صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

stopped! We reckon Johnson's "talent of silence" to be among his great and too rare gifts. Where there is nothing farther to be done, there shall nothing farther be said: like his own poor blind Welshwoman, he accomplished somewhat, and also "endured fifty years of wretchedness with unshaken fortitude." How grim was Life to him; a sick Prison-house and Doubting-castle! "His great business," he would profess," was to escape from himself." Yet towards all this he has taken his position and resolution; can dismiss it all “with frigid indifference, having little to hope or to fear." Friends are stupid and pusillanimous and parsimonious; "wearied of his stay, yet offended at his departure:" it is the manner of the world. "By popular delusion," remarks he with a gigantic calmness, "illiterate writers will rise into renown:" it is portion of the History of English Literature; a perennial thing, this same popular delusion; and will-alter the character of the Language.

out, and examined with microscopes by friend and foe; yet was there no Lie found in him. His Doings and Writings are not shows but performances: you may weigh them in the balance, and they will stand weight. Not a line, not a sentence is dishonestly done, is other than it pretends to be. Alas! and he wrote not out of inward inspiration, but to earn his wages: and with that grand perennial tide of "popular delusion" flowing by; in whose waters he nevertheless refused to fish, to whose rich oyster-beds the dive was too muddy for him. Observe, again, with what innate hatred of Cant, he takes for himself, and offers to others the lowest possible view of his business, which he followed with such nobleness. Motive for writing he had none, as he often said, but money; and yet he wrote so. Into the region of Poetic Art he indeed never rose; there was no ideal without him avowing itself in his work: the nobler was that unavowed ideal which lay within him, and commanded, saying, Closely connected with this quality of Valour, Work out thy Artisanship in the spirit of an partly as springing from it, partly as protected Artist! They who talk loudest about the digby it, are the more recognisable qualities of❘nity of Art, and fancy that they too are Artistic Truthfulness in word and thought, and Hones-guild-brethren, and of the Celestials,-let them ty in action. There is a reciprocity of in- consider well what manner of man this was, fluence here: for as the realizing of Truthfulness and Honesty is the Life-light and great aim of Valour, so without Valour they cannot, in anywise, be realized. Now, in spite of all practical shortcomings, no one that sees into the significance of Johnson, will say that his prime object was not Truth. In conversation, doubtless, you may observe him, on occasion, fighting as if for victory;-and must pardon these ebulliences of a oareless hour, which were not without temptation and provocation. Remark likewise two things; that such prizearguings were ever.on merely superficial debat able questions; and then that they were argued generally by the fair laws of battle, and logic-fence, by one cunning in that same. If their purpose was excusable, their effect was harmless, perhaps beneficial: that of taming noisy mediocrity, and showing it another side of a debatable matter; to see both sides of which was, for the first time, to see the Truth of it. In his Writings themselves, are errors enough, crabbed prepossessions enough, yet these also of a quite extraneous and accidental nature; nowhere a wilful shutting of the eyes to the Truth. Nay, is there not everywhere a heartfelt discernment, singular, almost admirable, if we consider through what confused conflicting lights and hallucinations it had to De attained, of the highest everlasting Truth, and beginning of all Truths: this, namely, that man is ever, and even in the age of Wilkes and Whitfield, a Revelation of God to man; and lives, moves, and has his being in Truth only; is either true, or, in strict speech, is not at all?

Quite spotless, on the other hand, is Johnson's love of Truth, if we look at it as expressed in Practice, as what we have named Honesty of action. "Clear your mind of Cant;" clear it, throw Cant utterly away: such was his emphatic, repeated precept; and did not he himself faithfully conform to it? The Life of this man has been, as it were, turned inside

who felt himself to be only a hired day-labourer. A labourer that was worthy of his hire; that has laboured not as an eye-servant, but as one found faithful! Neither was Johnson in those days perhaps wholly a unique. Time was when, for money, you might have ware: and needed not, in all departments, in that of the Epic Poem, in that of the Blacking Bottle, to rest content with the mere persuasion that you had ware. It was a happier time. But as yet the seventh Apocalyptic Bladder (of PUFFERY) had not been rent open,-to whirl and grind, as in a West-Indian Tornado, all earthly trades and things into wreck, and dust, and consummation, and regeneration. Be it quickly, since it must be !

That Mercy can dwell only with Valour, is an old sentiment or proposition; which, in Johnson, again receives confirmation. Few men on record have had a more merciful, tenderly affectionate nature than old Samuel. He was called the Bear; and did indeed too often look, and roar, like one; being forced to it in his own defence: yet within that shaggy exterior of his, there beat a heart warm as a mother's, soft as a little child's. Nay generally, his very roaring was but the anger of affection: the rage of a Bear, if you will; but of a Bear bereaved of her whelps. Touch his Religion, glance at the Church of England, or the Divine Right; and he was upon you! These things were his Symbols of all that was good, and precious for men; his very Ark of the Covenant: whoso laid hand on them tore asunder his heart of hearts Not out of hatred to the opponent, but of love to the thing opposed, did Johnson grow cruel, fiercely contradictory: this is an important distinction; never to be forgotten in our censure of his conversational outrages. But observe also with what humanity, what openness of love, he can attach himself to all things: to a blind old woman, to a Doctor Levett, to a Cat "Hodge." "His thoughts in the latter part of his life were

frequently employed on his deceased friends; he often muttered these or such-like sentences: "Poor man! and then he died." How he 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.

great emotion of tenderness, the same hopes. We kissed and parted; I humbly hope, to meet again, and to part no more."

Tears trickling down the granite rock: a soft sweil 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:

"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 specta

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

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 gar-cle, amid the " rainy weather, and the sneers," den." 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 inci-thee for one day,-how savage, diabolic, was dent, 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:"

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, unre sponsive for ever.

"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. That this so keen-loving, soft-trembling "I desired all to withdraw; then told her Affectionateness, the inmost essence of his that we were to part for ever; that as Chris-being, must have looked forth, in one form or tians, 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.

"I then kissed her. She told me that to part was the greatest pain she had ever felt, and that she hoped we should meet again in a better place. I expressed with swelled eyes, and

another, through Johnson's whole character, practical and intellectual, modifying both, is not to be doubted. Yet through what singula distortions and superstitions, moping melancholies, blind habits, whims about "entering with the right foot," and "touching every post as he walked along;" and all the other mad chaotic lumber of a brain that, with sun-clear intellect, hovered for ever on the verge of in 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 Loving ness, 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 doubt ful." 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. Conider with what force early-imbibed opinions

[ocr errors]

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 recollec tions: 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 Darham;" should see nothing in the great Frederick but "Voltaire's lackey;" in Voltaire himself but a man acerrimi ingenii, paucarum l'erarum: 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

[blocks in formation]

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,

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-may remain undecided. 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.]

Ix the obituary of these days stands one article of quite peculiar import; the time, the place, and particulars of which will have to be often repeated, and re-written, and continue in remembrance many centuries: this, namely, that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died at Weimar, on the 22d March, 1832. It was about eleven in the morning; "he expired," 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."

A beautiful death; like that of a soldier found faithful at his post, and in the cold hand his arms still grasped! The Poet's last words are a greeting of the new-awakened earth; his last movement is to work at his appointed task. Beautiful: what we might call a Classic, sacred death; if it were not rather an Elijah-translation,-in a chariot, not of fire 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

must have clung to a soul of p
Those evil-famed Prejudices
Jacobitism, Church-of-Englar
the Scotch, belief in Witch
what were they but the
well-doing, well-meaning
men in that day?
Father's hearth; ro
fires" of native Sta
his growth and str
they were hallow
tions: to part
heart's blood.
of Affection,
of Prejudic
to himsel

Melar

Johnso
these

looked forth; unrecognisable to all but the
most observant! Accordingly it was not re-
cognised; Johnson passed not for a fine nature,
but for a dull, almost brutal one. Might not,
for example, the first-fruit of such a Loving-
ness, coupled with his quick Insight, have
been expected to be a peculiarly courteous
demeanour as man among men? In John-
son'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 morn-
ing 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 ther
can see the spirit of true Politeness, only Y
shining through a strange medium. Thus t
again, in his apartments, at one time, there
were unfortunately no chairs. "A gentlemar
who frequently visited him whilst writing h
Idlers, constantly found him at his desk, sit
on one with three legs; and on rising fre
he remarked that Johnson never for
defect; but would either hold it in his
place it with great composure aga
support; taking no notice of its in
to his visitor,”—who meanwhile,
sat upon folios, or in the sart
"It was remarkable in Johns
Miss Reynolds, (“Renny dea
ternal circumstances ever
make any apology, or to
of their existence. W
effect of philosophic pr
notion of his respectin
ful." That it was, f
genuine Politeness
the Pharisaical Br
would suffer cry
for soup: but
of a man, tha
feels his ow
patriarchia
such as J
sudden c
his Kin

it now have!

Polite

atter

M

her

fi

110

its

us,

t all,

⚫ over ; some theless to comhout reThere were not, ; of what ,," mean; oughts on lated into at imperfect

pher, "is a comTime; in the death nity is seen looking ith such a sublimity here ad heart, it is not unnatural .ew earnestness before and beK, what space in those years and computed Time, this man with his

y may influence; what relation to the d of change and mortality, which the arthly name Life, he who is even now called to the Immortals has borne and may bear.

118 Goethe, it is commonly said, made a new his era in Literature; a Poetic era began with ess and him, the end or ulterior tendencies of which appointed are yet nowise generally visible. This com measure mon saying is a true one, and true with a far and a course deeper meaning than, to the most, it conveys the whole Were the Poet but a sweet sound and singer, else could we solacing the ear of the idle with pleasant songs, she should be and the new Poet one who could sing his idle, ere to depart, "hav-| pleasant song, to a new air, we should account him a small matter, and his performance small. But this man, it is not unknown to many, was a Poet in such a sense as the late genera tions have witnessed no other; as it is, in this generation, a kind of distinction to believe in Poetry, so is the the existence of, in the possibility of. The rtual sense. Goethe's true Poet is ever, as of old, the Seer; whose

[ocr errors]

given him to may say of him ather, was like the down. For inis the eye and re

ve it, is well represented eye has been gifted to discern the godlike mys a solar Day. Beautifully tery of God's universe, and decipher some sun, gorgeous in the red new lines of its celestial writing; we can still

[ocr errors]

the spectres and sickly call him a Vates and Seer; for he sees into this which there were enough greatest of secrets "the open secret;" hidden sg benignant in his noon-day things become clear; how the future (both triumphant through the up- resting on Eternity) is but another phasis of

done.

and now, mark also how he sets! the present; thereby are his words in very anbetungsvoll! "So dies a truth prophetic; what he has spoken shall be worshipped." when the inanimate, material sun It begins now to be everywhere surmised disappeared, it will happen that that the real Force, which in this world all gaze into the still glowing West; things must obey, is Insight, Spiritual Vision, se great, pale, motionless clouds, and Determination. Th: Thought is parent he ovalsses or curtains, to close the flame- of the Deed, nay, is living soul of it, and last Segoe wihin; and then, in that death-pause and continual, as well as first mover of it; is obe Day, an unspeakable feeling will come the foundation, and beginning, and essence, wes it is as if the poor sounds of Time, therefore, of man's whole existence here be hammerings of tired Labour on his an- low. In this sense, it has been said, the woRD hose voices of simple men, had become of man (the uttered thoughts of man) is still and supernatural; as if in listening, we | a magic formula, whereby he rules the world. them "mingle with the ever-pealing Do not the winds and waters, and all tumultu old Eternity." In such moments the ous powers, inanimate and animate, obey him? of Life lie opener to us; mysterious A poor, quite mechanical, Magician speaks

eveld hear

ngs fit over the soul; Life itself seems ho- and fire-winged ships cross the ocean at his

onderful, and fearful. How much more

bidding. Or mark, above all, that" raging of

« السابقةمتابعة »