1750. Ætat. 41. " Amid these names can BOSWELL be forgot, " To friends around his philofophick throne; Johnson's language, however, must be allowed to be too mafculine for the delicate gentleness of female writing. His ladies, therefore, feem strangely formal, even to ridicule; and feem well denominated by the names which he has given them, as, Misella, Zozima, Properantia, Rhodoclia. It has of late been the fashion to compare the style of Addison and Johnson, and to depreciate, I think very unjustly, the style of Addison as nerveless and feeble, because it has not the strength and energy of that of Johnson. Their prose may be balanced like the poetry of Dryden and Pope. Both are excellent, though in different ways. Addison writes with the ease of a gentleman. His readers fancy that a wife and accomplished companion is talking to them, so that he infinuates his fentiments and tafte into their minds by an imperceptible influence. Johnfon writes like a teacher. He dictates to his readers as if from an academical chair. They attend with awe and admiration; and his precepts are impressed upon them by his commanding 9 The following observation in Mr. Bofwell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides may fufficiently account for that gentleman's being "now scarcely esteem'd a Scot" by many of his countrymen : "If he [Dr. Johnson] was particularly prejudiced against the Scots, it was because they were more in his way; because he thought their success in England rather exceeded the due proportion of their real merit; and because he could not but fee in them that nationality which, I believe, no liberal-minded Scotchman will deny." Mr. Bofwell, indeed, is so free from national prejudices, that he might with equal propriety have been described as "Scarce by South Britons now esteem'd a Scot." : COURTENAY. eloquence. 1750. eloquence. Addison's style, like a light wine, pleases every body from the first. Johnson's, like a liquor of more body, seems too ftrong at first, but, by Ætat. 41 degrees, is highly relished; and fuch is the melody of his periods, so much do they captivate the ear, and seize upon the attention, that there is scarcely any writer, however inconfiderable, who does not aim, in fome degree, at the fame species of excellence. But let us not ungratefully undervalue that beautiful style, which has pleasingly conveyed to us much instruction and entertainment. Though comparatively weak, when opposed to Johnson's Herculean vigour, let us not call it positively feeble. Let us remember the character of his style, as given by Johnson himself: "What he attempted, he performed; he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetick; he is never rapid, and he never ftagnates. His fentences have neither studied amplitude, nor affected brevity: his periods, though not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy. Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not oftentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison '." Though the Rambler was not concluded till the year 1752, I shall, under this year, say all that I have to observe upon it. Some of the translations of the mottos by himself, are admirably done. He acknowledges to have received " elegant translations" of many of them from Mr. James Elphinston; and some are very happily translated by a Mr. F. Lewis, of whom I never heard more, except that Johnson thus described him to Mr. Malone: "Sir, he lived in London, and hung loose upon society." The concluding paper of his Rambler is at once dignified and pathetick. I cannot, however, but wish, that he had not ended it with an unnecessary Greek verse, translated also into an English couplet. It is too much like the conceit of those dramatick poets, who used to conclude each act with a rhyme; and the expression in the first line of his couplet, "Celestial powers," though proper in Pagan poetry, is ill fuited to Christianity, with a conformity to which he consoles himself. How much better would it have been, to have ended with the prose sentence, " I shall never envy the honours which wit and learning obtain in any other cause, if I can be numbered among the writers who have given ardour to virtue, and confidence to truth." His friend Dr. Birch being now engaged in preparing an edition of Raleigh's smaller pieces, Dr. Johnfon wrote the following letter to that gentleman: * I shall probably, in another work, maintain the merit of Addison's poetry, which has been very unjustly depreciated. 1750. } Ætat. 41. 1 " SIR, To Dr. BIRCH. Gough-square, May 12, 1750. “KNOWING that you are now preparing to favour the publick with a new edition of Raleigh's mifcellaneous pieces, I have taken the liberty to fend you a Manufcript, which fell by chance within my notice. I perceive no proofs of forgery in my examination of it; and the owner tells me, that, as he has heard, the hand-writing is Sir Walter's. If you should find reafon to conclude it genuine, it will be a kindness to the owner, a blind perfon2, to recommend it to the booksellers. I am, Sir, "Your most humble servant, “SAM. JOHNSON." His just abhorrence of Milton's political notions was ever strong. But this did not prevent his warm admiration of Milton's great poetical merit, to which he has done illuftrious justice, beyond all who have written upon the fubject. And this year he not only wrote a Prologue, which was spoken by Mr. Garrick before the acting of Comus at Drury-lane theatre, for the benefit of Milton's grand-daughter, but took a very zealous interest in the fuccess of the charity. On the day preceding the performance, he published the following letter in the "General Advertiser," addressed to the printer of that paper: " SIR, "THAT a certain degree of reputation is acquired merely by approving the works of genius, and testifying a regard to the memory of authours, is a truth too evident to be be denied; and therefore to enfure a participation of fame with a celebrated poet, many who would, perhaps, have contributed to starve him when alive, have heaped expensive pageants upon his grave. " It must, indeed, be confessed, that this method of becoming known to pofterity with honour is peculiar to the great, or at least to the wealthy; but an opportunity now offers for almost every individual to secure the praise of paying a just regard to the illustrious dead, united with the pleasure of doing good to the living. To assist illustrious indigence, struggling with distress and debilitated by age, is a display of virtue, and an acquifition of happiness * and honour. 2 Mrs. Williams is probably the perfon meant. " Whoever, 3 Lest there should be any person, at any future period, abfurd enough to suspect that Johnfon was a partaker in Lauder's fraud, or had any knowledge of it, when he assisted him with his masterly pen, it is proper here to quote the words of Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Carlifle, at the time when he detected the imposition.. " It is to be hoped, nay it is expected, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious sentiments and inimitable style point out the authour of Lauder's Preface and Postscript, will no longer allow one to plume himself with his feathers, who appeareth so little to deferve his assistance: an assistance which I am perfuaded would never have been communicated, had there been the least fufpicion of those facts which I have been the instrument of conveying to the world in these sheets." Milton no Plagiary, ad edit. p. 78. And his Lordship has been pleased now to authorise me to fay, in the strongest manner, that there is no ground whatever for any unfavourable reflection against Dr. Johnson, who expressed the ftrongest indig nation against Lauder, } "Whoever, then, would be thought capable of pleasure in reading the 1750. works of our incomparable Milton, and not so deftitute of gratitude as to Ætat. 41. refuse to lay out a trifle in rational and elegant entertainment for the benefit of his living remains, for the exercise of their own virtue, the increase of their reputation, and the pleasing confciousness of doing good, should appear at Drury-lane theatre to-morrow, April 5, when Comus will be performed for the benefit of Mrs. Elizabeth Fofter, grand-daughter to the authour, and the only furviving branch of his family. "N. B. There will be a new prologue on the occafion, written by the authour of Irene, and spoken by Mr. Garrick; and, by particular defire, there will be added to the Masque a dramatick fatire, called Lethe, in which Mr. Garrick will perform." In 1751 we are to confider him as carrying on both his Dictionary and Rambler. But he also wrote "The Life of Cheynel,*" in the mifcellany called "The Student;" and the Reverend Dr. Douglas having, with uncommon acuteness, clearly detected a gross forgery and impofition upon the publick by William Lauder, a Scotch schoolmaster, who had, with equal impudence and ingenuity, represented Milton as a plagiary from certain modern Latin poets, Johnson, who had been so far impofed upon as to furnish a Preface and Postscript to his work, now dictated a letter for Lauder, addressed to Dr. Douglas, acknowledging his fraud in terms of fuitable contrition 3. This extraordinary attempt of Lauder was no fudden effort. He had brooded over it for many years; and to this hour it is uncertain what his principal motive was, unless it were a vain notion of his fuperiority, in being able, by whatever means, to deceive mankind. To effect this, he produced certain passages from Grotius, Masenius, and others, which had a faint refemblance to fome parts of the " Paradife Loft." In these he interpolated fome fragments 1751 1751. Ætat. 42. fragments of Hog's Latin tranflation of that poem, alledging that the mass thus fabricated was the archetype from which Milton copied. These fabrications he published from time to time in the Gentleman's Magazine; and, exulting in his fancied success, he in 1750 ventured to collect them into a pamphlet, entitled "An Essay on Milton's Ufe and Imitation of the Moderns in his Paradife Loft." To this pamphlet Johnson wrote a Preface, in full perfuafion of Lauder's honesty, and a Poftscript recommending, in the most perfuafive terms, a subscription for the relief of a grand-daughter of Milton, of whom he thus speaks: "It is yet in the power of a great people to reward the poet whose name they boast, and from their alliance to whose genius, they claim some kind of fuperiority to every other nation of the earth; that poet, whose works may possibly be read when every other monument of British greatness shall be obliterated; to reward him, not with pictures or with medals, which, if he fees, he fees with contempt, but with tokens of gratitude, which he, perhaps, may even now confider as not unworthy the regard of an immortal spirit." Surely this is inconfiftent with " enmity towards Milton," which Sir John Hawkins imputes to Johnfon upon this occafion, adding, " I could all along observe that Johnson seemed to approve not only of the design, but of the argument; and seemed to exult in a perfuafion, that the reputation of Milton was likely to fuffer by this discovery. That he was not privy to the imposture, I am well perfuaded; but that he wished well to the argument, may be inferred from the Preface, which indubitably was written by Johnson." Is it possible for any man of clear judgement to suppose that Johnson, who so nobly praised the poetical excellence of Milton in a Postscript to this very "discovery," as he then fuppofed it, could, at the fame time, exult in a perfuafion that the great poet's reputation was likely to fuffer by it? This is an inconsistency of which Johnfon was incapable; nor can any thing more be fairly inferred from the Preface, than that Johnson, who was alike diftinguished for ardent curiofity and love of truth, was pleased with an investigation by which both were gratified. That he was actuated by these motives, and certainly by no unworthy defire to depreciate our great epick poet, is evident from his own words; for, after mentioning the general zeal of men of genius and literature " to advance the honour, and diftinguish the beauties of Paradife Loft," he says, "Among the inquiries to which this ardour of criticism has naturally given occafion, none is more obfcure in itself, or more worthy of rational curiofity, than a retrospection of the progress of this mighty genius in the construction of his work; a view of the fabrick gradually rifing, perhaps, from small beginnings, |
