tential excellence of human nature to become a reformer of manners, or the speculative power to endeavour to remould the ancient creeds. He stands in fierce isolation amongst the calmer or shallower intellects of his time, with insight enough to see the hollowness of their beliefs, with moral depth enough to scorn their hypocritical self-seeking, and with an imagination fervid enough to give such forcible utterance to his feelings as has scarcely been rivalled in our literature. But he had not the power or the nobility of nature to become a true poet or philosopher or reformer. When a shallow optimism is the most living creed, a man of strong nature becomes a scornful pessimist. 50. Johnson escaped from the hell of Swift's passion by virtue of that pathetic tenderness of nature which lay beneath his rugged outside. If Swift excites a strange mixture of repulsion and pity, no one can know Johnson without loving him. And what was Johnson's special message to the world? He has given it most completely in 'Rasselas ;' and the curious coincidence between Rasselas' and 'Candide' has been frequently noticed. Voltaire, the arch-iconoclast, Johnson, the last of the Tories, agree in making the protest against optimism the topic of their most significant works. Besides the vast difference in style between the greatest master of literary expression and the powerful writer whose pen seems to be paralysed by his constitutional depression, there is another striking difference. The moral of 'Candide' is, in one sense, speculative. The result, it is true, is purely negative. Deism, that is Voltaire's thesis, will not fit, the facts of the world. Johnson, on the other hand, is exclusively moral. A disciple of Voltaire would learn to 'cultivate his garden' and abandon speculation; but then, with speculation, he would abandon all theology. A disciple of Johnson learns the futility of enquiring into the ultimate purposes of the Creator; but he would acquiesce in the accepted creed. It is as good as any other, considered as a philosophy, and much better considered as supplying motives for the conduct of life. Johnson's fame amongst his contemporaries was that of a great moralist; and the name represents what was most significant in his teaching. 51. He was as good moralist as a man can be who regards the ultimate foundations of morality as placed beyond the reach of speculation. 'We know we are free, and there's an end on't' is his answer to the great metaphysical difficulty. He 'refutes' Berkeley by kicking a stone. He thinks that Hume is a mere trifler, who has taken to 'milking the bull' by way of variety. He laughs effectually at Soame Jenyns's explanation of the origin of evil; but leaves the question as practically insoluble, without troubling himself as to why it is insoluble, or what consequences may follow from its insolubility. Speculation, in short, though he passed for a philosopher, was simply abhorrent to him. He passes by on the other side, and leaves such puzzles for triflers. He has made up his mind once for all that religion is wanted, and that the best plan is to accept the established creed. And thus we have the apparent paradox that, whilst no man sets a higher value upon truthfulness in all the ordinary affairs of life than Johnson, no man could care less for the foundations of speculative truth. His gaze was not directed to that side. Judging in all cases rather by intuition than by logical processes, he takes for granted the religious theories which fall in sufficiently with his moral convictions. To all speculation which may tend to loosen the fixity of the social order he is deaf or contemptuously averse. The old insidious Deism seems to him to be mere trash; and he would cure the openly aggressive Deism of Rousseau by sending its author to the plantations. Indifference to speculation generates a hearty contempt for all theories. He has too firm a grasp of facts to care for the dreams of fanciful Utopians; his emotions are too massive and rigid to be easily excited by enthusiasts. He ridicules the prevailing cry against corruption. The world is bad enough in all conscience, but it will do no good to exaggerate or to whine. He has no sympathy with believers in the speedy advent of a millennium. The evils under which creation groans have their causes in a region far beyond the powers of constitution-mongers and political agitators. How small of all that human hearts endure That part which laws or kings can cause or cure !1 52. These words sum up his political theory. Subordination Lines added by Johnson to Goldsmith's Traveller.' is the first necessity of man, whether in politics or religion. To what particular form of creed or constitution men are to submit is a matter of secondary importance. No mere shifting of the superficial arrangements of society will seriously affect the condition of mankind. Starvation, poverty, and disease are evils beyond the reach of a Wilkes or a Rousseau. Stick to the facts, and laugh at fine phrases. Clear your mind of cant. Work and don't whine. Hold fast by established order, and resist anarchy as you would resist the devil. That is the pith of Johnson's answer to the vague declamations symptomatic of the growing unrest of European society. All such querulous complaints were classed by him with the fancies of a fine lady who has broken her china, or a fop who has spoilt his fine clothes by a slip in the kennel. He under-estimated the significance of the symptoms, because he never appreciated the true meaning of Hume or Voltaire. But the stubborn adherence of Johnson, and such men as Johnson, to solid fact, and their unreasonable contempt for philosophy, goes far to explain how it came to pass that England avoided the catastrophe of a revolution. The morality is not the highest, because it implies an almost wilful blindness to the significance of the contemporary thought, but appropriate to the time, for it expresses the resolute determination of the dogged English mind not to loosen its grasp on solid fact in pursuit of dreams; and thoroughly masculine, for it expresses the determination to see the world as it is, and to reject with equal decision the optimism of shallow speculation, and the morbid pessimism of such misanthropists as Swift. 53. The moralising tendency thus directly expressed by poets and preachers, both lay and professional, may be traced through many other forms. The essayists preach a series of sermons, varying indefinitely in grace and power, upon every conceivable text, from the shortness of life to the extravagant size of feminine petticoats. The same material, treated in verse, and mixed with more or less poetical feeling, supplies the satires of Swift, Pope, Johnson, Young, Churchill, Mason, Cowper, and their innumerable imitators and rivals. The moralists have a similar didactic tendency. De Foe preaches incessantly; Richardson is ostentatiously and supereminently a moralist; Fielding, though his morality is of a rather different type, moralises as persistently as any contemporary preacher, and a good deal more forcibly. The theatre which had excited the indignation of Collier was partly occupied by the moralists, and sentimental comedies took the place of the cynical dramas of the Restoration. The morality, whether inculcated by direct precepts, or pompous allegory, or fictitious narrative, is much of the same stamp. Everywhere it expresses the remarks upon human life and conduct made by shrewd and sensible men, living in a society defaced by much coarseness and corruption, and stirred by no very strong passions or deep speculations; but yet comfortable, growing in wealth and mechanical knowledge, and profoundiy impressed with the importance of the domestic virtues. 54. Fielding, it is true, has a contempt for Richardson as a milksop and a straitlaced parson out of the pulpit. But Fielding has a very decided morality of his own. He does not, like the old dramatists, describe all passion with equal sympathy; nor, like Byron, express the indignant revolt against the whole system of effete respectability. He has a very decided theory of his own, and spares no pains to express it. He despises the Pharisee, and has a considerable compassion for the sinner; but then there are sins of different degrees of turpitude. The doctrine of male chastity, expounded in 'Pamela,' struck him as simply ridiculous; but though a man was not bound to be a monk, he was not to be a seducer or a systematic voluptuary. He would be the last man to attack marriage, and his ideal woman, though made of very solid flesh and blood, is pure in conduct, if tolerably free in speech. His view reflects the code by which men of sense generally govern their conduct, as distinguished from that by which they affected to be governed in language. His respect for facts is, in this sense, as marked as Johnson's. He refuses to be imposed upon by phrases. The ecclesiastical type of morality, with its tendencies to the ascetic theory that passions should be eradicated rather than regulated, or that, at best, they were necessary evils to be kept within the narrowest bounds, produced that fierce reaction in France which seemed to assail not only theology, but all the virtues associated with it. In England, where theology was diluted instead of rejected, the reaction against the theological virtues was proportionally less intense. The ideal man of Fielding's novels is as far from being a libertine as from being an ascetic. He is a full-blooded healthy animal, but respects the Church so long as the Church does not break with com mon sense. 55. Parson Adams-probably his finest conception-drinks beer and smokes pipes, and when necessity compels, takes to the cudgels with a vigour which might have excited the envy of Christopher North. He scorns the unborn Malthus, and is outrageously impecunious in his habits. He is entirely free from worldliness, and is innocent as a child in the arts of flattery and timeserving. But it is not because he is an enthusiast after the fashion of Whitefield, or has any highflown views of the sacerdotal office. Common sense is the rule of his life, or, in other words, the views which commend themselves to a man who sees the world as it is, who has no visionary dreams, and who has a thoroughly generous nature. Fielding would have Christianity freed from all extravagances -that is to say, from those vivid imaginings which subordinate the world of sense to the supernatural; he thinks that a man should be a gentleman, but laughs heartily at the extravagances of the fire-eating descendants of the old romantic cavaliers; he is for a stringent enforcement of the moral laws, which actually keep society together, but has no patience with those who would attempt any radical reform, or draw the line higher than ordinary human nature can endure. Richardson is more of a sentimentalist; De Foe is simply commonplace; and Smollett content to observe the eccentricities of his race without preaching about them. Fielding, though hardly an exalted moralist, expresses the genuine sentiment of his time with a force and fulness which make his works more impressive than the whole body of contemporary sermons, because untrammelled by conventional necessities. 2 56. The aesthetic tendency of the time is precisely in harmony with this moral sentiment. I have endeavoured to show 1 See 'Joseph Andrews,' ch. xvii., where Parson Adams gives his opinion of Whitefield, and expresses his admiration for Hoadly's book on the Sacrament, 2 See especially Colonel Bath, in • Amelia.' |