The life and writings of Addison; Samuel Johnson

Front matter

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Contents

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BIBLIOGRAPHY iv

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE \i

Part II TEXT: "Samuel Johnson" 3

NOTES to " Samuel Johnson " 45

INDEX 65

BIBLIOGRAPHY

MACAULAY Text:

Collected Works. Edited by Lady Trevelyan. 8 vols. London, 1866.

Essays (including Addison), History of England, and Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches (including Life of Johnson) in separate volumes, "Popular Edition." Longmans, Green, and Co.

" History of England," in "Everyman's Library." London : John Dent and New York : E. P. Dutton.

Life and Criticism :

Trevelyan, Sir G. O., " Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay."' 2 vols. Longmans, 1876.

Morison, J. C, " Macaulay "(" English Men of Letters"). Macmillan.

Stephen, Leslie, Article "Macaulay" in "Dictionary of National Biography.'/

Gladstone, W. E., "Macaulay" in "The Quarterly Review," vol. cxlii, and in "Gleanings of Past Years," II.

McGregor, "Lord Macaulay." Cambridge University Press, 1901.

Jebb, Sir R. C, "Macaulay, a Lecture." Cambridge University Press, 1900.

ADDISON

Text:

Collected Works. Edited by Tickell. London, 1721. Works. In Bohn's " British Classics." 6 vols. 1856. " The Spectator," in "Everyman's Library." London : Dent and New York : Dutton.

BIBLIOGRAPHY v

" Eighteenth Century Essays.*' Edited by Austin Dobson. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, and Company, 1897.

Life and Criticism :

Aikin, Lucy, " Life of Addison." London, 1843.

Johnson, Samuel, " Addison" in " Lives of the Poets." Edited by Arnold. Macmillan.

Courthope, W. J., "Addison" ("English Men of Letters"). Macmillan.

Stephen, Leslie, Article "Addison," in " Dictionary w National Biography."

Thackeray, W. M., "English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century." London, 1858.

JOHNSON

Text:

Complete Works. Edited by Walesby. 9 vols. Oxford, 1825.

"Letters." Edited by G. Birkbeck Hill. 2 vols. Clarendon Press, 1897.

" Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia." Edited by G. B. Hill. Oxford, 1887.

"Lives of the Poets" (selected). Edited by Matthew Arnold. Macmillan.

Life and Criticism :

Boswell, James, "Life of Johnson." Edited by G. B. Hill. 6 vols. Oxford, 1887.

Stephen, Leslie, "Johnson" ("English Men of Letters"). Macmillan.

Hill, G. B., "Dr. Johnson, His Friends and His Critics." Oxford, 1878.

Macaulay, "Essay on Boswell' s Life of Johnson" in "Edinburgh Review," vol. liv, and in "Essays."

Carlyle, "Boswell's Life of Johnson" in " Fraser's Magazine," 1832, and in "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays."

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Thomas Babington Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, October 25th, 1800; entered the University of Cambridge in 1S18; graduated in 1822; was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge— i.e., one of the sixty masters of the college, with an income of $1,500 a year for seven years— in 1824; called to the bar in 1826; began his long connection with the "Edinburgh Review" in 1825 with the essay on Milton; entered the House of Commons in 1830 in time to take distinguished part in the struggle for parliamentary reform; became Secretary of the Board of Control for India in 1833; went to India in 1834 as legal adviser to the Supreme Council, remained there till 1838, and was the chief author of a new Indian Penal Code; published in 1848 the first two volumes of his "History of England from the Accession of James IP'; Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow in 1849; issued remainder of the "History" in 1855; was raised to the peerage as Baron Macaulay of Rothley in 1857; died at his residence in Kensington. December 28th, 1859; and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Introduction

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

(1800- 1859)

PERHAPS as long- as there has been a political history in this country," says Walter Bagehot, 1 "there have been certain men of a cool, moderate, resolute firmness, not gifted with high imagination, little prone to enthusiastic sentiment, heedless of large theories and speculations, careless of dreamy scepticism, with a clear view of the next step, and a wise intention to take it, a strongconviction that the elements of knowledge are true, and a steady belief that the present world can, and should, be quietly improved. These are the Whigs." Of this type was Thomas Babington Macaulay. And if we add to these qualities a healthy grip on life, a restless vitality, clearness of thought, an enthusiastic love of the world and of humankind as he saw them, and ability to express all these things in vivid, eloquent language, we may see in a measure why Macaulay was during his lifetime the most popular of English writers outside the field of fiction. Even now, fifty years after his death, so much of this popularity remains that we may safely class the "Essays" and the "History of England" among the permanent works of English literature. After the lapse of half a century little remains of mere fashion or accidental value. If people read Macaulay now it is because he gives them something that is worth while. What then, stated briefly, is this "something" that places him with the immortals?

1 One of the keenest and sanest of modern English critics in the fields of Politics and Economics, — author of the best description that we possess of "The English Constitution " as it is.

viii INTRODUCTION

Perhaps it is not far from the truth to say that Macaulay is and will be read largely because of his clearness, his robust sense, and his radiant vitality. He is the sanest, clearest, most interesting of all English historians; and the same general qualities of sanity and clearness, the same attractive gift of seizing the striking, universally interesting features of his hero appear even in his literary essays — such as those contained in this little book. Now it will be noted that we say sane, not boldly imaginative or picturesque ; clear, not profound or philosophic ; interesting, not deeply sympathetic or gifted with insight into subtle motives. It was doubtless partly temperamental, his love for the tangible, his warm admiration for men who do things, his liking for a practical problem rather than 'for dreamy uncertainties and vague aspirations, his yearning for clear-cut lines and finite ideals. But this matter-of-fact tendency may have been partly due to the age in which he lived. For it was peculiarly a time, when according to his temperament it would be possible for a thoughtful mind to go to either of two extremes. The early nineteenth century was full of the impulse of the French Revolution and Rousseau's gospel of nature. Sensitive, high-strung, imaginative, hopeful natures caught the fever of democracy, nature worship and romanticism, and the result was seen in Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, and Keats. But the time was equally one of severe practical problems, and a practical mind might well turn impatiently from the wild visions of the Revolution to the immediate need for clear thinking and hard work. A descendant of Scotch Presbyterian ministers, son of a stern reformer, Macaulay was not of a sensitive, emotional temperament. Adam Smith's investigations into the laws that govern the production, exchange and increase of the wealth of nations were far more apt to interest him than the passionate dreams of Rousseau. The vigorous action, the great social changes, the industrial problems, the crying need for reforms, the storms and calms in the practical world of his time,— these are the

INTRODUCTION ix

things that we must keep in mind when w^ estimate the influence on Macaulay of his education and environment. Men of hard, clear good sense, men of the type of George Canning, Sir Robert Peel, and Macaulay were as truly the product of their age as were Shelley and Byron.

Let us briefly summarize Macaulay's life and the forces that affected it. He was born in the last year of the eighteenth century, the year of Marengo, six years after the close of the Reign of Terror. When he was five years old was fought off Cape Trafalgar the battle that saved England from the imminent danger of invasion. Another year, and the two greatest men in English public life — Pitt and Fox— passed almost together from the scene of their triumphs and their rivalries, leaving their country to struggle on against the gigantic power that was rising with no sign of diminishing vitality across the Channel. The world was a stirring one, and it was of no small events and no small men that the boy would hear talk on all hands as his school-days passed and as his outlook on life grew broader. Even the literary products of those years were dynamic,— alive with the interest of human action and passion. In 1812 appeared the first two cantos of "Childe Harold"; in 1819, the first four cantos of "Don Juan." In 1814 "Waverley" was published. In 1820 came Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound." The notes of exultant action, of romantic joy in love and brave deeds, of stormy passion, almost drowned such quieter, deeper, calmer music as that of Wordsworth. The men who were looking eagerly for the latest news of Napoleon, whose souls were filled with the exhilaration of war and patriotism or the passion of revolt, might find relief in Scott's romances or inspiration in the wild songs of Byron and Shelley. Few could find response in their hearts to the exquisite peace of the "Solitary Reaper" or the "Excursion." Finally, in Macaulay's fifteenth year, came news of the great battle of Waterloo, when the name of Wellington was on the tongue of every man in England, and when the pride of his country's brilliant and hard-earned x INTRODUCTION

victory would fill the boy's soul. Then at last the years of strife were over.

By the time that Macaulay was ready to go to Cambridge England was feeling the hard times that succeeded the long war, and her best men were trying to decide which of her old laws were helpful and which were hindrances in the face of the new problems of the 'age. Steam and the invention of new mechanical devices had wholly changed the conditions of the industrial world. The victory of democracy in Europe and America had introduced new ideas into politics. And the young, openminded, quick-witted and clear-headed student had little difficulty in finding living problems of the utmost importance to attack and try to wisely solve. He was an immense reader, a ready and eager debater, a fluent and vehement speaker, and his wonderful memory gave him an advantage in argument which he used constantly in the vigorous conflicts of tongue and wit characteristic of university life. In 1824 he left Cambridge, and two years later he was called to the bar.

But although in due time he had to take the leading part in drawing up a Penal Code for India, he never gave much attention to the practice of law in England. For he had already begun to make a name for himself in the domain of letters, and little as the essays contributed in these younger days to "Knight's Quarterly Magazine" are read now, they show most unmistakably the unique characteristics of style which every one now associates with his name. Indeed, this "Macaulay Style" had appeared in definite form in a University prize essay on William III. Take this, for example :

' ' Louis was not a great general. He was not a great legislator. But he was, in one sense of the words, a great king. He was a perfect master of all the mysteries of the science of royalty— of all the arts which at once extend power and conciliate popularity— which most advantageously display the merits, or most dexterously conceal the deficiencies, of 'a sovereign. He was surrounded by great men, by victorious

INTRODUCTION xi

commanders, by sagacious statesmen. Yet while he availed himself to the utmost of their services, he never incurred any danger from their rivalry. His was a talisman which extorted the obedience of the proudest and mightiest spirits. The haughty and turbulent warriors whose contests had agitated France during his minority yielded to the irresistible spell, and, like the gigantic slaves of the ring and lamp of Aladdin, labored to decorate and aggrandize a master whom they could have crushed." 1

Compare this, with its rapid movement, its clear-cut antithesis, its crisp concreteness, its luminous and suggestive simile from the Arabian Nights, with such a passage as the following from the essay on Milton, dealing with a totally different subject :

' ' His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial places of the memory give up their dead. Change the structure of the sentence; substitute one synonym for another,, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power; and he who should then hope to conjure with it would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying, ' Open Wheat, ' ' Open Barley,' to the door which obeyed no sound but 'Open Sesame. ' ' '

Here are the same characteristics, with only a slight loss of vivid concretehess resulting from the fact that Macaulay is discussing words instead of men. And this rapid, picturesque, clear-cut, almost staccato style— so brilliant, and yet so lacking in the softer tones — may be paralleled on page after page of the essays on Addison and Johnson. It is the product of an active, keen, practical and clearseeing brain grown to maturity in a time of great deeds,

iTrevelyan "Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay," I., 88-9.

xii INTRODUCTION

strong passions, and acute problems. It was fully formed when Maeaulay left the University, and it never lost the essential characteristics which brought its author such abundant fame. The fascination of both style and point of view then and always was the fascination of daylight. Their defect lay in the inability of a bright, healthy, common-sense, matter-of-fact, keen, and confident mind to see into the softer shades, into the dawns and twilights of life.

In August, 1825, the essay on Milton appeared in the "Edinburgh Review," and the young author at once leaped into fame. From that time on article after article to the end of his life continued to appear in the famous periodical which is now so definitely associated with his name and genius, and his position in the world of letters was assured. In 1830 he was offered a seat in Parliament. He took part with a distinction equalled by few of his colleagues in the great series of debates on the Reform Bill, and when that bill became law in 1832 he might well feel a peculiar pride in his share of the great achievement which went so far towards removing the abuses of the old regime in England. Yet with all the busy life of a parliamentary debater, a valued party leader, a conscientious and painstaking official, 1 a reader of inconceivable range, and a constant writer, he contrived to keep in touch with social life and with the movements of the world. He was a brilliant and easy talker, an open-eyed observer of current events, the possessor of a miraculous memory, 2 and with it all a genial companion, a firm friend, a loving son and brother, and the sunniest and kindest-hearted of men. Such a nature at such a time was not apt to develop either the virtues or the faults of a recluse. The eccentricity and the subtle penetration, the extravagance and the prophetic vision of Carlyle alike escaped him. He

i As Commissioner of Bankruptcy, Secretary of the Board of Control for India, Member of the Supreme Council of India, and, in 1840, Secretary at War

2 For instance— one of many that could be named— he could repeat half of ' ' Paradise Lost ' ' by heart.

INTRODUCTION xiii

was a man of the world. And if we appreciate this we may easily see what characteristics would appeal to him in either writer or man of action. Uncertainty, the interweaving- and conflict of complex motives, vain rebellion against facts, any tendency to dream and philosophize over things that required direct, alert, practical treatment irritated him in a poet or an historian as in a soldier or a statesman. Yet he did not require the continuous strain of seriousness in either writer or man of action. No man knew better than Macaulay how to enjoy himself and throw care aside when the time came to do so. And in both classical writers and in such an English essayist as Addison he enjoyed the lightness of touch, the dainty mockery, the easy play of mind as much as he did the pure diction, the directness, the lack of vain mysticism, and the clearness of* thought. Dreaming for the enjoyment of it he could well appreciate. But in dreams or philosophy when they were in earnest he had little interest. Not that this was earned to an extreme. He loved much great poetry, and poetry involves imagination. But the poetry that he cared about was poetry whose merit lay primarily in music, in majestic diction, in daintiness of touch or stateliness of thought, not in mystic visions or in yearnings for the infinite. He admired Virgil, Dante, and Milton. He cared not at all for Wordsworth, and Browning would have been to him a mere cause for astonishment and contemptuous irritation.

From the death of Milton to the appearance of Wordsworth and Coleridge— that is to say, roughly, during the eighteenth century— English literature possessed in the main precisely the merits that appealed to Maeaulay's mind. Dryden, Pope, Swift, Addison, Steele, Gibbon, all had the qualities of absolute clearness, directness, classic diction, and a certain stately eloquence. King William III. was Macaulay's ideal statesman and man of action, and the men of the age of William III., or those of the succeeding generations who carried on the traditions of that age, had a peculiar charm for him. Among these xiv INTRODUCTION

interpreters of the age of William III. and Queen Anne, Addison is the most lovable, the most cheerful, the writer of purest, most faultless style, and it is not hard to account for Macaulay's almost personal love for him. Among the later writers of the same eighteenth century Samuel Johnson, utterly lacking the sunny, well-balanced nature of Addison, was yet the most powerful literary personality of his age,— a man who hated mere dreams as much as did Macaulay, a man of strong affections, of strong, clear brain, whose merits Macaulay could admire intensely and whose defects as writer and thinker he could easily pardon. In these essays on Addison and Johnson, then, w r e see Macaulay— at least in the matter of literary appreciation and criticism — at his best. To judge him by his dislike of Wordsworth would be unjust and merely negative, for it would emphasize nt>t what he was, but what he was not. But in these two studies the great essayist sets forth the character and work of two great and kindred spirits with that certainty of touch, that uncompromising clearness— the luminous clearness of a Mediterranean landscape— that exhilarating life, that joyous vigor and sanity which we love and admire in him. These are his permanent gifts to English literature and to the world. Would that we could learn from them the cheeriness, the moral health, the goodness and kindness of soul of one of the most admirable and lovable figures in the annals of English literature !

II Macaulay's Personality

"Macaulay's outward man was never better described than in two sentences of Praed's Introduction to Knight's "Quarterly Magazine." 'There came up a short, manly figure, marvellously upright, with a bad neckcloth, and

INTRODUCTION xv

one hand in his waistcoat pocket. Of regular beauty he had little to boast; but in faces where there is an expression of great power, or of great good-humor, or both, you do not regret its absence.' This picture, in which every, touch is correct, tells all that there is to be told. He had a massive head, and features of a powerful and rugged cast; but so constantly lighted up by every joyful and ennobling emotion that it mattered little if, when absolutely quiescent, his face was rather homely than handsome. While conversing at table, no one thought him otherwise than good-looking; but when he rose he was seen to be short and stout in figure. . . . He at all times sat and stood straight, full, and square; . . . He dressed badly, but not cheaply. His clothes, though ill put on, were good."

"Whatever fault might be found with Macaulay's gestures as an orator, his appearance and bearing in conversation were singularly effective. Sitting bolt upright, his hands resting on the arms of his chair or folded over the handle of his walking-stick ; knitting " his great eyebrows if the subject was one that had to be thought out as he went along, or brightening from the forehead downwards when a burst of humor was coming; his massive features and honest glance suited well with the manly, sagacious sentiments which he set forth in his pleasant, sonorous voice, and in his racy and admirably intelligible language."

"The main secret of Macaulay's success lay in this, that to extraordinary fluency and facility he united patient, minute, and persistent diligence. . . . He never allowed a sentence to pass muster until it was as good as he could make it. He thought little of recasting a chapter in order to obtain a more lucid arrangement, and nothing whatever of reconstructing a paragraph for the sense of one happy stroke or apt illustration. Whatever the worth of his labor, at any rate it was a labor of love."

— From Trevelyan's u Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay."

xvi INTRODUCTION