there is simply a description of material objects, without any admixture of moral notions, which produces such an effect.” 1

That a critic should think of choosing the highly wrought lines of Congreve in preference to the rich offering of Shakespeare, even though, as here, he did so purely for the sake of teasing his friends, proves in what school of criticism he had been trained. Similarly, Rymer's comparison of various night scenes in literature, preferring Dryden's in The Indian Emperor, suggested the same kind of thing to Johnson in Macbeth, a comparison which he succeeded not ineffectively in working out.

In spite of defects of taste and judgment, the contribution which Johnson has made to Shakespearean scholarship yet remains considerable. He judged as a man of his century must inevitably have judged a great poet, whose mind and temperament were so foreign to his own. In view of this fact, it is hardly fair to hold him to a standard which a century of progress in criticism has set. Is it not rather more fitting to ask what advances he made over already existing editions of the poet? If he had not worked, would it not have been necessary for some other to brush away the foolish notes which Warburton in his self-confidence felt it incumbent on himself to write? If as an editor Johnson succeeded in destroying some of the absurd notions of previous commentators and, furthermore, showed himself possessed of extraordinary aptitude for clear explanation and sensible remark, these qualifications can at least go far toward recovering his edition from the contempt which later editors and critics have cast upon it.

1. Bos. 11, 86.

2. See Misc. I, 186. Mrs. Piozzi: "Johnson] told me, how he used to teize Garrick by commendations of the tomb scene in Congreve's Mourning Bride, protesting that Shakespeare had in the same line of excellence nothing as good: 'All which is strictly true (said he); but that is no reason for supposing Congreve is to stand in competition with Shakespeare: these fellows know not how to blame, nor how to commend.'"

CHAPTER VIII

Johnson's Relation to Contemporary Literary

and Social Movements

JOHNSON has so long stood as the great Tory in criticism

that any study of what we may call incipient romanticism. in his writings would seem to be almost superfluous. Had he not, forsooth, gone on record as the worst of critics by that most outrageous of all criticisms, the Life of Gray? Was he not blind to the beauties of Shakespeare? Had he not proved himself utterly devoid of taste in his attack on Lycidas? Can anyone, in short, excuse his numerous critical blunders on any grounds other than stark insensibility to all that we think of as poetry? But to those of us who know and love him well enough to relish even his absurdities, he stands for much more than can be briefly expressed. We know, for example, that he stands for solid learning, for huge common sense, for mental and moral discipline, for hatred of all falseness and sham. We feel that a man of Johnson's comprehensive soul does not permit himself to be circumscribed by a particular school of criticism. If in general he remains the expositor of neo-classic ideals, it is just as true that his rough manners concealed an emotional nature of unusual richness and power.

As we turn to consider his relation to contemporary movements, we should make an effort to understand the sentimental revolt that was under way against literary artificiality and conventionalized literary expression, and that was gradually undermining the hold of the older culture upon the people. This reaction from things as they were gathered headway during the years following Johnson's death, and issued in a

period of emotional expansion which is usually called the Romantic Movement.

To invent an exact and comprehensive definition of anything so elusive as the word romanticism which would satisfy every reader, is a task quite beyond the ordinary person's power. For present purposes we may at least accept Matthew Arnold's identification of the sentimental (which may for our purposes be also called the romantic) with a “readiness to react from the despotism of fact," and cite Wordsworth's 'spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" as the manner in which the romantic mood is inclined to express itself. In essence the difference between the romantic nature and the reasonable eighteenth-century habit of mind lies in this very tendency to turn away from the disturbing roughness of actuality, and to seek in the conscious cultivation of the individual emotions for balm to the bruised spirit. This subjective habit was to result during the next century in the Tower of Ivory into which the beautiful uncomprehended soul might retire when too tormented by the hardness of the world. At any time it means a domination over conduct and action by the emotional nature and usually involves petty discontent with small things, and a search for novelty in order to gratify a desire for change.

Toward these various phases of life Johnson's attitude was entirely clear. He was a man clinging to old doctrines and old customs, and seeing in the gradual change of points of view one of the grave dangers to established institutions. He accepted the orthodox creed as the basis of his religious faith; a confirmed Tory in politics, he opposed the American rebellion and disliked Americans; and in literature he in the main upheld established principles. His position in the eighteenth century is to a considerable degree that of the humanist recognizing in the accumulated experience of the past the best foundation for a judgment of the present, often leaning too far

backward in his endeavor to walk straight. His own painful struggle to emerge from poverty had deepened in him the intense but somewhat rigid emotions with which nature had endowed him. His life in a garret as hack-writer for the booksellers, and his long years of toil on the Dictionary, had not tended to instil in his mind those complacent fallacies about the essential goodness of human nature, the beauty of virtue, or the harmony of natural laws, which Shaftesbury found so easy of utterence. That he did rise from his early miserable existence with as tolerant a view of human nature as he had reflects a world of credit on his innate sense of values. But the iron had entered his soul, and he approached questions of human conduct in the light of a terrible experience, which enabled him to penetrate into human motives with sureness and understanding. Vividly conscious of the pettiness of our lives and the narrow limits of human knowledge, he was content to leave the mystery of final causes to a power higher than his; for God's purposes are inscrutable, and man's aim in this earthly existence should be to seek laws by which he may prepare himself to meet the divine mercy. Hence Johnson's deep interest in moral laws and his continual enunciation of precepts through which he might aid his fellow men in their preparation for eternity.

His two imitations of Juvenal, composed while he was still under the stress of poverty, were the clearest expressions of temperamental pessimism which had yet been uttered in English poetry, giving classic form to the author's sense of the futility of human endeavor and the nothingness of life's offerings. His two periodicals, the Rambler, published 1750-52, during his work on the Dictionary, and the later Idler, 175860, the papers of which were written after Johnson had ceased from his labors and was beginning to sink into a dangerous contentment, reflect the sombre view which he habitually took of human life and conduct. As one turns the pages of

period of emotional expansion which is usually called the Romantic Movement.

To invent an exact and comprehensive definition of anything so elusive as the word romanticism which would satisfy every reader, is a task quite beyond the ordinary person's power. For present purposes we may at least accept Matthew Arnold's identification of the sentimental (which may for our purposes be also called the romantic) with a "readiness to react from the despotism of fact," and cite Wordsworth's 'spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" as the manner in which the romantic mood is inclined to express itself. In essence the difference between the romantic nature and the reasonable eighteenth-century habit of mind lies in this very tendency to turn away from the disturbing roughness of actuality, and to seek in the conscious cultivation of the individual emotions for balm to the bruised spirit. This subjective habit was to result during the next century in the Tower of Ivory into which the beautiful uncomprehended soul might retire when too tormented by the hardness of the world. At any time it means a domination over conduct and action by the emotional nature and usually involves petty discontent with small things, and a search for novelty in order to gratify a desire for change.

Toward these various phases of life Johnson's attitude was entirely clear. He was a man clinging to old doctrines and old customs, and seeing in the gradual change of points of view one of the grave dangers to established institutions. He accepted the orthodox creed as the basis of his religious faith; a confirmed Tory in politics, he opposed the American rebellion and disliked Americans; and in literature he in the main upheld established principles. His position in the eighteenth century is to a considerable degree that of the humanist recognizing in the accumulated experience of the past the best foundation for a judgment of the present, often leaning too far