"LIFE OF SAVAGE."

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by his late host: "You made a man very happy t'other day.""How could that be?" said the gentleman; "nobody was there but ourselves." Cave answered, by reminding him that a plate of victuals was sent behind a screen, which was to Johnson, dressed so shabbily that he did not choose to appear; but on hearing the conversation, he was highly delighted with the encomiums on his book.

The "Life of Savage" was composed at a heat; Johnson himself said, "I wrote forty-eight of the printed octavo pages at a sitting; but then I sat up all night." He writes quickly whose pen is guided by love. The work at once met with the success it deserved. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who did not then know Johnson, began to read it, standing with his arm against a mantelpiece; he was taken prisoner on the spot, and could not lay the book down until he had read to the end, when he found his arm quite benumbed.

It is curious that one should feel tempted to linger over a chapter like this, even more fondly than over the most flourishing pages in any history. It is perhaps the very saddest in the long career of a man who never lay very soft in this world of ours; yet that determined clinging to poor Savage, believing against all reason, and hoping against all expectation, is so beautiful in its pathos that, if one could have been permitted to re-cast Johnson's whole life-drama, it would have seemed a great mistake to strike out this tragic scene.

"There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out."

D

IN 1745, Johnson published a pamphlet entitled, "Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with remarks on Sir Thomas Hanmer's Edition of Shakespeare." To this he affixed proposals for a new edition of the great dramatist. But the proposals were coldly received, Bishop Warburton being known to be engaged in a similar work. The pamphlet, however, was highly admired, and praised by Warburton himself. Johnson ever afterwards felt kindly towards the Bishop for this friendly notice: "he praised me at a time when praise was of value to me."

No further account of Johnson's literary doings during the years 1745 and 1746 has been left; but it is probable that he was drawing the plan of his Dictionary in this interval of silence. He is said also to have, at this time, contemplated a 66 Life of Alfred the Great," of which he talked with enthusiasm.

In 1747, his old friend, David Garrick, having obtained a share in the management of Drury Lane Theatre, Johnson honoured the opening night with a Prologue. The lines on Shakespeare are very much below the mark; but those on Ben Jonson and the wits of Charles's reign are admirable and well worth quoting :

"Then Jonson came, instructed from the school,

To please in method, and invent by rule;

His studious patience and laborious art,

By regular approach essayed the heart;

Cold approbation gave the lingering bays,

For those who durst not censure, scarce could praise.

DICTIONARY BEGUN.

A mortal born, he met the general doom,
But left, like Egypt's kings, a lasting tomb.

The wits of Charles found easier ways to fame,
Nor wished for Jonson's art, or Shakespeare's flame;
Themselves they studied, as they felt they writ,
Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit.

Vice always found a sympathetic friend;

They pleased their age, and did not aim to mend.

Their cause was general, their supports were strong,
Their slaves were willing, and their reign was long;
Till shame regained the post that sense betrayed,
And virtue called oblivion to her aid."

35

There is a world of sound criticism, high morality, antithetic point, and strong sense in lines like these.

But the event of 1747, so far as Johnson is concerned, was the publication of his "Plan of the Dictionary of the English Language." He must have been brooding over this herculean work for many years; "it was not the effect of particular study," he said, "it had grown up in his mind insensibly." All great things are thus unnoticed in their beginnings; there is no noise made about the first sprouting of the corn; the mightiest ocean-storm receives its earliest impulse from a scarcely felt little breath of wind far out at sea. "Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud." Several years before this time, when Johnson was one day sitting in Robert Dodsley's shop, the bookseller had suggested to him that a Dictionary of the English language might be expected to do well. Johnson had eagerly caught at the idea, but, pausing a little, had added, in his abrupt emphatic way, "I believe I shall not undertake it." The probability is, that Johnson nevertheless took the hint; and the two previous years of almost total silence may have been spent in elaborating the idea of the work and gathering in details.

Five firms of booksellers agreed to take the huge scheme in hand, and to give Johnson 15757. for his share of the work; but our Author was to pay the expense of preparing it for the press

35

DICTIONARY BEGUN.

and that would be a considerable item in a book of the kind. The Dictionary was considered a mighty undertaking for all concerned, in those days when publishing was in its youth, and bookbuyers were few. The "Plan" was dedicated to the Earl of Chesterfield, who had happened to see it before it was in print, the manuscript having got into his hands in a round-about way which it is unnecessary to detail. When it was observed to Johnson that this might prove an advantage to the work, his retort was: "No, Sir, it would have come out with more bloom if it had not been seen before by anybody."

It was a tremendous business for a single man to undertake; but it was Johnson's work by undoubted fore-ordination—massive, large, laborious, and only to be carried through by an iron will and an iron frame. Here is a dialogue which took place one day between him and Doctor 'Adams, who had come in upon him when busy at his Dictionary :-ADAMS: "This is a great work, Sir. How are you to get all the etymologies?"-JOHNSON : "Why, Sir, here is a shelf with Junius, and Skinner, and others; and there is a Welsh gentleman who has published a collection of Welsh proverbs, who will help me with the Welsh."-ADAMS: "But, Sir, how can you do this in three years?"—JOHNSON : "Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years."-ADAMS : "But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary."-JOHNSON: "Sir, thus it is this is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the propor-tion of an Englishman to a Frenchman."

Johnson engaged six men as amanuenses, five of whom were Scotchmen. We shall see that our Author always took a wicked but good-natured pleasure in girding at the "beggarly Scotch;" but, like many others who affect to despise the natives of North Britain, he knew their sterling worth, and, while he joked at their poverty and pride, gladly availed himself of their steady. services. It is to his everlasting honour that he remembered each one of those poor servitors ever afterwards; and almost the whole of them required, and received, at one time or other, special marks of his benevolent care. They helped him through

"THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES."

37

with a great work, and his great heart was touched with a gratitude that never died. This man, you see, did not look upon those who served him as mere "hands," but preferred to think of them as "souls" rather. The two points of view are somewhat different.

With Johnson's recent struggles fresh in our memory, it is pleasant to be able to record a fine little excursion which he and his wife made in the summer of 1748 to Tunbridge Wells. He met there a number of the great men of his time: Cibber, Garrick, Richardson, Whiston, Onslow (the Speaker), Pitt, Lyttelton, and others. In a print representing some of the "remarkable characters" who were at Tunbridge Wells that season, Johnson is observed standing as the foremost figure-and a good right he had to stand first.

In January, 1749, was published "The Vanity of Human Wishes," an imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It had been composed the previous year at Hampstead, and composed very rapidly. The poem only brought the author fifteen guineas. It is very much superior, as a work, to "London," but more didactic, more elaborate, more profound, more heavily loaded with moral reflections. The lighter minds of the period did not relish it quite so highly as they had relished the other. Garrick, for example, said, "When Johnson lived much with the Herveys, and saw a good deal of what was passing in life, he wrote his 'London,' which is lively and easy. When he became more retired, he gave us his 'Vanity of Human Wishes,' which is as hard as Greek. Had he gone on to imitate another satire, it would have been as hard as Hebrew." But the truth is, Johnson had been seeing rather too much of life when "London" was composed; and the retirement which had come at last was entirely healthful compared with the diseased excitement of that earlier time. Had Garrick been capable of seeing to the bottom of the "liveliness" and "ease" of the "London" period, he might have felt disposed to give these two charming qualities less pleasant names.

Thanks to the generous friendship of Garrick, "Irene," after lying neglected for more than eleven years, was at length got on