Samuel Johnson (Meynell & Chesterton)/Chapter 17
APPRECIATIONS AND TESTIMONIA
My dear, dear Doctor Johnson! what a charming man you are!—Letter to Miss S. Burney, July 5th, 1778.
The last of the Tories . . . the bravest of the brave. . . . 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. . . . Tears trickling down the granite rock: a soft well of Pity springs within!—Essays.
Johnson in the eighteenth century and as Man of Letters was one of such; and the bravest of the brave. . . . Who so will understand what it is to have a man's heart may find that since the time of John Milton no braver heart had beat in any English bosom than Samuel Johnson now bore.—Essays.
The names of many greater writers are inscribed on the walls of Westminster Abbey; but scarcely anyone lies there whose heart was more acutely responsive during life to the deepest and tenderest human emotions. In visiting that strange gathering of departed heroes and statesmen and philanthropists and poets, there are many whose words and deeds have a far greater influence on our imagination; but there are very few whom, when all has been said, we can love so heartily as Samuel Johnson.—Samuel Johnson.
The best proof that Johnson was really an extraordinary man is that his character, instead of being degraded has, on the whole been decidedly raised by a work (The Life of Boswell) in which all his vices and weaknesses are exposed more unsparingly than they were ever exposed by Churchill or by Kenrick.—Critical Essays.
The characteristic peculiarity of his intellect was the union of great powers with low prejudices. The judgements which Johnson passed on books . . . are the judgements of a strong but enslaved understanding. Within his narrow limits he displayed a vigour and an activity which ought to have enabled him to clear the barrier which confined him.—Critical Essays.
Few men have the gifts of Johnson, who, to great vigour and resource of intellect, when it was fairly roused, united a rare common sense and a conscientious regard for veracity which preserved him from flippancy or extravagance in writing.—Essays.
We now send for his books and after an hour we observe, that whatever the work be, tragedy or dictionary, biography or essay, he always writes in the same style. His phraseology rolls ever in solemn and majestic periods, in which every substantive marches ceremoniously accompanied by its epithet; grand pompous words peal like an organ; every proposition is set forth balanced by a proposition of equal length; thought is developed with the compressed regularity and official splendour of a procession. Classical prose attains its perfection in him, as classical poetry in Pope. Art cannot be more finished or nature more forced. None has confined ideas in straiter compartments; none has given stronger relief to dissertation and proof; none has imposed more despotically on story and dialogue the forms of argumentation and violent declamation. We understand now that an oratorical age would recognize him as a master, and attribute to him in eloquence the mastery which it attributed to Pope in verse.—History of English Literature.
Professor Walter Raleigh
It will be wise to face at once the charge so often brought against these writings, that they are dull. M. Taine, who somehow got hold of the mistaken idea that Johnson's periodical essays are the favourite reading of the English people has lent his support to this charge. . . . This is the greatness of Johnson, that he is greater than his work. He thought of himself as a man rather than as an author; and of literature as a means not as an end in itself.—Six Essays on Johnson.
As a writer of English prose, Johnson has always enjoyed a great albeit somewhat awful reputation. In childish memories he is constrained to be associated with dust and dictionaries and those provoking obstacles to a boy's reading—"long words." The characteristics of Johnson's prose style are colossal good sense, though with a strong sceptical bias, good humour, vigorous language, and movement from point to point which can only be compared to the measured tread of a well-drilled company of soldiers.—Obiter Dicta.
The chief characteristic of Johnson's ethical poetry is the depth of feeling with which he illustrates universal truths by individual examples. . . . Nowhere is the character of Johnson reflected more strongly than in his Prologues. Only a great man would dare to preach morality to a crowded theatre.—History of English Poetry.
I am very much the biographer's humble admirer. His uncommon share of good sense, and his forcible expression, secure to him that tribute from all his readers. He has a penetrating insight into character, and a happy talent of correcting the popular opinion upon all occasions when it is erroneous; and this he does with the boldness of a man who will think for himself, but, at the same time, with a justness of sentiment that convinces us he does not differ from others through affectation, but because he has a sounder judgement. This remark, however, has his narrative for its object, rather than his critical performance. In the latter, I do not always think him just when he departs from the general opinion.—Letter to Rev. W. Unwin, March 21st, 1784.
His treatment of Milton is unmerciful to the last degree. A pensioner is not likely to spare the republican; and the Doctor, in order, I suppose, to convince his royal patron of the sincerity of his monarchical principles has belaboured that great poet's character with the most industrious cruelty.
As a poet, he has treated him with severity enough, and has plucked one or two of the most beautiful feathers out of his Muse's wing, and trampled them under his great foot. He has passed condemnation upon Lycidas. . . .Oh, I could thresh his old jacket, till I made his pension jingle in his pocket.—Letter to Unwin, September 21st, 1779.
Dr. Johnson's very appearance is more familiar to us through portraits and descriptions than that of any other person of past generations. His massive figure still haunts Fleet Street, and he has "stamped his memory upon the remote Hebrides." His personal habits, his tricks of speech, his outlook upon life, all have become part of our national consciousness, and have encouraged both men in the past and men now living to support life with a manlier fortitude and an enlarged hope. The courage and beneficence of his own life, confirmed by the reports of all who knew him best, have justly become a treasured possession of the English race, of whose good points and of whose foibles he was an epitome. His intellect was not unworthy of his other qualities, the strength and weakness of which it reflected with fidelity. His conversation was even more remarkable than his writings, admirable though the best of these were, and has conferred upon him a species of fame which no Englishman shares with him in any considerable degree. The exceptional traits which were combined in his personality have met in the person of Boswell with a delineator unrivalled in patience, dexterity, and dramatic insight. The result has been a portrait of a man of letters more lifelike than that which any other age or nation has bequeathed to us.—Bookman Illustrated History of English Literature.
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