Tears trickling down the granite rock: a soft swell of Pity springs within! Still more tragical is this other scene: "Johnson mentioned that he could not in general accuse himself of having been an undutiful son. "Once indeed," said he, "I was disobedient: I refused to attend my father to Uttoxeter market. Pride was the source of that refusal, and the remembrance of it was painful. A few years ago I desired to atone for this fault."But by what method?-What method was now possible? Hear it; the words are again given as his own, though here evidently by a less capable reporter: frequently employed on his deceased friends; | great emotion of tenderness, the same hopes. he often muttered these or such-like sentences: We kissed and parted; I humbly hope, to meet "Poor man! and then he died." How he again, and to part no more." patiently converts his poor home into a Lazaretto; endures, for long years, the contradiction of the miserable and unreasonable; with him unconnected, save that they had no other to yield them refuge! Generous old man! Worldly possession he has little; yet of this he gives freely; from his own hard-earned shilling, the half-pence for the poor, that "waited his coming out," are not withheld: the poor "waited the coming out" of one not quite so poor! A Sterne can write sentimentalities on Dead Asses: Johnson has a rough voice; but he finds the wretched Daughter of Vice fallen down in the streets; carries her home, on his own shoulders, and like a good Samaritan, gives help to the help-needing, worthy or unworthy. Ought not Charity, even in that sense, to cover a multitude of Sins? No Penny-a-week Committee-Lady, no manager of Soup-Kitchens, dancer at Charity Balls, was this rugged, stern-visaged man: but where, in all England, could there have been found another soul so full of Pity, a hand so heavenlike bounteous as his? The widow's mite, we know, was greater than all the other gifts. Perhaps it is this divine feeling of Affection, throughout manifested, that principally attracts us towards Johnson. A true brother of men is he; and filial lover of the Earth; who, with little bright spots of Attachment," where lives and works some loved one," has beautified "this rough solitary Earth into a peopled garden." Litchfield, with its mostly dull and limited inhabitants, is to the last one of the sunny islets for him: Salve magna parens! Or read those Letters on his Mother's death: what a genuine solemn grief and pity lies recorded there; a looking back into the Past, unspeakably mournful, unspeakably tender. And yet calm, sublime; for he must now act, not look: his venerated Mother has been taken from him; but he must now write a Rasselas to defray her interment! Again in this little incident, recorded in his Book of Devotion, are not the tones of sacred Sorrow and Greatness deeper than in many a blank-verse Tragedy; as, indeed, "the fifth act of a Tragedy" (though unrhymed) does "lie in every death-bed, were it a peasant's, and of straw:" "Sunday, October 18, 1767. Yesterday, 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. 66 Madam, I beg your pardon for the abruptness of my departure in the morning, but I was compelled to do it by conscience. Fifty years ago, Madam, on this day, I committed a breach of filial piety. My father had been in the habit of attending Uttoxeter market, and opening a stall there for the sale of his Books. Confined by indisposition, he desired me, that day, to go and attend the stall in his place. My pride prevented me; I gave my father a refusal. And now to-day I have been at Uttoxeter; I went into the market, at the time of business, uncovered my head, and stood with it bare, for an hour, on the spot where my father's stall used to stand. In contrition I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory.” Who does not figure to himself this spectacle, amid the "rainy weather, and the sneers," or wonder, "of the by-standers?" The memory of old Michael Johnson, rising from the far distance; sad-beckoning in the "moonlight of memory:" how he had toiled faithfully hither and thither; patiently among the lowest of the low; been buffetted and beaten down, yet ever risen again, ever tried it anew-And oh! when the wearied old man, as Bookseller, or Hawker, or Tinker, or whatsoever it was that Fate had reduced him to, begged help of thee for one day,-how savage, diabolic, was that mean Vanity, which answered, No! He sleeps now; after life's fitful fever, he sleeps: but thou, O Merciless, how now wilt thou still the sting of that remembrance?-The picture of Samuel Johnson standing bareheaded in the market there, is one of the grandest and saddest we can paint. Repentance! Repentance!" he proclaims, as with passionate sobs:-but only to the ear of Heaven, if Heaven will give him audience: the earthly ear, and heart, that should have heard it, are now closed, unresponsive for ever. 66 That this so keen-loving, soft-trembling Affectionateness, the inmost essence of his being, must have looked forth, in one form or another, through Johnson's whole character, practical and intellectual, modifying both, is not to be doubted. Yet through what singular distortions and superstitions, moping melancholies, blind habits, whims about "entering with the right foot," and "touching every post "I then kissed her. She told me that to part as he walked along;" and all the other mad was the greatest pain she had ever felt, and chaotic lumber of a brain that, with sun-clear that she hoped we should meet again in a bet-intellect, hovered for ever on the verge of in ter place. I expressed with swelled eyes, and sanity,-must that same inmost essence have looked forth; unrecognisable to all but the most observant! Accordingly it was not recognised; Johnson passed not for a fine nature, but for a dull, almost brutal one. Might not, for example, the first-fruit of such a Lovingness, coupled with his quick Insight, have been expected to be a peculiarly courteous demeanour as man among men? In Johnson's "Politeness," which he often, to the wonder of some, asserted to be great, there was indeed somewhat that needed explanation. Nevertheless, if he insisted always on handing lady-visitors to their carriage; though with the certainty of collecting a mob of gazers in Fleet Street, as might well be, the beau having on, by way of court dress, "his rusty brown morning suit, a pair of old shoes for slippers, a little shrivelled wig sticking on the top of his head, and the sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging loose:"-in all this we can see the spirit of true Politeness, only shining through a strange medium. Thus again, in his apartments, at one time, there were unfortunately no chairs. "A gentleman who frequently visited him whilst writing his Idlers, constantly found him at his desk, sitting on one with three legs; and on rising from it, he remarked that Johnson never forgot its defect; but would either hold it in his hand, or place it with great composure against some support; taking no notice of its imperfection to his visitor," who meanwhile, we suppose, sat upon folios, or in the sartorial fashion. 'It was remarkable in Johnson," continues Miss Reynolds, ("Renny dear,") "that no external circumstances ever prompted him to make any apology, or to seem even sensible of their existence. Whether this was the effect of philosophic pride, or of some partial notion of his respecting high breeding, is doubtful." That it was, for one thing, the effect of genuine Politeness, is nowise doubtful. Not of the Pharisaical Brummellian Politeness, which would suffer crucifixion rather than ask twice for soup: but the noble universal Politeness of a man, that knows the dignity of men, and feels his own; such as may be seen in the patriarchial bearing of an Indian Sachem; such as Johnson himself exhibited, when a sudden chance brought him into dialogue with his King. To us, with our view of the man, it nowise appears "strange" that he should have boasted himself cunning in the laws of Politeness; nor "stranger still," habitually attentive to practise them. . More legibly is this influence of the Loving heart to be traced in his intellectual character. What, indeed, is the beginning of intellect, the first inducement to the exercise thereof, but attraction towards somewhat, affection for it? Thus too, who ever saw, or will see, any true talent, not to speak of genius, the foundation of which is not goodness, love? From Johnson's strength of Affection, we deduce many of his intellectual peculiarities; especially that threatening array of perversions, known under the name of "Johnson's Prejudices." Looking well into the root from which these sprung, we have long ceased to view them with hostility, can pardon and reverently pity them. Conder with what force early-imbibed opinions must have clung to a soul of this Affection. Those evil-famed Prejudices of his, that Jacobitism, Church-of-Englandism, hatred of the Scotch, belief in Witches, and such like, what were they but the ordinary beliefs of well-doing, well-meaning provincial Englishmen in that day? First gathered by his Father's hearth; round the kind "country fires" of native Staffordshire; they grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength: they were hallowed by fondest sacred recollections: to part with them was parting with his heart's blood. If the man who has no strength of Affection, strength of Belief, have no strength of Prejudice, let him thank Heaven for it, but to himself take small thanks. Melancholy it was, indeed, that the noble Johnson could not work himself loose from these adhesions; that he could only purify them, and wear them with some nobleness. Yet let us understand how they grew out from the very centre of his being: nay, moreover, how they came to cohere in him with what formed the business and worth of his Life, the sum of his whole Spiritual Endeavour. For it is on the same ground that he became throughout an Edifier and Repairer, not, as the others of his make were, a Puller-down; that in an age of universal Skepticism, England was still to produce its Believer. Mark too his candour even here; while a Dr. Adams, with placid surprise, asks, "Have we not evidence enough of the soul's immortality?" Johnson answers, "I wish for more." But the truth is, in Prejudice, as in all things, Johnson was the product of England; one of those good yeomen whose limbs were made in England: alas, the last of such Invincibles, their day being now done! His culture is wholly English; that not of a Thinker but of a "Scholar:" his interests are wholly English; he sees and knows nothing but England; he is the John Bull of Spiritual Europe: let him live, love him, as he was and could not but be! Pitiable it is, no doubt, that a Samuel Johnson must confute Hume's irreligious Philosophy by some "story from a Clergyman of the Bishopric of Durham;" should see nothing in the great Frederick but "Voltaire's lackey;" in Voltaire himself but a man acerrimi ingenii, paucarum literarum; in Rousseau but one worthy to be hanged; and in the universal, long-prepared, inevitable Tendency of European Thought but a greensick milkmaid's crotchet of (for variety's sake) "milking the Bull." Our good, dear John! Observe too what it is that he sees in the city of Paris: no feeblest glimpse of those D'Alemberts and Diderots, or of the strange questionable work they did; solely some Benedictine Priests, to talk kitchen-latin with them about Editiones Principes. “Monsheer Nongtongpaw!" -Our dear, foolish John; yet is there a lion's heart within him!-Pitiable all these things were, we say; yet nowise inexcusable; nay, as basis or as foil to much else that was in Johnson, almost venerable. Ought we not, indeed, to honour England, and English Institutions and Way of Life, that they could still equip such a man; could furnish him in heart and head to be a Samuel Johnson, and yet to love them, and unyieldingly fight for them? What truth and living vigour must such Institutions once have had, when, in the middle of the Eighteenth century, there was still enough left in them for this! deed, that they were earnest men, and had subdued their wild world into a kind of temporary home, and safe dwelling. Both were, by principle and habit, Stoics: yet Johnson with the greater merit, for he alone had very much to triumph over; farther, he alone ennobled his Stoicism into Devotion. To Johnson Life was as a Prison, to be endured with heroic faith: to Hume it was little more than a foolish Bartholomew-Fair Show-booth, with the foolish crowdings and elbowings of which it was not worth while to quarrel; the whole would break up, and be at liberty, so soon. Both realized the highest task of Manhood, that of living like men; each died not unfitly, in his way: Hume as one, with factitious, half-false gayety, taking leave of what was itself wholly but a Lie: Johnson as one, with awe-struck, yet resolute and piously expectant heart, taking leave of a Reality, to enter a Reality still higher. Johnson had the harder problem of it, from first to last: whether, with some hesitation, we can admit that he was intrinsically the better-gifted, may remain undecided. It is worthy of note that, in our little British Isle, the two grand Antagonisms of Europe should have stood imbodied, under their very highest concentration, in two men produced simultaneously among ourselves. Samuel Johnson and David Hume, as was observed, were children of the same year: through life they were spectators of the same Life-movement; often inhabitants of the same city. Greater contrast, in all things, between two great men, could not be. Hume, well-born, competently provided for, whole in body and mind, of his own determination forces a way into Literature: Johnson, poor, moonstruck, diseased, forlorn, is forced into it "with the bayonet of necessity at his back." And what a part did they severally play there! As Johnson became the father of all succeeding Tories; so was Hume the father of all succeeding Whigs, for his own Jacobitism was but an accident, as worthy to be named Prejudice as These two men now rest; the one in Westany of Johnson's. Again, if Johnson's culture minster Abbey here; the other in the Calton was exclusively English; Hume's, in Scotland, Hill Churchyard of Edinburgh. Through Life became European;-for which reason too we they did not meet: as contrasts, “like in unfind his influence spread deeply over all quar-like," love each other; so might they two have ters of Europe, traceable deeply in all speculation, French, German, as well as domestic; while Johnson's name, out of England, is hardly anywhere to be met with. In spiritual stature they are almost equal; both great, among the greatest: yet how unlike in likeness! Hume has the widest methodizing, comprehensive eye; Johnson the keenest for perspicacity and minute detail: so had, perhaps chiefly, their education ordered it. Neither of the two rose into Poetry; yet both to some approximation thereof: Hume to something of an Epic clearness and method, as in his delineation of the Commonwealth Wars; Johnson to many a deep Lyric tone of plaintiveness, and impetuous graceful power, scattered over his fugitive compositions. Both, rather to the general surprise, had a certain rugged Humour shining through their earnestness: the indication, in loved, and communed kindly, had not the terrestrial dross and darkness, that was in them, withstood! One day their spirits, what truth was in each, will be found working, living in harmony and free union, even here below. They were the two half-men of their time: whoso should combine the intrepid Candour, and decisive scientific Clearness of Hume, with the Reverence, the Love, and devout Humility of Johnson, were the whole man of a new time. Till such whole man arrive for us, and the distracted time admit of such, might the heavens but bless poor England with half-men worthy to tie the shoelatchets of these, resembling these even from afar! Be both attentively regarded, let the true Effort of both prosper ;-and for the present, both take our affectionate farewell! DEATH OF GOETHE. NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, 1832.] In the obituary of these days stands one | A beautiful death; like that of a soldier found article of quite peculiar import; the time, the faithful at his post, and in the cold hand his place, and particulars of which will have to arms still grasped! The Poet's last words are be often repeated, and re-written, and continue a greeting of the new-awakened earth; his in remembrance many centuries: this, namely, last movement is to work at his appointed that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died at task. Beautiful: what we might call a ClasWeimar, on the 22d March, 1832. It was sic, sacred death; if it were not rather an about eleven in the morning; "he expired," | Elijah-translation,-in a chariot, not of fire says the record, “without any apparent suffering, having a few minutes previously, called for paper for the purpose of writing, and expressed his delight at the arrival of spring." and terror, but of hope and soft vernal sunbeams! It was at Frankfort on the Mayn, on the 28th of August, 1749, that this man entered the world-and now, gently welcoming the birth-day of his eighty-second spring, he closes his eyes, and takes farewell. So then, our greatest has departed. That melody of life, with its cunning tones, which took captive ear and heart, has gone silent; the heavenly force that dwelt here victorious over so much, is here no longer; thus far, not farther, by speech and by act, shall the wise man utter himself forth. The End! What solemn meaning lies in that sound, as it peals mournfully through the soul, when a living friend has passed away! All now is closed, irrevocable; the changeful life-picture, growing daily into new coherence,. under new touches and hues, has suddenly become completed and unchangeable; there, as it lay, it is dipped, from this moment, in the æther of the Heavens, and shines transfigured, to endure even so for ever, Time and Time's Empire; stern, wide devouring, yet not without their grandeur! The week-day man, who was one of us, has put on the garment of Eternity, and become radiant and triumphant; the present is all at once the past; Hope is suddenly cut away, and only the backward vistas of Memory remain, shone on by a light that proceeds not from this earthly sun. when our sunset was of a living sun; and its bright countenance and shining return to us, not on the morrow, but "no more again, at all, for ever!" In such a scene, silence, as over the mysterious great, is for him that has some feeling thereof, the fittest mood. Nevertheless by silence, the distant is not brought into communion: the feeling of each is without response from the bosom of his brother. There are now, what some years ago there were not, English hearts that know something of what those three words, "Death of Goethe," mean; to such men, among their many thoughts on the event, which are not to be translated into speech, may these few, through that imperfect medium, prove acceptable. "Death," says the Philosopher, "is a commingling of Eternity with Time; in the death of a good man, Eternity is seen looking through Time." With such a sublimity here offered to eye and heart, it is not unnatural to look with new earnestness before and behind, and ask, what space in those years and æons of computed Time, this man with his activity may influence; what relation to the world of change and mortality, which the earthly name Life, he who is even now called to the Immortals has borne and may bear. Goethe, it is commonly said, made a new era in Literature; a Poetic era began with him, the end or ulterior tendencies of which are yet nowise generally visible. This common saying is a true one, and true with a far deeper meaning than, to the most, it conveys Were the Poet but a sweet sound and singer, solacing the ear of the idle with pleasant songs, and the new Poet one who could sing his idle, The death of Goethe, even for the many hearts that personally loved him, is not a thing to be lamented over; is to be viewed, in his own spirit, as a thing full of greatness and sacredness. "For all men it is appointed once to die." To this man the full measure of a man's life had been granted, and a course and task such as to only a few in the whole generations of the world; what else could we hope or require but that now he should be called hence and have leave to depart, "hav-pleasant song, to a new air, we should account ing finished the work that was given him to him a small matter, and his performance do?" If his course, as we may say of him small. But this man, it is not unknown to many, more justly than of any other, was like the was a Poet in such a sense as the late generaSun's, so also was his going down. For in- tions have witnessed no other; as it is, in this deed, as the material Sun is the eye and re-generation, a kind of distinction to believe in vealer of all things, so is Poetry, so is the World-Poet in a spiritual sense. Goethe's life, too, if we examine it, is well represented in that emblem of a solar Day. Beautifully rose our summer sun, gorgeous in the red fervid East, scattering the spectres and sickly damps (of both of which there were enough to scatter)-strong, benignant in his noon-day clearness, walking triumphant through the upper realms; and now, mark also how he sets! So Stirbt ein Held: anbetungsvoll! "So dies a hero; sight to be worshipped." And yet, when the inanimate, material sun has sunk and disappeared, it will happen that we stand to gaze into the still glowing West; and here rise great, pale, motionless clouds, like coulisses or curtains, to close the flametheatre within; and then, in that death-pause of the Day, an unspeakable feeling will come over us; it is as if the poor sounds of Time, those hammerings of tired Labour on his anvils, those voices of simple men, had become awful and supernatural; as if in listening, we could hear them "mingle with the ever-pealing ones of old Eternity." In such moments the secrets of Life lie opener to us; mysterious things flit over the soul; Life itself seems holier, wonderful, and fearful. How much more the existence of, in the possibility of. The true Poet is ever, as of old, the Seer; whose eye has been gifted to discern the godlike mystery of God's universe, and decipher some new lines of its celestial writing; we can still call him a Vutes and Seer; for he sees into this greatest of secrets" the open secret;" hidden things become clear; how the future (both resting on Eternity) is but another phasis of the present; thereby are his words in very truth prophetic; what he has spoken shall be done. It begins now to be everywhere surmised that the real Force, which in this world all things must obey, is Insight, Spiritual Vision, and Determination. The Thought is parent of the Deed, nay, is living soul of it, and last and continual, as well as first mover of it; is the foundation, and beginning, and essence, therefore, of man's whole existence here be low. In this sense, it has been said, the woRD of man (the uttered thoughts of man) is still a magic formula, whereby he rules the world. Do not the winds and waters, and all tumultuous powers, inanimate and animate, obey him? A poor, quite mechanieal, Magician speaksand fire-winged ships cross the ocean at his bidding. Or mark, above all, that" raging of the nations," wholly in contention, despera- | victories were gained and lost, dynasties tion, and dark chaotic fury; how the meek founded and subverted, revolutions accomvoice of a Hebrew Martyr and Redeemer stills plished, constitutions sworn to; and ever the it into order, and a savage Earth becomes "new era" was come, was coming, yet still it kind and beautiful, and the "habitation of came not, but the time continued sick! Alas, horrid cruelty" a temple of peace. The true all these were but spasmodic convulsions of sovereign of the world, who moulds the world the death-sick time; the crisis of cure and relike soft wax, according to his pleasure, is he generation to the time was not there indicated. who lovingly sees into the world; the "inspired The real new era was when a Wise Man came Thinker," whom in these days we name Poet. into the world, with clearness of vision and The true sovereign is the Wise Man. greatness of soul to accomplish this old high enterprise, amid these new difficulties, yet again: A Life of Wisdom. Such a man became, by Heaven's pre-appointment, in very deed, the Redeemer of the time. Did he not bear the curse of the time? He was filled full with its skepticism, bitterness, hollowness, and thousandfold contradictions, till his heart was like to break; but he subdued all this, rose victorious over this, and manifoldly by word and act showed others that come after, how to do the like. Honour to him who first, "through the impassable, paves a road!" Such indeed is the task of every great man; nay, of every good man in one or the other sphere, since goodness is greatness, and the good man, high or humble, is ever a martyr, and a "spiritual hero that ventures forward into the gulf for our deliverance." The gulf into which this man ventured, which he tamed and rendered habitable, was the greatest and most perilous of all, wherein truly all others lie included: The whole distracted Existence of man in an age of unbelief. Whoso lives, whoso with earnest mind studies to live wisely in that mad element, may yet know, perhaps, too well, what an enterprise was here; and for the chosen of our time, who could prevail in that same, have the higher reverence, and a gratitude such as belong to no other. However, as the Moon, which can heave up the Atlantic, sends not in her obedient billows at once, but gradually; and, for example, the Tide, which swells to-day on our shores, and washes every creek, rose in the bosom of the great ocean (astronomers assure us) eight and forty hours ago; and indeed all world-movements, by nature deep, are by nature calm, and flow and swell on wards with a certain majestic slowness-so, too, with the impulse of a Great Man, and the effect he has to manifest on other men. To such an one we may grant some generation or two before the celestial impulse he impressed on the world will universally proclaim itself, and become (like the working of the moon) if still not intelligible, yet palpable, to all men; some generation or two more, wherein it has to grow, and expand, and envelop all things, before it can reach its acme; and thereafter mingling with other movements and new impulses, at length cease to require a specific observation or designation. Longer or shorter such period may be, according to the nature of the impulse itself, and of the elements it works in; according, above all, as the impulse was intrinsically great and deep-reaching, or only wide-spread, superficial, and transient. Thus, if David Hume is at this hour pontiff of the world, and rules most hearts, and guides most tongues, How far he prevailed in it, and by what (the hearts and tongues, even in those that in means, with what endurances and achievevain rebel against him,) there are, nevertheless, ments, will in due season be estimated; those symptoms that his task draws towards com- volumes called Goethe's Works, will receive no pletion; and now in the distance his succes- further addition or alteration; and the record sor becomes visible. On the other hand, we of his whole spiritual Endeavour lies written have seen a Napoleon, like some gunpowder there, were the man or men but ready who force (with which sort he, indeed, was appoint- could read it rightly! A glorious record; ed chiefly to work) explode his whole virtue wherein he that would understand himself and suddenly, and thunder himself out and silent, his environment, and struggles for escape out in a space of five-and-twenty years. While of darkness into light, as for the one thing again, for a man of true greatness, working needful, will long thankfully study. For the with spiritual implements, two centuries is no whole chaotic time, what it has suffered, atuncommon period; nay, on this Earth of ours, tained, and striven after, stands imaged there: there have been men whose impulse had not interpreted, ennobled into poetic clearness. completed its development till after fifteen From the passionate longings and wailings of hundred years, and might, perhaps, be seen "Werter" spoken as from the heart of all still individually subsistent after two thousand. Europe; onwards through the wild unearthly But, as was once written, "though our clock melody of Faust" (like the spirit song of strikes when there is a change from hour to falling worlds;) to that serenely smiling wishour, no hammer in the horologe of time peals dom of "Meisters Lehrjahre," and the "Gerthrough the universe to proclaim that there is man Hafiz,"-what an interval; and all ena change from era to era." The true begin- folded in an ethereal music, as from unknown ning is oftenest unnoticed, and unnoticeable. spheres, harmoniously uniting all! A long Thus do men go wrong in their reckoning; interval; and wide as well as long; for this and grope hither and thither, not knowing where they are, in what course their history runs. Within this last century, for instance, with its wild doings and destroyings, what hope, grounded in miscalculation, ending in disappointment! How many world-famous was a universal man. History, Science, Art, human Activity under every aspect; the laws of light in his "Farbenlehre;" the laws of wild Italian life in his "Benvenuto Cellini;"nothing escaped him, nothing that he did not look into, that he did not see into. Consider |