Jonathan Swift

Johnson’s poetry and prose

Goldsmith belonged to the circle of a writer of still ampler range and outstanding intellect, Samuel Johnson. Pope recognized Johnson’s poetic promise as it was exhibited in London (1738), an invigorating reworking of Juvenal’s third satire as a castigation of the decadence of contemporary Britain. Johnson’s finest poem, The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), also takes its cue from Juvenal, this time his 10th satire. It is a tragic meditation on the pitiful spectacle of human unfulfillment, yet it ends with an urgent prayer of Christian hope.

But, great poet though he was, the lion’s share of Johnson’s formidable energies was expended on prose and on editorial work. From his early years in London, he lived by his pen and gave himself unstintingly to satisfy the booksellers’ demands. Yet he managed to sustain a remarkable coherence of ethical ambition and personal presence throughout his voluminous labours. His twice-weekly essays for The Rambler (1750–52), for instance, consistently show his powers at their fullest stretch, handling an impressive array of literary and moral topics with a scrupulous intellectual gravity and attentiveness. Many of the preoccupations of The Vanity of Human Wishes and the Rambler essays reappear in Rasselas (1759), which catalogues with profound resource the vulnerability of human philosophies of life to humiliation at the hands of life itself. Johnson’s forensic brilliance can be seen in his relentless review of Soame Jenyns’s Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil (1757), which caustically dissects the latter’s complacent attitude to human suffering, and his analytic capacities are evidenced at their height in the successful completion of two major projects, his innovative Dictionary of the English Language (1755) and the great edition of Shakespeare’s plays (1765). The former of these is in some ways his greatest work of literary criticism, for it displays the uses of words by means of illustrations culled from the best writing in English. The latter played a major part in the establishment of Shakespeare as the linchpin of a national literary canon. It should be noted, however, that Johnson’s was but the most critically inspired of a series of major Shakespeare editions in the 18th century. These include editions by Nicholas Rowe (1709), Pope (1725), Lewis Theobald (1734), Sir Thomas Hanmer (1744), and William Warburton (1747). Others, by Edward Capell (1768), George Steevens (1773), and Edmund Malone (1790), would follow. Johnson was but one of those helping to form a national literature.



Samuel Johnson's definition of “Oats”

A detail of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755). The definition of “Oats” is often cited as evidence of Johnson's prejudice against Scots.

Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago

Johnson’s last years produced much political writing (including the humanely resonant Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland’s Islands, 1771); the socially and historically alert Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1775; and the consummate Lives of the Poets, 1779–81. The latter was the climax of 40 years’ writing of poetic biographies, including the multifaceted An Account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage (1744). These last lives, covering the period from Cowley to the generation of Gray, show Johnson’s mastery of the biographer’s art of selection and emphasis and (together with the preface and notes to his Shakespeare edition) contain the most provocative critical writing of the century. Although his allegiances lay with Neoclassical assumptions about poetic form and language, his capacity for improvisatory responsiveness to practice that lay outside the prevailing decorums should not be underrated. His final faith, however, in his own creative practice as in his criticism, was that the greatest art eschews unnecessary particulars and aims toward carefully pondered and ambitious generalization. The same creed was eloquently expounded by another member of the Johnson circle, Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his 15 Discourses (delivered to the Royal Academy between 1769 and 1790, but first published collectively in 1797).

The other prime source of Johnson’s fame, his reputation as a conversationalist of epic genius, rests on the detailed testimony of contemporary memorialists including Burney, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Sir John Hawkins. But the key text is James Boswell’s magisterial Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). This combines in unique measure a deep respect for its subject’s ethical probity and resourceful intellect with a far from inevitably complimentary eye for the telling details of his personal habits and deportment. Boswell manifests rich dramatic talent and a precise ear for conversational rhythms in his re-creation and orchestration of the debates that lie at the heart of this great biography. Another dimension of Boswell’s literary talent came to light in the 1920s and ’30s when two separate hoards of unpublished manuscripts were discovered. In these he is his own subject of study. The 18th century had not previously produced much autobiographical writing of the first rank, though the actor and playwright Colley Cibber’s flamboyant Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber (1740) and Cowper’s sombre Memoir (written about 1766, first published in 1816) are two notable exceptions. But the drama of Boswell’s self-observations has a richer texture than either of these. In the London Journal especially (covering 1762–63, first published in 1950), he records the processes of his dealings with others and of his own self-imaginings with a sometimes unnerving frankness and a tough willingness to ask difficult questions of himself.

Boswell narrated his experiences at the same time as, or shortly after, they occurred. Edward Gibbon, on the other hand, taking full advantage of hindsight, left in manuscript at his death six autobiographical fragments, all having much ground in common, but each telling a subtly different version of his life. Though he was in many ways invincibly more reticent than Boswell, Gibbon’s successive explorations of his own history yet form a movingly resolute effort to see the truth clearly. These writings were undertaken after the completion of the great work of his life, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–88). He brought to the latter an untiring dedication in the gathering and assimilation of knowledge, an especial alertness to evidence of human fallibility and failure, and a powerful ordering intelligence supported by a delicate sense of aesthetic coherence. His central theme—that the destruction of the Roman Empire was the joint triumph of barbarism and Christianity—is sustained with formidable ironic resource.

Michael CordnerJohn Mullan