale; the conclusion is pretty. The poem on the Cat was doubtless by its author considered as a trifle, but it is not a happy trifle. In the first stanza “the azure flowers” that “blow,” shew reso­ lutely a rhyme is sometimes made when it cannot easily be found. Selima, the cat, is called a nymph, with some violence both to language and sense; but there is good use made of it when it is done; for of the two lines, What female heart can gold despise?    What cat’s averse to fish?

the first relates merely to the nymph, and the second only to the cat. The sixth stanza contains a melancholy truth, that “a favourite has no friend”; but the last ends in a pointed sentence of no relation to the purpose; if “what glistered” had been “gold,” the cat would not have gone into the water; and, if she had, would not less have been drowned. The Prospect of Eton College suggests nothing to Gray, which every beholder does not equally think and feel. His supplication to father Thames, to tell him who drives the hoop or tosses the ball, is useless and puerile. Father Thames has no better means of knowing than himself. His epithet “buxom health” is not elegant; he seems not to understand the word.18 Gray thought his language more poetical as it was more remote from common use: finding in Dryden “honey redolent of spring,” an expression that reaches the utmost limits of our language, Gray drove it a little more beyond common apprehension, by making “gales” to be “redolent of joy and youth.” Of the Ode on Adversity, the hint was at first taken from O Diva, gratum quae regis Antium;19 but Gray has excelled his original by the variety of his sentiments, and by their moral application. Of this piece, at once poetical and rational, I will not by slight objections violate the dignity. My process has now brought me to the “wonderful Wonder of Wonders,”20 the two Sister Odes; by which, though either vulgar ignorance or common sense at first 18. Buxom: “Obedient; obsequious” (Dictionary, sense 1); “Gay; lively; brisk” (sense 2); “Wanton, jolly” (sense 3). 19. Horace, Odes, i.35, Ode to Fortune, l. 1: “O goddess, you who reign over your favourite Antium” (Loeb edition, trans. Niall Rudd, 2004). 20. There is a satiric narrative of this name (1721), generally attributed to Swift, but a learned friend in­ forms us that the title was a stock phrase.

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universally rejected them, many have been since persuaded to think themselves de­ lighted. I am one of those that are willing to be pleased, and therefore would gladly find the meaning of the first stanza of the Progress of Poetry. Gray seems in his rapture to confound the images of “spreading sound” and “running water.” A “stream of musick” may be allowed; but where does “musick,” however “smooth and strong,” after having visited the “verdant vales, rowl down the steep amain,” so as that “rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar”? If this be said of musick, it is nonsense; if it be said of water, it is nothing to the purpose. The second stanza, exhibiting Mars’s car and Jove’s eagle, is unworthy of fur­ ther notice. Criticism disdains to chase a school-­boy to his common places.21 To the third it may likewise be objected, that it is drawn from mythology, though such as may be more easily assimilated to real life. Idalia’s “velvet-­green” has something of cant.22 An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature. Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily compounded. “Many-­twinkling” was formerly censured as not analogi­ cal; we may say “many-­spotted,” but scarcely “many-­spotting.” This stanza, how­ ever, has something pleasing. Of the second ternary of stanzas, the first endeavours to tell something, and would have told it, had it not been crossed by Hyperion: the second describes well enough the universal prevalence of poetry; but I am afraid that the conclusion will not rise from the premises. The caverns of the north and the plains of Chili are not the residences of “glory” and “generous shame.” But that poetry and virtue go always together is an opinion so pleasing, that I can forgive him who resolves to think it true. The third stanza sounds big with Delphi, and Egean, and Ilissus, and Me­ ander, and “hallowed fountain” and “solemn sound”; but in all Gray’s odes there is a kind of cumbrous splendor which we wish away. His position is at last false: in the time of Dante and Petrarch, from whom he derives our first school of poetry, Italy was over-­run by “tyrant power” and “coward vice”; nor was our state much better when we first borrowed the Italian arts. Of the third ternary, the first gives a mythological birth of Shakespeare. What is said of that mighty genius is true; but it is not said happily: the real effects of his poetical power are put out of sight by the pomp of machinery. Where truth is suf­ ficient to fill the mind, fiction is worse than useless; the counterfeit debases the ­genuine. His account of Milton’s blindness, if we suppose it caused by study in the for­ 21. Entries in a commonplace book, a collection of notable passages from one’s reading. 22. Jargon; SJ may have thought velvet part of the jargon of milliners, such as Gray’s mother (Lonsdale, Lives of the Eminent Poets, IV.182n).



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mation of his poem, a supposition surely allowable, is poetically true, and happily imagined. But the “car” of Dryden, with his “two coursers,” has nothing in it pecu­ liar; it is a car in which any other rider may be placed. The Bard appears, at the first view, to be, as Algarotti and others have re­ marked, an imitation of the prophecy of Nereus.23 Algarotti thinks it superior to its original; and, if preference depends only on the imagery and animation of the two poems, his judgement is right. There is in The Bard more force, more thought, and more variety. But to copy is less than to invent, and the copy has been unhappily produced at a wrong time. The fiction of Horace was to the Romans credible; but its revival disgusts us with apparent and unconquerable falsehood. Incredulus odi.24 To select a singular event, and swell it to a giant’s bulk by fabulous appendages of spectres and predictions, has little difficulty, for he that forsakes the probable may always find the marvellous. And it has little use; we are affected only as we believe; we are improved only as we find something to be imitated or declined. I do not see that The Bard promotes any truth, moral or political. His stanzas are too long, especially his epodes; the ode is finished before the ear has learned its measures, and consequently before it can receive pleasure from their consonance and recurrence. Of the first stanza the abrupt beginning has been celebrated; but technical beauties can give praise only to the inventor. It is in the power of any man to rush abruptly upon his subject, that has read the ballad of Johnny Armstrong, “Is there ever a man in all Scotland—”

The initial resemblances, or alliterations, “ruin,” “ruthless,” “helm nor hau­ berk,” are below the grandeur of a poem that endeavours at sublimity. In the second stanza the Bard is well described; but in the third we have the puerilities of obsolete mythology. When we are told that “Cadwallo hush’d the stormy main,” and that Modred made “huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-­top’d head,” attention recoils from the repetition of a tale that, even when it was first heard, was heard with scorn. The “weaving” of the “winding sheet” he borrowed, as he owns, from the northern bards; but their texture,25 however, was very properly the work of female powers, as the art of spinning the thread of life in another mythology. Theft is always dangerous; Gray has made weavers of his slaughtered bards, by a fiction outrageous 23. Francesco Algarotti (1712–1764), poet and scholar, in a letter quoted in Mason, Poems, p. 83. 24. Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 188: “I discredit and abhor” (Loeb edition, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, 1926). 25. “Woven fabric” (Dictionary, sense 1).

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and incongruous. They are then called upon to “Weave the warp, and weave the woof,” perhaps with no great propriety; for it is by crossing the “woof ” with the “warp” that men “weave” the “web” or piece; and the first line was dearly bought by the admission of its wretched correspondent, “Give ample room and verge enough.” He has, however, no other line as bad. The third stanza of the second ternary is commended, I think beyond its merit. The personification is indistinct. Thirst and Hunger are not alike; and their features, to make the imagery perfect, should have been discriminated. We are told, in the same stanza, how “towers” are “fed.” 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. These odes are marked by glittering accumulations of ungraceful ornaments; they strike rather than please; the images are magnified by affectation; the language is laboured into harshness. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural vio­ lence. “Double, double, toil and trouble.”26 He has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking on tiptoe. His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too little appearance of ease and nature.27 To say that he has no beauties would be unjust: a man like him, of great learn­ ing and great industry, could not but produce something valuable. When he pleases least, it can only be said that a good design was ill directed. His translations of Northern and Welsh poetry deserve praise; the imagery is preserved, perhaps often improved; but the language is unlike the language of other poets. In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours. The Church-­yard abounds with images which find a mir­ rour in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas beginning “Yet even these bones,” are to me original:28 I have never seen the notions in any other place; yet he that reads them here, persuades himself that he has always felt them. Had Gray written often thus, it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him.

26. Macbeth, iv.i.10, part of the witches’ incantation. 27. SJ’s views in this paragraph echo some of his objections to the metaphysical poets that he expressed in “Cowley” (pp. 600–618 above). 28. SJ refers to ll. 77–92.



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Index

These entries derive entirely from the notes and introductions. Of course, many of the entries also appear on the page proper, and when they do, no note number is indicated. This index is a guide to the glosses on John­ son’s works, rather than the works themselves, but it also demonstrates the breadth of Johnson’s learning and the wide range of his references. Abyssinia, xiv, 169 Académie Française, xv–xvi, 374, 378, 380, 382, 417 Accademia della Crusca, 375, 412n40, 417 Accius, Lucius (170–c. 86 BCE), drama critic, 748n138 Act for Taking away and Abolishing the Heritable Jurisdictions in Scotland (1747), 490 Act for the more effectual Disarming the Highlands (1746, 1748), 490 Act of Oblivion (1660), 667 Act of Toleration (1689), 338n11 Addison, Joseph (1672–1719), author, diplomat, 1, 134, 153, 265, 373, 388, 390, 393, 438, 465, 623n120, 624n128, 629n148, 690, 691, 700, 707n18, 708, 711, 717, 730, 732–33, 758n181, 776n223, 778n230 Adventurer, The, 2, 533n44, 522n7 Aelianus, Claudius (c. 170–235 CE), zoologist, 31 Ainsworth, Robert (1660–1743), lexicographer, 404, 765n202 Alabaster, William (1568–1640), writer, 644 Alaric I (c. 370–410), King of the Visigoths, 475 Alexander III of Macedon (356–323 BCE), general and ruler, 286, 361, 437 Alfonso de Valdés (1490–1532), 54 Alfred the Great, King of the West Saxons (848/49– 899), 274 Algarotti, Francesco (1712–1764), critic and trans­ lator, 693n200, 798 Allen, Ralph (1694–1764), entrepreneur and phi­ lanthropist, 743 Amherst, Jeffrey (1717–1797), soldier, 159n2

Ammianus Marcellinus (330–395 CE), historian, 185n50 Anacreon (sixth–fifth century BCE), 443, 621 Anacreontea, 443n58 Anaxagoras (fifth century BCE), philosopher, 55n1 Andrea, Giovanni Antonio ( Joannes Andreas) (1417–c. 1480), critic, 460 Andreini, Giovan Battista (1571–1654), playwright, 670n116 Anguillara, Giovanni Andrea dell’ (1517–1572), scholar and translator, 782 Anne, Queen of Great Britain (1665–1714), 563 Apollo, 22n2 Aratus (c. 315–240 BCE), astronomer, 782n243 Arbuthnot, John (1667–1735), physician and writer, 741, 753, 757 Ariosto, Ludovico (1474–1533), poet, 694n207 Aristotle (384–322 BCE), philosopher, 300, 349–51, 406, 433n29, 435n37, 601n50, 691–92, 711 Arminius, Jacob (1560–1609), theologian, 681 Ascham, Roger (1514/15–1568), teacher, 440, 644 Aston, Henry Hervey (1701–1748), clergyman, 275 Atalanta, 435n36 Atterbury, Francis (1663–1732), Bishop of Roches­ ter, 679, 706, 736, 756n170 Augusta of Saxe–Gotha (1719–1772), Princess Dowager of Wales, 337 Ausonius, Decimus Magnus (fourth century CE), 394 Bacon, Francis (1561–1626), statesman, philoso­ pher, 2, 45, 72, 84, 86n6, 242n185, 416, 499, 616

801

Bacon, Friar Roger (1214–1292?), philosopher, 285 Bailey, Nathan (1691–1742), lexicographer, 380n15, 402n17 Baker, Henry (1698–1774), grammarian, 516 Banks, Sir Joseph (1743–1820), naturalist, 509 Barber, Francis (c. 1745–1801), school teacher, xvii, 297 Barberini, Cardinal Francesco (1597–1679), scholar and book collector, 649 Barclay, Alexander (1485–1552), poet and clergy­ man, 592n9 Baretti, Giuseppe (1719–1789), lexicographer, xix, 684n170, 782n242 Barnes, Joshua (1654–1712), classical scholar, 593 Barrow, Samuel (1625–1682), poet, 696n213 Bathurst, Allen, first Earl Bathurst (1684–1749), politician, 751 Baudius, Dominic (Dominique Baudier) (1561– 1613), writer, 681 Beaton, James (1473–1539), Archbishop of St. Andrews, 473n12 Beattie, James (1735–1803), scholar, 793 Beckingham, Charles (1699–1731), poet and play­ wright, 539n63 Bedell, William (1571–1642), biblical scholar, 504n68 Behn, Aphra (1640–1689), playwright, 279 Bembo, Pietro (1470–1547), critic and courtier, 153n4 Beni, Paolo (1552–1625), critic, 417n55 Bennet, George (fl. 1745), translator, 200n87, 201n89 Benson, William (1682–1754), politician and archi­ tect, 679, 749 Bentley, Richard (1662–1742), scholar, 391, 460, 621, 695, 777, 792n9 Bentley, Richard, the younger (1708–1782), son of Richard Bentley, 792 Berkeley, George (1685–1753), philosopher and Bishop of Cloyne, 713 Betterton, Thomas (1635–1710), actor and theater manager, 667, 715–16 Bias of Priene (sixth century BCE), sage, 18n5 Bible, 374, 409: 1 Corinthians, 359; Genesis, 231n163, 351n9; Isaiah, 776n226; Job, 29n6; John, 358; Luke, 334n4, 354; Matthew, 296; Psalms, 54n5, 333n2, 352, 630n149; 1 Samuel, 630n150 Bigot, Emeric (1626–1689), patron of literature, 70n1

Birch, Thomas (1705–1766), antiquarian, xv, 445n64, 557, 597, 657, 668n110 Birmingham Journal, 1 Blair, Hugh (1718–1800), critic, 516n89 Blount, Martha (1690–1763), Catholic gentle­ woman, 752 Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313–1375), writer, 414 Bodleian Library, Oxford, 285 Boethius, Ancius Manilius Servius (c. 480– 524 CE), politician and philosopher, 254 Boileau-­­Despréaux, Nicolas (1636–1711), poet and critic, 147, 393, 787–88 Book of Common Prayer, 358n9, 474n15 Bordelon, Laurent (1653–1730), abbot and play­ wright, 755n169 Boscawen, Edward (1711–1761), admiral, 159n3 Boston Tea Party, 340 Boswell, James (1740–1795), biographer, journal­ ist, xviii, xix, xx, 469–70, 508n76; Life of SJ, 182n40, 189n63, 198n81, 210n118, 212n124, 215n130, 221n145, 222n146, 249n201, 278, 310, 374, 384n38, 502n65, 522n4, 553n89, 554n91, 554n91, 701n235, 748n140, 761n190, 770n214, 790n273, 793n14 Bourbon, Louis de, Prince of Condé (1621–1686), 137 Bowen, Emanuel (1693/94–1767), cartographer, 184n46, 185nn49–50, 229n157, 231n163 Boyle, John, fifth Earl of Orrery (1707–1762), 30, 378n9 Boyle, Richard, third Earl of Burlington and fourth Earl of Cork, 741–42 Boyle, Robert (1627–1691), chemist, 416, 445, 499 Braddock, Edward (1695–1755), British general, 320 Braidwood, Thomas (1715–1806), educator, 516 Bramhall, John (1594–1663), Archbishop of Armagh, 660 Brant, Sebastian (1457–1521), humanist, 592n9 Brett, Anne (née Mason) (1667/8–1753), 522–23, 539, 541n68, 554n91 Brett, Henry (1677/8–1714), politician, 522 Bridges, Ralph (1679–1758), clergyman and friend of Pope, 790n275 The British Magazine, 330 British Museum, xv, xx, 719, 721 Broome, William (1689–1745), translator, 719 Brown, Thomas (1663–1704), writer, 594 Browne, Sir George (d. 1730), Pope’s Sir Plume, 713

802 I N D E X

Browne, Sir Thomas (1605–1682), author, divine, 60, 240n181 Brownlow, John, first Viscount Tyrconnel (1690– 1754), 541, 553n89, 553 Brydges, James, first Duke of Chandos (1673– 1744), 545, 741 Buchanan, George (1506–1582), poet and scholar, 472 Buchler, Johann, lexicographer, 652n44 Bueil, Honorat de, seigneur de Racan (1589–1670), biographer, 135 Bullock, Christopher (1691?–1722), playwright, 526n26 Buonarroti, Michelangelo (1568–1646), gram­ marian, 412 Burke, Edmund (1729–1797), politician, author, 335n4, 339n14 Burnet, Gilbert (1643–1715), Bishop of Salisbury, historian, 63, 73, 135n9, 517, 667, 737 Burnet, Sir Thomas (1694–1753), judge and pam­ phleteer, 734 Burton, Robert (1577–1640), author, 247n197, 671n124 Bute, Lord. See Stuart, John Butler, Samuel (1613–1680), poet, 700 Button’s Coffee–house, 533, 732 Byng, John (1704–1757), admiral, 160 Cabot, John (c. 1451–1498), explorer, 319 Cabot, Sebastian (1481/2–1557), explorer, 319 Caesar, Augustus (63 BCE–19 CE), emperor, 93, 130 Caesar, C. Julius (100–44 BCE), general, 58n5, 437 Caesar, Mary (née Freeman), 768n209 Calamy, Edmund (1600–1660), dissenting clergy­ man, 652n48 Caligula (Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus) (12– 41 CE), emperor, 122n10, 748n138 Camerarius, Joachim (1500–1574), scholar, 134 Campbell, Hugh Hume, third Earl of Marchmont (1708–94), 770 Caro, Annibal (1507–1566), writer, 414 Caroline, Queen of Great Britain (1683–1737), 572 Carpenter, Alicia Maria (1729–1794), 275 Carter, Elizabeth (1717–1806), author, xv, 17n3, 584n141, 747n136 Cary, Lucius, second Viscount Falkland (1609/10– 1643), 593 Caryll, John (1626–1711), Jacobite politician, 712 Caryll, John (1667–1736), Alexander Pope’s corre­ spondent, 712

Casaubon, Meric (1599–1671), scholar, 385n39 Cassius, Dio (c. 164–229 CE), 395n76 Castelvetro, Lodovico (1505–1571), literary histo­ rian, 435n37 Castiglione, Baldasare (1478–1529), courtier, 17 Catiline. See Sergius Catalina, Lucius Cave, Edward (1691–1754), publisher, xiv, 1, 313, 547n85, 585n144 Cavendish, Margaret (1623?–1673), author, 116 Celsus, Aulus Cornelius (c. 25 BCE–50CE), physi­ cian, 59 Cervantes, Miguel de (1547–1616), author, 9n4 Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, 674 Chalmers, Alexander (1759–1834), editor, 118n1 Chambers, Catherine (1708–1767), Johnson family friend, 369 Chambers, Ephraim (1680–1740), encyclopedist, 379n12 Chambers, Robert (1737–1803), jurist, xviii Chapman, George (1559?–1634), playwright and translator, 701n232, 719 Chapone, Hester Mulso (1727–1801), author, 17n3 Charles I, King of England (1600–1649), 285, 286, 318, 594n22, 657, 703 Charles II, King of England (1630–1685), 278, 593, 594n22, 667 Charles VI (1685–1740), Holy Roman Emperor, 288 Charles VII, Charles Albert of Bavaria (1697–1745), Holy Roman Emperor, 288 Charles XII, King of Sweden (1682–1718), 287 Chaucer, Geoffrey (c.1340–1400), poet, 441 Cheke, Sir John (1514–1557), Hellenist, 440 Chesterfield. See Stanhope, Phillip Dormer Cheyne, George (1671–1743), physician, 361 Chillingworth, William (1602–1644), religious writer, 54 Chilon of Sparta (sixth century BCE), sage, 22n2 Christina, Queen of Sweden (1626–1689), 659 Churchill, Charles (c.1678–1745), nephew of the Duke of Marlborough, 530 Churchill, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (1660– 1744), 752 Churchill, John, first Duke of Marlborough (1650– 1722), general, 269, 290, 365, 530n34 Cibber, Colley (1671–1757), actor, playwright, 441, 532, 556n94, 569n120, 556, 756–58, 793 Cibber, Theophilus (1703–1758), actor, 441n54, 533 Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106–43 BCE), orator, 14n7, 153, 395, 406, 427n6, 704n8, 782

INDEX 803

Circe, 647 Clarges, Sir Thomas (1617?–1695), politician, 667 Claudianus, Claudius (370–404 CE), poet, 131 Claudius I, Emperor of Rome (10 BCE–54 CE), 395 Clarke, John (1687–1734), schoolmaster, 690 Cleland, John (1710–1789), novelist, 741n116 Cleland, William (1673/4–1741), father to John Cle­ land, 741 Clerk, John (1481/2?–1541), Bishop of Bath and Wells, 440 Cleveland, John (1613–1658), poet, 603, 609, 612n85 Cobb, Samuel (1675–1713), poet, 777 Cocker, Edward (1631/2–1676), mathematician, 478 Cocker’s Arithmetic (1660?), 478n24 Complete Farmer or a General Dictionary of Husbandry (1767), 478n23 Concanen, Matthew (1701–1749), writer and law­ yer, 748 Condell, Henry (1576?–1627), actor and editor, 430n18 Congreve, William (1670–1729), playwright, 25, 447 Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), author, 795 Corbett, Owen (1646–1671), poet, 629n147 Corneille, Pierre (1606–1684), critic and play­ wright, 436n38 Cornuel, Anne–Marie Bigot de (1605–1694), salonnière, 137n4 corona civica, 458n108 Cowley, Abraham (1618–1667), poet, 51, 520, 651 Craddock, Joseph (1742–1826), gentleman and man of letters, 681 Craggs, James, the younger (1686–1721), secretary of state, 732 Crashaw, Richard (1612/13–1648), poet, 621 Crescimbeni, Mario Giovanni (1663–1728), critic, 385 Croesus, King of Lydia (595–547 BCE), 290 Croft, Herbert (1751–1861), barrister, xx Cromwell, Henry (1659–1728), poet and friend of Pope, 707 Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658), Lord Protector, 596 Cromwell, Richard (1626–1712), Lord Protector, 666 Crousaz, Jean–Pierre de (1663–1750), critic, xv, 747 Crowley, Sir Ambrose (1658–1713), iron magnate, 488

Culloden, Battle of (1746), 469, 490 Curll, Edmund (1683–1747), publisher, 707 Curtius Rufus, Quintus (fl. second century CE), 349n4 Dacier, Anne Le Févre (1654?–1720), scholar and translator, 719 Dalrymple, David, Lord Hailes (1726–1792), 516n89 Dalrymple, Sir John (1726–1810), Scottish judge, 667 Dati, Carlo Roberto (1619–1676), writer, 648 Davenant, Sir William (1606–1668), poet and play­ wright, 667 Davies, Sir John (1569–1626), poet and administra­ tor, 388, 476 Deane, Thomas (1651–1735), tutor, 704 De Bauval, Henri Basanage (1656–1710), critic, 389n52 De Bueil, Honorat, signeur de Racan (1589–1670), biographer, 135n8 De Drucour, Chevalier (1703–1762), general, 159n4 Defoe, Daniel (1660?–1731), author, 1, 516n92 De la Houssaye, Abraham Nicolas Amelot (1634– 1706), historian, 414n43 De La Tour d’Auvergne (1611–1675), vicomte de Turenne, general, 28 Democritus (460–370 BCE), philosopher, 282 De Montcalm–Grozon, Louis–Joseph (1712–1759), Marquis de Montcalm, 164n1 Denham, John (1614/15–1669), poet, 603, 635, 775n221 Dennis, John (1658–1734), critic, 429, 446, 465, 598, 707–15, 740, 775, 781 De Robethon, Jean (1660–1722), Huguenot court official, 711 Descartes, René (1596–1650), philosopher, 330 De Scudery, Georges (1601–1667), poet, 376n3 De Silhouette, Étienne (1709–1767), minister of finance, 747 De Thou, Jacques Auguste (1553–1617), historian, 34, 134n3 De Urreta, Luis (1570–1636), Spanish scholar, 170n6 Devonport, Devonshire, xviii De Witt, Johann (1625–1672), statesman, 134 Digby, Kenelm (1603–1665), courtier, natural phi­ losopher, 61, 89, 592 Diodati, Charles (1609?–1638), friend of Milton, 645

804 I N D E X

Diodati, Giovanni (1576–1649), professor of divinity, 650 Diogenes the Cynic (c. 412/403–c. 324/321 BCE), 201n88 Diogenes Laertius (third century CE), intellectual historian, 26n2, 60n2, 206n104, 349n3 Dionysius of Halicarnassus (fl. c. 20 BCE), critic, 143 Dionysius of Heraclea (the Renegade) (c. 328– 248 BCE), Stoic philosopher, 26n2 Dionysius “Periegetes” (fl. C. 130 CE), geographer and writer, 19n8, 126 Dobson, William (fl. 134–1750), translator, 749 Dr. Faustus Necromancer, 279n5 Dodd, William (1729–1777), preacher and author, 297 Dodsley, Robert (1704–1764), publisher, 376n2, 755 Donne, John (1572–1631), poet and divine, 608, 612–18, 637 Downes, John (d. 1712?), theatre prompter and his­ torian, 598 Dress Act, The (1746), 490 Dryden, John (1631–1700), poet, playwright, and critic, 57, 81, 83, 393, 462, 466, 467n12, 601, 629, 699, 705, 723n74, 735, 782, 788 Duck, Stephen (1705?–1756), poet, 570 Duckett, George (1684–1732), politician and au­ thor, 734 Du Puy, Pierre (1582–1651), scholar, 134n3 Du Resnel du Bellay, Françoise (1692–1761), trans­ lator, 711, 747 D’Urfey, Thomas (1653–1723), playwright, 279 Edict of Nantes (1598), 338 Edward III, King of England (1312–1377), 269 Edwards, Thomas (d. 1757), critic, 453n92 Elections Act, The (1770), 342n21 Eliot, Thomas Stearns (1888–1965), poet and critic, 281 Elizabeth, Czarina (1709–1762), 330 Elizabeth I, Queen of England (1533–1603), 267, 315, 440n49, 751n151 Ellwood, Thomas (1639–1713), Quaker, 669, 674, 677 Elphinston, James (1721–1809), Scots Educator, 3 Elys, Edmund (1633x5–1708), clergyman and writer, 623n122 Epictetus (first and second century CE), philoso­ pher, 10n6, 201nn88, 92, 584

Erasmus, Desiderius (1466–1536), scholar and theologian, 153n4 Eusden, Laurence (1688–1730), poet, 556, 556 Eustathius of Thessalonica (d. 1194?), critic, 719 Felton, Henry (1679–1740), clergyman and critic, 642 Fenton, Elijah (1683–1730), poet, 643, 662n92, 716, 719 Fermor, Arabella (1690–1738), Pope’s Belinda, 713 Fielding, Henry (1707–1754), judge, novelist, 118n1 Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de (1657–1737), author, 125n4 Fortescue, William (1687–1749), Master of the Rolls, 737 Foster, James (1697–1753), Baptist minister, 560 Fox, Henry, first Baron Holland (1705–1774), 754 Francini, Antonio (fl. 1638), friend of Milton, 648 Francis, Philip (1708–1773), translator, 6 Frazer, Simon, eleventh Lord Lovat (1667?–1747), 487 Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707–1751), 291 French and Indian War. See Seven Years’ War Friedrich II (the Great) (1712–1786), King of Prus­ sia, 330, 365 Furetière, Antoine (1619–1688), encyclopedist, 389 Galilei, Galileo (b. 1564), astronomer, 286 Gardiner, Stephen (c. 1495–1555), Bishop of Win­ chester, 440 Garrick, David (1717–1779), actor, xiv, 17n17, 277n1, 278, 408n29, 456n105 Garth, Samuel (1660/61–1719), poet, 728 Gay, John (1685–1732), poet and dramatist, 732n88, 742, 757n177 Gentleman’s Magazine xiv, 1, 313, 336n5, 420n2, 494n51, 540n65, 544n76, 540n65, 544n76, 557n96, 563n108, 570n122, 581n136, 792n10 Gerard, Charles, second Earl of Macclesfield (c. 1659–1701), soldier, 522 Geoffrey of Monmouth (1100–1155?), historian, 465n2 George I, King of the United Kingdom (1660– 1727), 711 George II, King of the United Kingdom (1683– 1760), 274, 327 George III, King of the United Kingdom (1738– 1820), xvii, 313, 337n7, 793 Gerard, Charles, second Earl of Macclesfield, 522 German language, 401

INDEX 805

Germanicus. See Julius Caesar, Germanicus Gibson, Edmund (1669–1748), Bishop of London, 560 Gill, Alexander (1564–1635), grammarian, 644 Glorious Revolution (1688–89), 676 Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?–1774), author, 215n129 Goodwin, John (c.1594–1665), republican clergy­ man, 667 Gordon Riots (1780), 313 Gove, Philip (1902–1972), lexicographer, 374 Gray, Thomas (1716–1771), poet and scholar, 520, 791–800 Greek Anthology, 12n1, 16n1, 22n2, 68n2, 89n3 Gregory, David (1696–1767), Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, 679n151 Grey, Zachary (1688–1766), editor, 453 Griffith, Matthew (c.1599–1665), royalist clergy­ man, 666 Grotius, Hugo (1583–1645), scholar, 33, 636, 648 Guardian, The, 715n55, 762n193 Guy of Warwick, 441 Haddon, Walter (1514/15–1571), jurist, 440, 644 Hale, Mathew (1609–1676), jurist, 73n6, 135n9 Hall, Joseph (1574–1656), Bishop of Norwich and satirist, 652, 789 Halsey, Anne (d.1760), wife of Richard Temple, 792 Hamilton, Anthony (1644/6–1719), courtier and author, 711 Hammond, Henry (1605–1660), theologian, 399 Hampton, James (1721–1778), translator, 644 Hancock, Coleburn (d. 1783), glassworks owner, 567n117 Hanmer, Thomas (1677–1746), editor, 451 Harley, Edward (1689–1741), second Earl of Oxford, book collector, xv, 744 Harley, Robert, first Earl of Oxford (1661–1724), politician, 285, 716, 735n99 Harrington, James (1611–1677), republican author, 666 Harte, Walter (1709–1774), poet, 716 Hartlib, Samuel (c. 1600–1662), educator, 646, 669 Heath, Benjamin (1704–1766), scholar, 453n92 Heminge, John (1566–1630), actor and editor, 430n18 Henley, John “Orator” (1692–1756), 269n22, 587 Henrietta Maria, Queen of England (1609–1669), consort of Charles I, 594n20

Henry IV, King of France (1533–1610), 316 Henry V, King of England (1386–1422), 270 Henry VIII, King of England (1491–1547), 284, 315 Herbert, George (1593–1633), divine and poet, 744 Hereford Infirmary, 297 Hervey, John, Baron (1696–1743), politician, 754 Hierocles (Hercules), 49, 156n1, 210n88 Hill, Aaron (1685–1750), poet, 525n21, 532–33, 741 Hill, G. B. (1835–1903), editor, 203n97, 247n197 Hippocrates (fifth century BCE), physician, 58 Hitch, Charles (d. 1764), bookseller, 272n38 Hoadly, Benjamin (1676–1761), Bishop of Winches­ ter, 526 Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679), philosopher, 658, 660n85 Holder, William (1616–1698), grammarian, 516 Hollinshed, Raphael (1529–1580), historian, 465n2 Hollis, Thomas (1720–1774), radical politician, 333 Holste, Lucas (1596–1661), 649 Homer, 4n3, 132, 148, 151, 186n53, 426n5, 452, 479, 651, 703n5, 719, 723, 730, 732, 758n182, 782, 790n275 Hooke, Nathaniel (d.1763), translator, 749 Hooker, Richard (1554–1600), theologian, 400, 409, 416, 711 Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE), poet, 93n3, 782n240; Ars Poetica, 4n4, 80, 97, 734n95, 798n24; Epistles, 119n5, 398n6, 403n21, 426n3; Odes, 777, 796n19; Satires, 6n11, 112, 619n107, 624n128, 641n191, 733, 796n19, 798 Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey (1516/17–1547), 701 Howard, Sir Robert (1626–1698), playwright and politician, 430n20 Howell, James (1594?–1666), author, 744 Huet, Pierre Daniel (1630–1721), scholar, 457 Hunt, Edward, boxer, 279 Hurd, Richard (1720–1808), Bishop of Worcester and editor, 637 Hussars, 329 Hyde, Edward, first Earl of Clarendon (1609– 1674), 285, 636–37 Inch Kenneth, 506 Inveraray Castle, 513 James I, King of England, James VI of Scotland (1566–1625), 317, 471n6, 531n38, 658n76 James II, King of England, James VII of Scotland (1633–1701), 291, 327, 643 Jansson, Jan Jr. (1588–1664), cartographer, 234n171

806 I N D E X

Jenyns, Soame (1704–1787), writer and member of Parliament, 359–65, 786n256 Jermyn, Henry, Earl of St. Albans (1605–1684), 594 Jervas, Charles (1675–1739), artist, 715 John Neve’s Almanack, 497n57 Johnson, Elizabeth (“Tetty”) Porter (née Ford), wife to SJ, xvi, 352, 367, 417n57 Johnson, Nathaniel (d. 1737), brother of SJ, 211 Johnson, Samuel (1709–1784): Life of, xiii–xiv; pension, 2, 313; self–quotation, 408n29; Works: Adventurer, 2, 174n16, 186n52, 198n80, 207n108; An Account of the Harleian Library, 220n143; A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage, 313; Debates in Parliament xv; diaries, 175n22, 313, 367, 713n42; Dictionary of the English Language, xv, xvi, xviii, xix, xxix, 1, 101n3, 175n19, 225n149, 227n155, 243nn189, 191, 368, 423, 469, 519, 720n69, 765n202; “Dis­ sertation on the Epitaphs written by Pope,” 790n275; Harleian Catalogue xv, 758n182; Idler, xvii, 2, 174n15, 177n26, 202n95, 206n107, 219n138, 313, 764n200; “Introduction to the Political State of Great Britain,” 565n113; Irene, xiv, 265; Jests of Hierocles, 427; Journey to the Western Islands, xix, 189n62; letters, xxix, 190n66, 198n81, 212n124, 214n126, 227n152, 354n6, 375, 469, 478n24, 504n69, 515n87, 519, 758n181, 771n215; “Life of Confucius,” 222n146; “Life of Hermann Boerhaave,” 298n2, 529n31; Life of Richard Savage, xv, xx; Lives of the Poets, xix–xx, xxix, 25n6, 84n1, 117n8, 148n3, 186n53, 187n60, 210n115, 237n175, 449n83, 500n63, 545n80, 620n112, 623n124, 631n153, 685n175, 695n211, 751n154, 761n190, 789n271, 795n17, 799n27; London, xiv–xv, 213n125, 265, 281, 313, 445n65, 547n85, 577n132; Messia, 776n226; The Patriot, 313; Plan of a Dictionary, 695n210; proposal to edit Poliziano, xiv, 1; Plays of Shakespeare, xiii, xviii, xix, 135n9, 219n140, 241n184, 248n199, 278, 279n4, 469, 519, 693n201, 720n69; Rambler, xvi, xxix, 1–2, 167, 172n12, 187n57, 190n65, 194n70, 199n82, 200n86, 202n93, 206n103, 210n117, 211n119, 212n124, 219n141, 223n147, 228n156, 237n175, 243n187, 248n198, 261n9, 265, 424, 428n13, 519, 651n42, 685n174, 689n185, 742n121, 748n138, 775n219, 778n233; Rasselas, xvii, 85n4, 265, 689n183; Review of Soame Jenyns, 786n256; Sermons, 199n83, 212n124, 297; Taxation No Tyranny, xviii–xix, 340n17; Taxation no

Tyranny, xviii–xix; translation of Jean–Pierre de Crousaz’s Commentary on Mr. Pope’s Principles of Morality, or Essay on Man, xv; Vanity of Human Wishes, 243n192, 265; Vinerian Law Lectures, xviii, xxix; Voyage to Abyssinia, xiv Jones, Bridget (1713–1780), 578 Jonson, Ben (1572–1637), playwright, 278, 442, 467n12, 700 Jortin, John (1698–1770), critic, 719 Josephus, Flavius (b. 37/38 CE), historian and Jew­ ish priest, 214n128 Julius Caesar, Germanicus (15/16BCE–19CE), gen­ eral, 782 Junius, Franciscus (1591–1677), lexicographer, 401, 402n16 Justinian (c. 482–565 CE), emperor, 79n1 Juvenal (b. 60 CE), Roman satirist, xv, 20n1, 119n7, 265–74, 298, 313, 742, 764, 785n248 Juxon, William, Bishop of London (1582–1663), 657 Kaaba, 186n54 Kennett, White (1660–1728), Bishop of Peterbor­ ough, 731 Ker, John (d. 1741), Scottish poet, 658n80 King George’s War, 327 Knight, (Ellis) Cornelia (1757–1837), author, 237n135 Knight, Joseph, freed slave, 310 Knox, John (c. 1514–1572), religious reformer, 473 Kyd, Thomas (1558–1594), playwright, 446n70 Kyrle, John (1634–1724), philanthropist, 750 La Tour d’Auvergne, Henri, Vicomte de Turenne (1611–1675), 28 Lade, Sir John (b. 1769), gentleman, 293 Laud, William (1573–1645), Archbishop of Canter­ bury, 286 Laurence, Thomas (1711–1783), physician, 355n6 Law, William (1686–1761), devotional writer, 408n29 Le Bossu, René (1631–1680), critic, 689 Le Courayer, Pierre François (1681–1776), theolo­ gian, 414n43 Le Grand, Antoine (d. 1699), translator, 201n91 Leman, William (1685–1741), 576 Lennox, Charlotte (1720–1804), author, 408n29 Lesley, John (1527–1596), Bishop of Ross, 512 L’Estrange, Roger (1616–1704), writer, 666 Levet, Robert (1705–1782), doctor, xvii, xx, 295 Lewis, Francis (fl. 1750), translator, 33

INDEX 807

Lewis, Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707–1751), 291n40, 563 Ley, James, first Earl of Marlborough (1550–1629), 654n58 Ley, Lady Margaret (b. 1608?), friend of Milton, 654n58 Lichfield, Staffordshire, xiv, xvii Lily, William (1468–1522/3), grammarian, 440 Linacre, Thomas (1460–1524), physician, 440 Lintot, Bernard (1675–1736), publisher, 716n58, 743 Lintot, Henry (1703–1758), publisher, 743 Lipsius, Justus (1547–1606), scholar, 460 Literary Magazine, The, xvii–xviii, 313, 315n1, 322n1 Littleton, Adam (1627–1694), philologist, 662n90 Lobo, Jerónimo (1595–1678), Jesuit missionary, 169n1, 197n78, 204n100 Locke, John (1632–1704), philosopher, 85, 88n1, 143n5, 240n183 Locke, William (1732–1810), critic, 701n235 Lodge, Thomas (1558–1625), author and physician, 441n53 London: Aldersgate Street, 650; Bunhill Fields, 669; Charing Cross, 534; Doctor’s Common, 522; Fleet Street, xv, 117n9; Fleet (the), 575; Gatehouse, 535; Gray’s Inn, 652; Holborn, 522; London Bridge, 742; Mile–end, 338; Middle Temple Lane xvii; the Mint, 766; the Monu­ ment, 751; Newgate, 535; Richmond, 534; St. Giles, 115n2; Savoy, 597; Strand (the), 266; Threadneedle Street, 115n2; Tyburn, 274 Longinus (pseudo–) (first century CE), critic, 87n9 Louis XV (1715–1774), King of France, 159, 378 Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (1621–1686), 137n4 Loveday, Robert (1620?–1656), translator, 744 Lowther, James, Earl of Lonsdale (1736–1802), 793 Lucan (Marcus Lucanus Annaeus) (39–65 CE), 47, 103, 148, 439n47, 597n34, 642, 692 Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) (c. 94–55 or 51 BCE), 201n90, 713n43 Lucullus, Lucius Licinius (d. 57/6 BCE), 437 Ludolf, Hiob (1624–1704), German orientalist, 169n1, 180n38 Lydiat, Thomas (1572–1646), mathematician, 286 Lyly, John (1554–1606), author, 25n7 Lyttelton, George, Lord (1709–1773), politician and poet, 754 Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469–1527), politician, 85, 414

Maclaurin, John (1734–1806), jurist, 516n89 Macpherson, James (1736–1796), poet, 502n65, 504n69, 505n70 Macpherson, Martin (1743–1812), minister, 481 Madden, Samuel Molyneux (1686–1765), writer and benefactor, 400n12 Maecenas, Gaius (d. 8 BCE), Roman patron of arts, 93n3 Mahomet, tightrope walker, 279 Mallet, David (1705?–1765), writer, 721, 761 Mallory, Thomas (1415x18–1471), author, 440n51 Manicheanism, 360 Manilius, Marcus (first century CE), astronomer and poet, 411n38 Manso, Giovanni Battista (1569–1645), writer, 649 Marcellinus, Ammianus (fourth century CE), his­ torian, 185 Maria Theresa (1717–1780), Habsburg ruler, 288 Marino, Giambattista (1569–1625), poet, 603 Marshall, Stephen (1594?–1655), dissenting clergy­ man, 652n48 Martial (Marcus Varlierius Martialis) (38x41– 101x104 CE), poet, 641n190 Martin, Martin (d. 1718), travel writer, 469, 497 Marvell, Andrew (1621–1678), poet and politician, 667 Mary Queen of Scots (1542–1587), 471 Mason, William (1725–1797), poet and garden de­ signer, 792, 798 Maty, Matthew (1718–1776), librarian and journal­ ist, 721 May, Thomas (c. 1596–1650), translator, 597, 642 Medea, 436 Melanchthon, Philip (1497–1560), theologian, 134 Meleager, 604 Menander (344/3–292/1 BCE), author of comedies, 782 Metrodorus Epigrammaticus (sixth century CE), anthologist, 90 Miller, James (1704–1744), playwright, 569 Milton, Christopher (1615–1693), brother of the poet, 643 Milton, John (1608–1674), poet, 70, 123, 124, 131n12, 146, 152, 205n102, 219n139, 286, 302, 332n12, 335, 343, 364, 380n17, 381–82, 384, 390, 391, 394, 398, 416, 520, 599n43, 608n71, 637, 643–702 Minsheu, John (1559/60–1627), lexicographer, 385n41

808 I N D E X

Minshull, Elizabeth (1638–1727), third wife of Milton, 668 A Miscellany of Poems, ed. John Husbands (1731), 1 Mithridates VI (12–63 BCE), King of Pontus, 437 Montagu, Charles, Earl of Halifax (1661–1715), 728 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley (1689–1762), poet, diarist, and travel writer, 534, 754n162, 765 Montaigne, Michel de (1533–1592), 2, 137, 152n3 More, Sir Thomas (1478–1535), author, cleric, 301, 440 Morhoff, Daniel George (1631–1691), scholar, 744 Morice, Sir William (1602–1676), politician, 667 Mu’allaqat, 186n54 Mudge, Zachariah (1694–1769), clergyman, xviii Murphy, Arthur (1727–1805), author and actor, 418, 465 Murray, James A. H. (1837–1915), lexicographer, 374 Murray, William, Lord Chief Justice and first Earl of Mansfield (1705–1793), 749 Nairne, William, Lord Dunsinane (1731–1811), judge, 471n2 Nash, Beau (1674–1761), impresario, 583 Newcomen, Matthew (1610?–1669), independent clergyman, 652n48 New Criticism, xiii Newgate, Bristol, 583 Newton, Isaac (1642–1727), physicist, 13n4 Newton, Thomas (1704–1782), Bishop of Bristol and editor, 636n175, 683 North, Sir Thomas (1535–1603?), translator, 441 Norton, Thomas (1530x32–1584), playwright, 446n69 Ogilby, John (1600–1676), translator, 703 Oldfield, Anne (1683–1730), actor, 530 Oracle of Delphi, 22n2 Orpheus, mythical poet, 289 Osborne, Thomas (1704?–1767), bookseller, 758 Ossian, fictional Gaelic bard, 502n65 Overbury, Sir Thomas (1581–1613), courtier, 531 Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (43 BCE–17 CE), poet, 57n3, 105, 642n194, 647, 703n4, 778n231, 781–82 Oxford University, xvi Page, Sir Francis (1660/61?–1742), “the hanging judge,” 536

Paget, Nathan, physician (1615?–1679), 668 Palladio, Andrea (1508–1580), architect, 42 Palladium, 283 Il Palmerino d’Inghilterra, 441 Panciroli, Guido (1523–1599), antiquarian, 624 Paracelsus (Philippus Theophrastus Aureolis Bom­ bastus von Hohenheim) (1493–1541), chemist, 771 Parnell, Thomas (1679–1718), poet, 719 Patrick, Samuel (1684–1748), lexicographer, 765 Pausanias (fl. c. 150 CE), historian, 704n7 Peace of Utrecht (1711), 714 Peck, Francis (1692–1743), antiquarian, 599 Pembroke College, Oxford, xiv, 1 Pennant, Thomas (1726–1798), naturalist and travel writer, 485n37, 511 Pepperell, Colonel William (1696–1759), soldier, 327 Perry, John (1669/70–1733), engineer, 113n5 Persius (Flaccus, Aulus Persius) (34–62 CE), poet, 22 Petrarcha, Francesco (1304–1374), scholar, poet, 593 Petronius Arbiter (d. 66 CE), fiction writer, 427n10, 782n240 Phaedrus (15 BCE–50CE), fabulist, 60, 147 Phidias (fifth century BCE), sculptor, 421 Philip II, King of Spain and Portugal (1527–1598), 316 Philips, Ambrose (1674–1749), poet, 708 Philips, John (1676–1713), poet, 679 Philips, Katherine (née Fowler) (1632–1664), poet, 744 Phillips, Charles Claudius (d. 1732), violinist, 277 Phillips, Edward (1630–c. 1696), lexicographer, 380n15, 404, 652, 654n57, 668n110, 671, 670 Phillips, John (1631–1706?), nephew of Milton, 660n85 Pindar (c. 518–446 BCE), poet, 594 Piozzi, Gabriel Mario (1740–1809), musician, hus­ band of Hester Thrale, xx Piozzi, Hester Lynch Thrale (1741–1821), writer, xviii, xix, xx, 167–68, 211n121, 227, 254n2, 293, 469, 478n24, 515n87, 721n73, 758n181 Pitt, Christopher (1699–1748), translator, 157n3 Pitt, William, the elder (1708–1778), prime minis­ ter, xv, 159–60 Plain Dealer, The, 525n21, 526n22, 527n28, 533 Plato (fifth century BCE), philosopher, 349n7, 394n73, 592n9

INDEX 809

Plautus (254–184 BCE), playwright, 443 Pliny the Elder (23/24–79 CE), natural historian, 119n6, 159, 223n148 Pliny the Younger (61–c. 112 CE), writer, 30, 131, 459n110 Plutarch (46–119 CE), biographer, 4n6, 4n7, 55n1 Pole, Reginald (1500–1558), Archbishop of Canter­ bury, 440 Poliziano (Angelo Ambrogini) (1454–1494), poet, 1, 644 Pontano, Giovanni Giovano (1426–1503), poet and humanist, 54, 119n4 Pope, Alexander (1689–1744), poet, xv, xvi, 78n7, 121n8, 123, 128, 129, 143, 146, 219n138, 266, 336n5, 360–63, 373, 384, 390, 393, 394, 428, 433n28, 443, 448n78, 449, 450, 459, 520, 543nn71–72, 574n126, 576n128, 577n131, 586n147, 587nn148–49, 592n6, 601, 623n123, 689n185, 703–790 Posidippus of Pella (third century BCE), 89n3 Powell, John (1705–1769), Swansea barrister, 578 Powell, Mary (1625–1652), first wife of Milton, 654 Preceptor, The, 219n137 Price, Sir John (1502?–1555), grammarian, 502n67 Prideaux, Humphrey (1648–1724), theologian, 477 Prior, Matthew (1664–1721), poet and statesman, 714, 749, 787 Pyrrhus of Epirus (329–272 BCE), king, 30n3 Pythagoras (sixth century BCE), philosopher, 49, 425 Quebec Act (1774), 337 Quintilian (fl. 68 CE), rhetorician, 14n7, 386, 400n12, 692 Rackett, Magdalen Pope, half-­sister to Pope, 703 Radcliffe Camera, Oxford, 285 Raleigh, Sir Walter (1554–1618), explorer, xiii, 409 Ralph, James (d.1762), poet, 738 Ramus, Petrus (1552–1572), philosopher and edu­ cational reformer, 144 Rapin, Nicolas (1535–1608), magistrate, poet, 125n4, 629n148 Rapin, René (1621–1687), writer, 629n148 Ray, John (1627–1705), theologian, scientist, 113n3 Review, The, 1 Reynolds, Sir Joshua (1723–1792), painter, xviii Richardson, Jonathan, the elder (1667–1745), painter and author, 591, 667, 668n111, 670n120, 679

Richardson, Jonathan, the younger (1694–1771), printer and author, 759 Richardson, Samuel (1689–1761), printer, pub­ lisher, author, xvii, 17n3, 408n29 Rigault, Nicolas (1577–1654), scholar, 134n3 Robertson, William (1721–1793), historian, 516n89 Robinson, Jacob (d.1759), publisher, 748n142 Roscommon, Wentworth Dillon, Earl of (1637– 1685), poet, 734n95 Rowe, Nicholas (1674–1718), playwright, 384, 444, 448 Rowland, John (1606?–1680), clergyman, 660n85 Ruffhead, Owen (1723–1769), biographer, 705n9, 712, 759 Rundle, Thomas (1687/8–1743), Bishop of Derry, 560n101 Rymer, Thomas (1643–1713), critic, 429, 431, 629 Sackville, Charles, Earl of Middlesex (1711–1769), 738 Sackville, Lionel Cranfield, first Duke of Dorset (1688–1765), 530 Sackville, Thomas (1536–1608), first Earl of Dorset, 446n69 Sallust (Gaius Sallustius Crispus) (86–35 BCE), his­ torian, 134, 350n5 Salmasius, Claudius (Claude Saumaise) (1588– 1653), 460n115, 658–59 Salsilli, Giocanni (fl. 1638), 648n29 Salusbury, Hester Maria (1709–1773), mother of Hester Thrale Piozzi, 254n4 Salvini, Anton Maria (1653–1729), hellenist, 782 Sandys, George (1578–1644), translator, 642, 703 Sannazaro, Jacopo (1457–1530), poet, 125, 623 Sarbieweski, Casimir (1595–1640), poet, 627 Sardanapalus (seventh century BCE), ruler, 71 Sarpi, Paolo (1552–1623), clergyman and statesman, xv, 414 Sarum Manual (1554), 392n65 Saturnalia, 335 Saunders, William (b. 1715?), clergyman, 581 Savage, Richard, fourth Earl Rivers (1654–1712), 522 Savage, Richard (1697–1743), poet, 521–90, 738 Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1160–c. 1220), Danish histo­ rian, 441n54 Scaliger, Joseph Justus (1540–1609), scholar, xiv, 130, 153, 374, 417, 419–20, 460, 636 Scaliger, Julius Caesar (1484–1558), scholar, 119n4, 130n9, 153n4, 619

810 I N D E X

Scarborough, Sir Charles (1615–1694), physician, 595 Scholasticism, 412 Sedley, Catherine (1657–1717), Countess of Dorchester, 291 Selvaggi, Matteo (David Codner), English Bene­ dictine, 648n29 Seneca (Annaeus Seneca, the younger) (c. 4 BCE– 65 CE), writer, 174n16, 200n87 Sergius Catilina, Lucius (Catiline) (d. 62 BCE), Roman conspirator, 134, 349 Servius (fourth century CE), grammarian, 144n6 Settle, Elkanah (1648–1724), dramatist, 117 Seven Years’ War, xvii, 297, 313, 485, 506 Severn River, 273 Seymour, Frances (née Thynne), Duchess of Somerset (1699–1754), patron and poet, 539 Shakespeare, William (1564–1616), xiii, xviii, 36, 148, 219, 241, 278, 382, 390, 419–70, 507n75, 720n69, 735, 799n26 Siculus, Diodorus (c. 90–c. 30 BCE), historian, 71 Sidney, Sir Philip (1554–1586), courtier and poet, xvi, 409, 433, 466 Simpson, Joseph (1721–1768), author, 17n3 Skinner, Stephen (1623–1667), lexicographer, 401 Smith, Sir Thomas (1513–1577), hellenist, 440 Smollett, James (d.1775), brother of Tobias, 514 Smollett, Tobias (1721–1771), writer, 118n1, 320n18, 514 Smythe, James Moore, born James Moore (1702– 1734), playwright, 785 Socrates (fifth century BCE), philosopher, 201n88, 651 Solon (b. 638 BCE), ruler, 290 Sortes Virgiliana, 595 Southcote, Thomas (1670–1748), Catholic priest, 750 Spanheim, Frederick (1600–1649), professor of divinity, 650 Spectator, 1, 153, 711, 778n230 Spence, Joseph (1699–1768), anecdotist, 394n74, 716n59, 717n63, 728n75, 730n82, 732n89, 737, 750n149, 760n187, 761n188 Spenser, Edmund (1552–1599?), poet, 129, 131n12, 152, 409 Spon, Jacob (1647–1685), scholar, 509 Sprat, Thomas (1635–1713), Bishop of Rochester, 591, 595–96, 599–600, 622, 679 Spurstow, William (1605–1666), independent clergyman, 652n48

St. Anthony the Great, monk (c. 251–356 CE), 229 St. David (500–589?), patron saint of Wales, 266 St. John, Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke (b. 1678) 359–60, 563, 721, 735n99, 745, 761–62 St. Lucia, 327 Stamp Act (1765), 340n17 Stanhope, George (1660–1728), clergyman, trans­ lator, 201nn88, 92 Stanhope, Phillip Dormer, fourth Earl of Chester­ field (1694–1773), 373, 376, 378, 382n28, 384n38 Statius, Publius Papinius (c. 50–83 CE), poet, 705 Steele, Sir Richard (1672–1729), playwright and essayist, 527, 533n44, 711, 776 Steevens, George (1736–1800), scholar and editor, 721n73 Stoics, 32n5 Stonhewer, Richard (1728?–1809), friend of Gray, 795n16 Strahan, George (1744–1824), minister, 367, 371n9 Stuart, Charles Edward (Bonnie Prince Charlie) (1720–1788), 282n4, 327 Stuart, John, third Earl of Bute (1713–1792), prime minister, xvii, 337–38, 793 Suckling, Sir John (1609–1641?), poet, 430n20, 598, 603, 744n129 Suetonius (Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus) (c. 70–130 CE), historian, 122n10, 748n138 Swift, Jonathan (1667–1745), writer, xv, 290, 415, 719n68, 745, 750, 765n205, 768–69, 789, 796n20 Talbot, Catherine (1721–1770), writer, 17 Talbot, Charles (1685–1737), Lord Chamberlain, 560n101 Tantalus, 41 Tartars, 329 Tasso, Torquato (1544–1595), poet, 634–35, 649, 694n207 Tate, Nahum (1652–1715), playwright, 465 Tatler, The, 1, 711n38 Taverner, Edward (a.k.a. John Bannister) (d. 1745), tutor, 703 Taylor, John (1711–1788), clergyman, 343, 352 Temple, Richard, first Viscount Cobham (1675– 1749), 751, 792n8 Temple, William (1628–1699), diplomat, 134n6, 706, 709n27 Terence (fl. 160s BCE), playwright, 333, 443n58, 600n46, 782

INDEX 811

Thales of Miletus (b. 624 BCE), sage, 266 Theobald, Lewis (1688–1744), playwright and edi­ tor, 450, 685, 735 Theocritus (third century BCE), poet, 127 Theseus, legendary king of Athens, 201n88 Thirlby, Styan (1691–1753), scholar, 719 Thomas, Elizabeth (1677–1731), poet, 707 Thomson, James (1700–1748), poet, 560 Thoulier d’Olivet, Pierre–Joseph (1682–1768), aca­ demician, 393n70 Thrale, Henry (1728/9–1781), brewer, politician, xix, 167, 335 Thucydides (fifth century BCE), historian, 4n5 Tickell, Thomas (1685–1740), poet and editor, 125n4, 127n3, 128n4, 130n9, 134, 138, 732 Titus (Titus Flavius Vespasianus), emperor (d. 81 CE), 214 Toland, John (1670–1722), deist, 666, 671, 682n163 Tonson, Jacob, the elder (1655/56–1736), publisher, 675 Tonson, Jacob, the younger (1714–1767), 683 Treaty of Aix-­la-­Chapelle (1748), 325n9 Treaty of Limerick (1690), 338n10 Treaty of Utrecht (1713), 318n13, 714 Trent River, 273, 285 Trinity College, Cambridge, 777n228 Trissino, Gian Giorgio (1478–1550), poet, 701 Trumbull, William (1639–1716), diplomat, 706 Turner, William (1653–1701), clergyman, 703 Turpin, Lancelot, Comte de Crissé et de Sanzay (1716–1793), soldier, 331 Tyers, Thomas (1726–1787), writer, 703 Tyrwhitt, Thomas (1730–1786), scholar and critic, 383n34 Union of Utrecht (1579), 316n6 Universal Chronicle, The, 2 Universal Visiter, The, 790n275 Upton, John (1707–1760), critic, 447n71, 453 Usher, James (1581–1656), Archbishop of Armagh, 652n49 Valdés, Alfonso de (1490–1532), humanist, 54 Vane, Anne (1705–1736), mistress of Frederick, Prince of Wales, 291 Vida, Marco Girolamo (c. 1485–1566), critic, 141, 144, 156 Villiers, George, second Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687), 269, 285, 318

Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) (70–19 BCE), poet, 57n4, 93n3, 127–30, 144n6, 149, 152, 186n53, 376, 439, 462, 595, 631, 671–72, 765n203, 776n226, 778n231, 782, 785n250 Voltaire (François–Marie Arouet de) (1694–1778), 379, 429, 431, 439, 442, 670, 762n193 Waller, Edmund (1606–1687), poet, 603, 775n221 Wallis, John (1616–1703), grammarian and mathe­ matician, 516 Walmesley, Gilbert (1680–1751), registrar, 417n57 Walpole, Horace, fourth Earl of Orford (1717– 1797), politician and author, 791 Walpole, Robert (1676–1745), prime minister, 266, 268, 284n11, 313, 545, 551n88, 572, 755, 791n3 Walsh, William (1662–1708), poet and critic, 707, 744 Walton, Brian (1600–1661), biblicist, 716n60 Walton, Izaac (1593–1683), biographer, 744n129 Warburton, William (1698–1779), Bishop of Gloucester and critic, 448–49, 451, 711, 745, 748, 762, 793 Wars of the Roses (1455–85), 643 Warton, Joseph (1722–1800), poet and critic, 782n241, 790n274 Watts, Isaac (1674–1748), minister, writer, and poet, 789 Webster, Noah (1758–1843), lexicographer, 374 Wentworth, Thomas, first Earl of Strafford (1593– 1641), 285 Wesley, John (1703–1791), minister, 333 West, Richard (1716–1742), poet, 791 Wharton, Thomas (1648–1715), politician, 545n79 Wheler, George (1651–1724), travel writer, 509 Whitehead, Paul (1710–1774), poet, 755 Whitehead, William (1715–1785), poet laureate, 793 Wilkes, John (1725–1797), politician, 337–38 Wilkins, Bishop John (1614–1672), scientist, 177n27, 179n32 Wilks, Robert (c.1665–1732), theater manager, 527, 529 William III, King of England (1650–1702), 291, 338 Williams, Anna (1706–1783), writer and member of SJ’s household, xvii, xx, 167 Wilmot, John, second Earl of Rochester (1647– 1680), 705 Wolfe, James (1727–1759), soldier, 160n7, 164n1 Wollaston, William (1660–1724), theologian, 585

812 I N D E X

Wolsey, Cardinal Thomas (1472–1530), lord chan­ cellor, 284 Wood, Anthony à (1632–1695), biographer, 591, 596, 597n35, 599, 655, 670n119 Woodward, John (1665/8–1728), antiquarian, 757n177 Wotton, Henry (1568–1639), diplomat and writer, 620, 648 Wycherly, William (1641–1716), playwright, 707

Yonge, William, fourth Baronet (c. 1693–1755), politician, 384n38 Yorke, Philip, first Earl of Hardwicke (1690–1764), lord chancellor, 561 Young, Edward (1683–1765), poet, xx, 764 Young, Thomas (1587?–1685), Milton’s tutor, 644, 652n48 Zeno of Citium (third century BCE), Stoic philoso­ pher, 26n1, 206n104

Xerxes (519–465 BCE), Persian ruler, 288, 414

INDEX 813

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W o r d s G l o ss e d wi t h D e f i n i t i o n s f r o m J o h n s o n ’ s Dic t i o n a r y , fourth edition (1773)

backsword, 679n154 barbarous, 428n12 bashaw, 204n98 bile, 366n26 blast, 170n4 blind, 378n8 brinded, 485n36 bulk, 567n116 buxom, 796n18

casuist, 48n4, 61n4, 215n131 catastrophe, 430n19 cession, 323n4 chace, 165n4 chaise, 472n7 chance, 108n5 closet, 443n62 clown, 330n2 cognizable, 345n1 collator, 449n84 collect, 217n132, 252n209 colour, 121n9 comedy, 80n2 commission, 310n2 commodious, 592n5 compendious, 449n79 compose, 173n14 conceit, 435n34 condescension, 87n8 condition, 226n150 conserve, 242n185 convenience, 226n151 converse, 248n200 conversion, 371n9 cony, 193n68 correspondence, 319n15 countenance, 210n114 custom, 425n3

cachexy, 380n20 calenture, 437n41 candour, 139n2, 211n122, 433n27, 699n226 cant, 386n42 casuality, 429n16

dark, 148n3 decrepitude, 187n58 desert, 5n9, 324n6 dignity, 196n75 dinner, 139n1

abruption, 355n7, 624n127 accident, 714n46 accommodation, 185n48 adamant, 432n24 added, 14n6 admiration, 76n4, 184n45 adventitious, 521n2 ague, 365n23 airy, 8n1, 209n113, 262n10 allay, 211n120 analogy, 386n43 anon, 171n10 apathy, 32n7 ardour, 14n7 arrive, 389n53 article, 113n4 auditory, 200n85 avocation, 48n5

815

discover, 172n13, 237n177 discovery, 197n77 disgust, 176n23, 253n210 dogmatical, 92n2 domestick, 180n37 dun, 148n3 ease, 243n187 eligible, 349n6 ellops, 382n26 elogy, 787n261 embroidery, 25n8 emersion, 237n178 emulation, 100n2, 456n104 encumbrance, 108n4 enthusiasm, 205n101 enthusiastick, 188n61 episode, 691n194 epithalamium, 117n7 epithet, 638n183 erratick, 232n167 evidence, 499n59 evolution, 330n6 evolve, 434n32 exility, 602n55 explode, 757n178 fable, 427n8 fabric, 432n23 familiar, 214n127 farm, 268n17 fatal, 175n20 fatally, 212n123 flagitious, 69n4, 73n5 flambeau, 273n42 fly, 779n234 fossile, 733n94 fright, 196n74 frigid, 14n6 generous, 688n179 genius, 400n9 grate, 176n24 gross, 354n4 gross, 499n60 herald, 389n51 hippopotamus, 233n169 horsecourser, 403n20 humour, 172n11

816

hydrostaticks, 651n41 hypostasis, 381n21 idea, 252n206 illiterate, 415n45 illustration, 455n101 image, 199n84 imbecility, 175n21, 263n11, 753n159 impassive, 252n207 indiscerptible, 252n208 infest, 765n204 insinuate, 209n112 instillation, 34n2 intelligency, 593n14 intemperature, 93n4 jakes, 78n7 janissary, 209n111 laurel, 378n9 leader, 545n79 lenient, 32n6 lenitive, 99n2 lesser, 393n68 leveret, 162n3 levity, 180n34 liberal, 16n2 life, 692n198 literature, 182n41, 236n173, 440n50 luxury, 171n9 machine, 118n3 magnanimity, 330n3 marasmus, 381n23 materialist, 251n205 meat, 231n162, 256n6 mellow, 390n56 meteor, 186n56 mind, 251n204 mine, 193n69 national, 346n2, 500n62 natural, 403n19 negociate, 182n42 nice, 699n225 nymph, 275n3 obsequiousness, 227n154 oeconomical, 427n7 oeconomy, 568n119

WORDS GLOSSED WITH DEFINITIONS

offend, 197n76 officious, 232n165, 295n1, 731n85 pace, 170n7 particular, 757n179 parts, 365n24 passenger, 232n167 passion, 10n5 pastoral, 127n2 pathetick, 157n5, 602n54, 695n209 patron, 139n3, 376n6 peculation, 594n19 peep, 148n3 pension, 268n14 penthouse, 308n3 periodical, 180n36 peripneumony, 380n20 perseverance, 206n105 perturbation, 193n67 philosopher, 380n14, 403n19 physick, 381n22 physiological, 651n40 pioneer, 397n2 policy, 190n64, 409n33 political, 68n3 pompous, 220n144, 260n8 popular, 208n109 portion, 175n18 pravity, 694n206 probatory, 249n202 prominence, 177n25 province, 210n116 punctuality, 232n164

satellite, 380n19 savanna, 164n2 scale, 361n11 scenic, 280n8 school, 86n5 science, 183n43, 220n142, 285n21, 379n13, 397n1 scruple, 15n8, 247n196 sensitive, 234n172 sentiment, 635n171 set, 488n42 shine, 303n3 shore, 269n26 sinistrous, 157n4 soul, 251n204 specious, 65n1, 430n17 speculation, 179n30 spoil, 181n39 stanza, 641n192 stay, 245n194 stipulation, 323n7 stock-­jobber, 24n5 straggler, 195n71 stricture, 456n103 subaltern, 34n3 sublimate, 693n199 sublime, 237n176 subtle, 170n5, 175n29 sufficiency, 709n27 suffrage, 2217n133 support, 180n2 surprised, 39n1

rank, 43n7, 331n8 recollect, 240n182, 245n195 recreate, 438n43 remonstrate, 40n1 resolution, 41n2 result, 779n234 retirement, 227n153 revision, 426n2 riot, 204n99 rover, 229n158

tenuity, 179n31 termagant, 259n7 terrific, 547n84 terrour, 195n72 texture, 798n25 theorick, 359n1 thick, 148n3 tide-­waiter, 115n3 topick, 8n3 tract, 409n35 traffick, 682n164 transcendental, 187n59 truth, 243n188 tumour, 434n31 tympany, 365n22

salubrity, 72n3 sanguinary, 92n1

vacation, 236n174 vagrant, 232n166, 455n100

quality, 242n186 quibble, 435n35



WORDS GLOSSED WITH DEFINITIONS

817

vicissitude, 171n8 virtuoso, 365n21 vitious, 618n106 voluntary, 729n79 voluptuous, 197n79 voluptuousness, 29n5 vulgar, 115n1, 691n190, 783n246

818

wanton, 8n3 wild, 175n17 wind, 737n108 wit, 14n5, 600n49 wonderful, 67n1 work, 108n6 worser, 393n69

WORDS GLOSSED WITH DEFINITIONS