Chapter II: The Man Johnson Himself

It is both amusing and interesting to look through the index to Boswell’s Life of Johnson and mark the minuteness with which that most extraordinary of Scotsmen studied his master. All was fish that came to his net. No detail was too small to be recorded if it offered the faintest fragment of evidence as to the sage’s private life, and no remark was too light to be missed if it seemed to reveal an intimate thought. James Boswell, like Laurence Sterne, and, in our own day, James Joyce, perceived the infinitely little and described the almost imperceptible. The least of things he brings to the light, just as the microscopist will bring to light the nervous system of a worm or a feather on a butterfly’s wing, and, consequently, the finished book is a most marvelous storehouse of information, not only of the man Johnson, but of all those with whom he came into contact.

Straight to the mark went Boswell. He had but one object in view, and from that nothing would turn him. Doubtless about him there were those who accused him of sycophancy, of toadyism; for that he cared nothing. He had set himself the task of telling posterity about a great man and there was an end to it. “When in that presence,” says Miss Burney, “he was unobservant, if not contemptuous, of everyone else. In truth, when he met with Dr. Johnson, he commonly forbore even answering anything that was said, or attending to anything that went forward, lest he should miss the smallest sound from that voice, to which he paid such exclusive, though merited, homage. But the moment that voice burst forth, the attention which it excited on Mr. Boswell amounted almost to pain. His eyes goggled with eagerness; he leaned his ear almost on the shoulder of the doctor; and his mouth dropped open to catch every syllable that might be uttered; nay, he seemed not only to dread losing a word, but to be anxious not to miss a breathing; as if hoping from it latently, or mystically, some Information.”

Miss Burney spoke from actual observation. Indeed, she was witness of one extraordinary scene when dining at Mr. Thrale’s and seated next to Dr. Johnson. The doctor was saying something to Miss Burney, when, chancing to glance sideways, he saw that Boswell was eavesdropping, having left his own partner at the other end of the table. “What are you doing there, sir?” cried the indignant doctor, angrily slapping his knee. “Go to the table, sir.”

Boswell obeyed, and the doctor resumed his talk. But the restless Boswell was ill at ease. Soon he rose from his seat again, but the doctor detected him. Across the table boomed his heavy bass voice. “What are you thinking of, sir? Why do you get up before the cloth is removed? Back to your place, sir.” Down sat Boswell then, his eyes on his master, to receive a last thunderous blow accompanied by the shaking of an accusing forefinger: “Running about in the middle of meals!”

Obviously, so faithful a follower might well be expected to do extraordinary things, and the result of his fidelity has been a perfect biography. Boswell tells us everything. He tells us about the inscription on Johnson’s watch and the why and the wherefore of it: the manner of his laugh which was “a kind of good humored growl”; that he had the habit of talking to himself; that he did not like clean linen; that he never got entirely rid of his provincial pronunciation; that “while talking, or even musing, as he sat in his chair he commonly held his head to one side towards his right shoulder, and shook it in a tremulous manner, moving his body backwards and forwards, and rubbing his left knee in the same direction with the palm of his hand.”

Boswell, we know, was not unaware of that “sneering jocularity” to be expected from those who had no relish for an exact likeness. Nevertheless, he kept at his task. Patiently he recorded all kinds of things: good and bad: painful and pleasant: incidents that showed pettiness as well as greatness. So well, indeed, was the task performed, that we know Johnson as we know no other man in history. Even those men of our own time who have achieved fame are less familiar to us than is Dr. Johnson. We see him stout, round bodied, almost “unwieldy from corpulency,” thick-lipped, near-sighted and blinking, “countenance disfigured from the king’s evil,” often when in company, “a good deal exhausted by violence and vociferation,” and, having said something, “blowing out his breath like a whale.” Seeing the man thus, and adding for good measure, an ill-fitting, ill-kempt wig more often than not burnt in front from his habit of reading with head close to the candle; suit of rusty brown with breeches unlaced at the knees; old and ill-fitting shoes; month old linen--one marvels at the forbearance of the cultured who overlooked appearance.

We get a brief glimpse, by accident as it were, of the regard with which the doctor was held by some who entertained him. There is Mrs. Boswell, for instance, annoyed that her husband should find pleasure in the company of such a fellow. “I have seen,” she tells a friend, “many a bear led by a man, but never before a man led by a bear.” In that you detect a certain asperity. It is her husband who quotes the remark and he explains that some of the habits of the sage were such that “they could not but be disagreeable to a lady.” There is a mild hint that Johnson’s unfortunate habit of turning the candles upside down so that the hot wax running to the wick would make them burn the brighter, made Mrs. Boswell very impatient, for melted wax on a carpet displeased her.

Other things were annoying. For instance, Johnson refused to assume indifference to the pleasures of the table and even boasted of his pleasure in eating. “I mind my belly very studiously,” said he, “for I look upon it that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.” So, at the homes of those who lionized him, he took care to let it be known that certain kinds of foods pleased him, and a certain and very liberal allowance was necessary for his comfort. Seven or eight peaches before breakfast; twenty-five cups of tea at a sitting; solid, satisfying dishes of boiled pork and veal pie stuffed with plums and sugar; heavy pastry supported with roast joints of meat--such things he called for. A very Gargantua, he. As for drink, in his younger days he was a very Falstaff. When the mighty feat was mentioned of a Dr. Campbell who could drink thirteen bottles of port at a sitting, the sage spoke, saying: “If a man drinks very slowly and lets one glass evaporate before he takes another, I know not how long he may drink.” And this: “Claret is the drink for boys, and port for men: but he who aspires to be a hero, must drink brandy.”

Obviously, so doughty a table knight would be very apt to cause consternation in a well ordered household. But there were other things to contend with besides his enormous appetite. No sooner was dinner announced than he would find his way to the table, and, sans ceremony, tackle the food. “His looks seemed riveted to his plate; nor would he, except when in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others.” So intent did he become upon his meal, that “the veins on his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible.”

All this, his ravenous eating, his grunting, his carelessness and boorishness, people put up with for the sake of the inimitable powers of conversation of the man. Of conversation he was a master and he was the oracle of a literary circle. His naturally retentive memory was stored with a vast variety of facts, odd things, little known things, important trifles encountered while reading and consulting books for the compilation of his dictionary. So, a dinner being finished, the lion roared to the delight of the hearers; the colloquial giant displayed his strength.

“I do not care,” said Orme, the historian of Hindustan, “on what subject Johnson talks: but I love better to hear him talk than anybody. He either gives you new thoughts or a new coloring.”

Said Boswell: “He had all his life habituated himself to consider conversation as a trial of intellectual vigor and skill. He had disciplined himself as a talker as well as a writer, making it a rule to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put it in, so that by constant practice and never suffering any careless expression to escape him, he had attained an extraordinary accuracy and command of language.”

It may well be that Johnson was spoiled by the homage of society. Reading Boswell’s Life of Johnson it becomes clear that there were times when the dictionary maker was overbearing, even if not actually insulting. “Having recourse to some sudden mode of robust sophistry,” Boswell terms it, and gives an instance, thus: “Once, when I was pressing upon him with visible advantage, he stopped me thus, ‘My dear Boswell, let’s have no more of this; you’ll make nothing of it. I’d rather hear you whistle a Scotch tune.’” But Goldsmith summed up the Johnson, when cornered, in far happier mode. “There is no arguing with Johnson,” he said, “for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.”

Goldsmith and Johnson were in the same literary circle and reading between lines one is inclined to the conclusion that often Johnson became heavily pontifical. The average man is so constituted that he could not hear thunders from Mount Sinai for long without yawning. Goldsmith and Johnson were at times conversational rivals, Johnson slow and huge like the magnificent ships of the Spanish Armada and Goldsmith swift in attack, getting under the mighty one’s counter to harass him, as it were. There leaps to mind the incident of the talk on fable making, with Goldsmith holding that animals introduced into fables rarely talked in character. “For instance,” said Goldsmith, “the fable of the little fishes, who saw birds fly over their heads, and, envying them, petitioned Jupiter to be changed into birds. The skill comes in making them talk like little fishes.” That set Dr. Johnson off into one of his fits of laughter, the laughter intended to overawe. Then Goldsmith launched his shaft. “Why, Dr. Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to think; for if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.”

It is evident that Johnson resented the Goldsmith method of attack and retreat. “Goldsmith,” said he, “should not be forever attempting to shine in conversation; he has not temper for it, he is so much mortified when he fails. Sir, a game of jokes is composed partly of skill, partly of chance; a man may be beat at times by one who has not the tenth part of his wit. Now, Goldsmith, putting himself against another, is like a man laying a hundred to one, who cannot spare the hundred. It is not worth a man’s while. A man should not lay a hundred to one unless he can easily spare it, though he has a hundred chances for him; he can get but a guinea, and he may lose a hundred. Goldsmith is in this state. When he contends, if he gets the better, it is a very little addition to a man of his literary reputation; if he does not get the better, he is miserably vexed.” Again, Johnson, in the character of a Sir Oracle, says: “The misfortune of Goldsmith in conversation is this, he goes on without knowing how he is to get off. His genius is great, but his knowledge is small. As they say of a generous man it is a pity he is not rich, we may say of Goldsmith it is a pity he is not knowing. He would not keep his knowledge to himself.”

Call Johnson a man of orthodox prejudice and we come near the truth. He was conservative of the conservatives, a Tory of Tories. As a straw will show which way the wind blows, so will a reference to his dictionary reveal the unbending rigidity and granite immobility of the man. Turn to his definition of the word Freethinker. You have his answer in four words. _A contemner of religion; a libertine._ Follow a little deeper and turn to Libertine. You read: _One who pays no regard to the precepts of religion_, with an explanatory quotation which runs:

“They say this town is full of cozenage,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such-like libertines of sin.”

In that you have a key to much. Like Stendhal, or H. L. Mencken of our own day, Johnson had his prejudices and paraded them. He disliked Scotland as the school boy disliked Dr. Fell and his antipathy was sufficient. “Mr. Johnson,” said Boswell apologetically on the occasion of their first meeting, “I do indeed come from Scotland; but I cannot help it.” “That sir, is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help,” was the reply. Again, when a fellow countryman and friend of Boswell’s claimed for Scotland a great many “noble, wild prospects,” the sage made reply: “I believe sir you have a great many. Norway, too, has noble, wild prospects. But sir, let me tell you the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.” His definition of the word Freethinker would be enough to lead to the belief that he had but small love for the historian Hume and all who, like him, did not hold fast to a belief in revealed religion. That Hume had created a new era of thought, that he profoundly influenced European thought, that he introduced a new and higher method of writing history than had previously been practised was as nothing to Johnson. Hume was of the black squad known as Freethinkers and that out-weighed everything else. “Hume,” he said to Boswell, “Hume, and other sceptical innovators, are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expense. Truth will not afford sufficient food for their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to error. Truth, sir, is a cow which will yield such people no milk and so they are gone to milk the bull.”

On one occasion the discussion of Hume led into a talk of death, a subject which always greatly annoyed Johnson. The passage that follows, throws a strong sidelight on Johnson’s character, especially on his testiness when cornered in an argument. I copy from the first volume of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, page 401, J. M. Dent edition, London, MCMI, used in all quotations here:

“When we were alone, I introduced the subject of death, and
endeavored to maintain that the fear of it might be got over. I told
him that David Hume said to me, he was no more uneasy to think he
should _not_ be after his life, than that he _had not been_ before he
began to exist.

“JOHNSON. ‘Sir, if he really thinks so, his perceptions are
disturbed; he is mad; if he does not think so, he lies. He may tell
you, he holds his finger in the flame of a candle, without feeling
pain; would you believe him? When he dies, he at least gives up all
he has.’

“BOSWELL. ‘Foote, sir, told me, that when he was very ill he was not
afraid to die.’

“JOHNSON. ‘It is not true sir. Hold a pistol to Foote’s breast, or to
Hume’s breast, and threaten to kill them and see how they behave.’

“BOSWELL. ‘But may we not fortify our minds for the approach of
death?’... He answered, in a passion, ‘No, sir, let it alone. It
matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying
is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.’ He added with an
earnest look, ‘A man knows it must be so, and submits. It will do him
no good to whine.’

“I attempted the conversation. He was so provoked, that he said:
‘Give us no more of this;’ and was thrown into such a state of
agitation, that he expressed himself in a way that alarmed and
distressed me; shewed an impatience that I should leave him, and when
I was going away, called to me sternly, ‘Don’t let us meet tomorrow.’

“I went home exceedingly uneasy. All the harsh observations which I
had ever heard made upon his character, crowded into my mind; and I
seemed to myself like the man who had put his head into the lion’s
mouth a great many times with perfect safety, but at last had it bit
off.”

A man of strangely susceptible nerves cowering under a deadly fear was Johnson. Of strong, sturdy good sense, yet he seemed at times to become paralyzed at the thought that all about him were dark demoniac powers. He is disturbed when a question as to the future state of man is pressed and he worries about the different degrees of happiness in heaven. He is positive that the better the life a man leads, the more he must fear death. He worries about predestination and infant salvation, and breaks into a furious tirade against anyone who comes under the ban as a philosophical innovator. Speaking of Rousseau and Voltaire, he says: “It is difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.” Again of Rousseau:

“I think him one of the worst of men; a rascal who ought to be hunted
out of society, as he has been.... I would sooner sign a sentence for
his transportation, than that of any felon who has gone from the old
Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the
plantations....”

In short according to the Johnson creed, there was no health, no truth, outside of the Established Church.

Naturally, a man thus constituted must break out in an unexpected direction. Other great souls, learned scholars, benevolent hearts have leaped into the gulf of strange superstition. So Johnson, the hard-headed, hearing of a tormented spirit haunting the Church of St. John, Clerkenwell, sets off at one in the morning to see what is to be seen, for the disembodied one had promised to “give a token of her presence there by a knock upon her coffin.” To give the Doctor due credit he was not foolishly credulous, although some writers have made him appear so. In the case of the Cock-Lane Ghost he himself wrote an account for the Gentleman’s Magazine saying that there was not sufficient ground to justify belief in the tale. But again:

“Talking of ghosts, he said, he knew one friend, who was an honest
man and a sensible man, who told him he had seen a ghost; old Mr.
Edward Cave, the printer at St. John’s Gate. He said, Mr. Cave did
not like to talk of it, and seemed to be in great horror whenever it
was mentioned.

“BOSWELL. ‘Pray, sir, what did he say was the appearance?’

“JOHNSON. ‘Why, sir, something of a shadowy being.’”

On the subject of the existence of witches he was dogmatic. “You have not only the general report,” said he, “but you have many voluntary confessions.”

Again as to ghosts:

“It is wonderful that five thousand years have now elapsed since the
creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there
has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after
death. All argument is against it; but all belief is for it.”

When Charles Wesley examined a haunted house without what Johnson thought sufficient care, the sage was solemnly vehement and again adduced his 5,000-year-old world argument. He has his own curious experience too, for when a young man at Oxford, as he was turning the key of his chamber, he heard his mother distinctly call him by name, although she was then miles away at Lichfield. But the man was too sincere, too much given to independent verification to go wholly over to the spiritualists. Yet, it can be clearly seen, the wish to believe was in him. All kinds of wonderful things were possible, he held, so why not the appearance of a departed spirit, and the thought worried him throughout his long life. A man, as he saw it, might even have attained heavenly bliss and yet not be safe. “We do not know that even the angels are quite in a state of security; nay, we know that some of them have fallen.”

Strange indeed it seems that this staunch Tory, this hide bound conservative and supporter of things as they were should have been so sound on the question of slavery and slave holding, in a time when the vast majority of men of his acquaintance were firmly convinced that slave holding was right and proper. The old man, aged 68, at a banquet in Oxford, in which were “some very grave men,” rose up and gave the toast: “Here’s to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies.” Then again, on another occasion, referring to the Americans in 1777, “How is it that we hear the greatest _yelps_ for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” There are other gems, too. For instance: “No man is by nature the property of another.” “The laws of Jamaica afford a negro no redress. His color is considered a sufficient testimony against him.” “It is to be lamented that moral right should ever give way to political consideration.” “Inhabitants of this island can neither gain riches nor power by taking away the liberty of any part of the human species.”

There is one incident in Johnson’s life which reveals the doughty old warrior determined to go the way he chooses, though it be a lone way. It is the tale of Johnson’s fight for Dr. William Dodd, a criminal under sentence of death. The man was not so great a criminal as we consider things today, for his offence was only forgery, though it was then considered a bold transgression of the moral law. Dr. Dodd had been one of the most popular preachers of his day, a man of pleasing form, genteel address and lively imagination. Discovering that the life of a fashionable parson was a very expensive one he got into debt, and, pressed by his creditors, forged the name of Lord Chesterfield to a document. The slightest of chances brought the forgery to light and Dr. Dodd was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. That was in the year 1777 when Johnson was 68 years old, his fame secure and his ability recognized, and when the greatest in the land were thankful enough to be honored among his acquaintances. But wealth, honor, name, counted for little. The heart of the old man beat strong and the spirit of the fellow who had carried unfortunates to his lodging from the streets was unchanged. The dogmatic old bear with the cultured heart and gentlest, most sympathetic manners under all his strange uncouthness, had his own notions of right and of wrong. Learning of the unfortunate Dr. Dodd’s predicament, Johnson fell into an extraordinary state of agitation. He walked up and down the room rumbling and grumbling. “I will do what I can,” he said, over and over again. Then followed days of vast activities. He wrote a petition to the Court of Common Council and another to the Humane Society, an organization Dr. Dodd himself had founded. He urged those in power to consider “whether it would not be more for the interest of religion to bury such an offender in the obscurity of a perpetual exile than to expose him in a cart and on the gallows to all who, for any reason, are enemies to the clergy.” He went further, composing a speech which the prisoner delivered at the Old Bailey when sentence of death was about to be imposed upon him. The stout old Tory seemed bent on playing a part similar to that played a century later by Bakounin and Roekel who put themselves in jeopardy to aid a law breaker. There were no half hearted measures. He composed the sermon which the condemned man preached to his fellow prisoners at Newgate on the Sunday before his execution. That we have on the authority of Boswell who tells us that “Dr. Johnson was so good as to mark for me with his own hand on a copy of this sermon which is now in my possession, such passages as were added by Dr. Dodd,” and a glance will show that it is quite in the Johnsonian style:

“I have fallen from reputation, which ought to have made me cautious;
and from a former fortune, which ought to have given me content. I
am sunk at once into poverty and scorn; my name and my crime fill
the ballads in the streets; the sport of the thoughtless and the
triumph of the wicked. It may seem strange that, remembering what
I have lately been, I should still wish to continue what I am.
But contempt of death, how speciously soever it might mingle with
Christian virtues, has nothing in it suitable to Christian penitence.
Many motives compel me to beg earnestly for life. I feel the natural
horror of a violent death, and the universal dread of untimely
dissolution. I am desirous to recompense the injury I have done to
the clergy, to the world, and to religion, and to efface the scandal
of my crime by the example of my penitence.”

Whether Dr. Johnson was privy to the forlorn hope or not, is not known. Certainly, secrets traveled fast in London in those days. However that may be, it can safely be asserted that no more romantic plan was ever conceived to cheat the gallows. The hangman was bribed to tie the knot in a certain way and it was arranged that after the hanging, the body should be rushed with all possible speed to a nearby house, where the famous Dr. John Hunter, author of a book in which was explained the method of resuscitating the apparently drowned, was to operate on the body of Dodd. All went well, but the unforseen intervened, for the crowd about the gallows was so great that it was two hours before the body reached Dr. Hunter, by which time all hope was gone. Whether Johnson was interested in that or not cannot be definitely asserted, but he certainly knew of other efforts that were being made on behalf of the luckless clergyman. Boswell records a conversation on the subject which runs as follows:

“He (Johnson) told us that Dodd’s city friends stood by him so that
a thousand pounds were ready to be given to the gaoler if he would
let him escape. He added, that he knew a friend of Dodd’s who walked
about Newgate for some time on the evening before the execution with
some five hundred pounds in his pockets, ready to be paid to any of
the turnkeys who could get him out; but it was too late; for he was
watched with much circumspection. He said Dodd’s friends had an image
of him made of wax, which was to have been left in his place; and he
believed it was carried into the prison.”

Were I asked to sum up Dr. Johnson’s character, avoiding all sentimentality and hero-worship, I should say that he was a man of strong inflexible will, satisfied to be a scholar and a thinker, utterly careless of notoriety, honors and wealth. He was by no means free from the small weaknesses of humanity, but he had the inestimable boon of patience and he was free from cant, pretense and hypocrisy. In spite of all his shortcomings, habits and tricks that would certainly annoy those of more delicate sensibilities, he had the redeeming merit of immense social ardor and the charity that covers a multitude of sins. For him was the deed rather than the word. Sympathy, he thought, was all very well, but “you will find these very feeling people are not very ready to do you good. They pay you by feeling.” Work, he held, was the great anodyne for human ills. Being told that Lady Tavistock’s death had been caused by her grief for her husband’s loss, he retorted that had she had something definite to do, the sting would have been drawn from her bereavement. Sentimentality annoyed him. When his friend, Mrs. Thrale, observed that a certain lady would be grieved because her friend had lost the chance of a fortune, Johnson growled: “She will suffer as much, perhaps, as your horse did when your cow miscarried.” Again, there is much of good in this: “Why whine about metaphysical distresses when there is so much want and hunger in the world.”

Johnson had a morbid fear of death. As shown in the conversation above repeated, he singularly failed to see that Hume might have strongly objected to die a violent death at the hands of another, and yet have no wish to exist after death. That immortality is not universally desired, and that five hundred millions of believers in Buddhism regard the extinction of personal consciousness as a high reward for a life well lived was not within the sphere of his knowledge.

The following quoted viewpoint of Seneca, as set forth in his letter to Marcia, Johnson could not understand. “Think this, that the dead are afflicted with no evils. Those things that make the grave terrible are no fables. We know that the dead are not enfolded in darkness. We believe not those floods flaming with fire, neither the lake of forgetfulness, nor the Judgment Seat. These are poetical, and thus have they tormented us with vain terrors. _Death reposeth us in that tranquility wherein we lay before we were born._ Death is neither good nor evil. That may be either good or evil which is something; but that which is of itself nothing, and reduceth all things to nothing, betrayeth us to no fortune.” Johnson, at the age of 69 solemnly declares that “I have made no approaches to a state which can look on it (death) as not terrible.” As for the extinction of personal consciousness, in arguing with a Miss Seward who had said that annihilation was “a pleasing sleep without a dream,” the doctor solemnly declared, “It is neither pleasing, nor sleep. It is nothing. Now mere existence is so much better than nothing, that one would rather exist even in pain than not exist.”