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so without straying into other fields of discussion which it is not our purpose to enter that these three elements in their proper equilibrium are essential to any great poetic achievement, we may say that Johnson possessed reason and a sense of fact in a surpassing degree, but permitted them to dominate and far too often to exclude the imaginative qualities. Herein lies his great deficiency both as a poet and as a critic of poetry.

CHAPTER IX

Critical Method

T

HE distinguishing features of classical criticism - externality, the application of laws founded on reason, and an effective method of applying these principles

are reflected in the form in which its dicta were cast. Merely personal judgments on particular objects of criticism were always subordinated in the critical mind to the knowledge of critical principles and the ability to apply them to special cases; and just in proportion as the critic possessed these qualifications, his literary opinions carried weight and authority. The formation of a judgment based on certain objective standards, confirmed by long practice, extensive learning, and a thoroughly organized critical method, were, then, the essential requirements in English criticism down to the nineteenth century; and upon them many a reputation for insight and authority arose, and lasted long after particular utterances were forgotten.

That Dr. Johnson possessed the first two of these characteristics of a true critic, judgment and learning, I have shown to be true, and that his dominating personality went far toward enforcing his decrees requires no proof. It now needs to be made clear what was his method of approach to his authors in his last great work, the Lives of the English Poets, and how strictly he applied his method in actual criticism.

His task was to write little lives and brief criticisms of selected poets, whose works the booksellers were preparing to publish. His interest in his subject led him far beyond his original design, however, and his completed work remains the most extended piece of combined biography and criticism that

had yet been produced in English letters. Notwithstanding the standards of criticism which he set himself, his primary interest was in the men themselves. Biography was admittedly that part of literature which he loved most,1 and his own training as a humanist and position as unofficial censor of morals would bear out his assertion. Literature was to him a means to a knowledge of life; life was greater than literature, which in turn had value to him only in proportion as it taught men how best to conduct their lives in the light of universal experience. Both by training and by instinct Johnson was a moralist before he was a critic.

His interest in the individual writer, as distinct from his work, and his anxiety to keep values in their right proportion to both writer and his literary production, induced him to divide his essay into two parts, with the biographical portion separate from the critical. He conceived of himself as the official biographer of this edition of the poets, and he consequently took care to present the external facts of their lives in chronological order, making such comments and general reflections upon human life and conduct as his strong sense from time to time suggested. His intention was to furnish the reader with all the main facts, and as much literary anecdote as long acquaintance with literary history could afford. These lives, fine examples of old-style biography, lack the carefully selected point of view which a modern biographer would seek in order to throw light upon causes and results of literary production. Non-selective and dissociated from the remainder of the essays, they do not have the inevitability and continuity of interest which give special value to nineteenth-century biography. Johnson was bound by the fact that he was not using a free form, adaptable to the purpose of the writer; and he of necessity chose his materials for another purpose, which was to attempt to tell the story of the lives of his authors without

1. Bos. I, 425.

other aim than incidental comment and application of moral principles, in order to place in relief the actual life of the man as his friends and intimates knew it.

His conception of what a good biographer should be is recorded by Boswell, "Nobody can write the life of a man, but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him." Inasmuch as he had not had the fortune of personal contact with many of the poets, he endeavored to substitute for this lack an intimate knowledge of their lives, their characteristics and personal habits, gleaned from all possible written sources and from personal inquiry. In this connection it is worth noting that at the beginning of the Life of Dryden he complains that, because of the carelessness of his contemporaries, nothing can be known beyond what casual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied. In spite of a characteristic excuse in the same Life, his later lives are full of rich literary anecdote, sound judgment, and wise remarks admirably expressed.

His interest in the individual and his avowed intention of passing judgment upon character led him into great detail concerning the private lives of his subjects; and the lives of Milton, Dryden, Addison, and Pope are made very human in consequence. He has described biography as the "art of writing trifles with dignity," and in this he has succeeded

1. Bos. II, 166. See also Ibid. 446.

2. Lives, I, 368. "To adjust the minute events of literary history is tedious and troublesome; it requires indeed no great force of understanding, but often depends upon enquiries which there is no opportunity of making, or is to be fetched from books and pamphlets not always at hand." See also Malone's Dryden, I, 2 (quoted Lives, I, xxvii, n. 2).

"Dr. Johnson, having, as he himself told me, made no preparation for that difficult and extensive undertaking, not being in the habit of extracting from books and committing to paper those facts on which the accuracy of literary history in a great measure depends, and being still less inclined to go through the tedious and often unsatisfactory process of examining ancient registers, &c.; he was under the necessity of trusting to his own most retentive memory.” Bos. III, 359, n. 2.

3. Ibid. IV, 34, n. 5.

throughout. His judgments are always sincere, and, except where personal prejudice led him astray, notably in the cases of Milton and Swift, usually sound.1

The deliberate moral purpose with which he set out to write these lives everywhere is evident, and his comment nearly always is, in the best sense, a comment upon life. He esteemed biography as giving us what comes near ourselves, what we can turn to use; 2 and as he declares in the advertisement to the Third Edition, he wrote the lives with the "honest desire of giving useful pleasure." He hoped that they had been written in such a manner as might tend to the promotion of piety, a thought never foreign to him during his whole literary life.

Boswell has retained his master's own explicit declaration of the duties of a biographer. One or two sentences deserve quotation: "The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestick privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, where exteriour appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and by virtue. There are many invisible circumstances, which whether we read as enquirers after natural or moral knowledge, whether we intend to enlarge

. .

1. Lives, II, 116. “The necessity of complying with times and of sparing persons is the great impediment of biography. History may be formed from permanent monuments and records; but Lives can only be written from personal knowledge, which is growing every day less, and in a short time is lost for ever. What is known can seldom be immediately told, and when it might be told it is no longer known. The delicate features of the mind, the nice discriminations of character, and the minute peculiarities of conduct are soon obliterated; and it is surely better that caprice, obstinacy, frolick, and folly, however they might delight in the description, should be silently forgotten than that by wanton merriment and unseasonable detection a pang should be given to a widow, a daughter, a brother, or a friend. As the process of these narratives is now bringing me among my contemporaries I begin to feel myself 'walking upon ashes under which the fire is not extinguished,' and coming to the time of which it will be proper rather to say nothing that is false, than all that is true.'"

2. Bos. V, 79.

3. Lives, I, xxvi.

4. Bos. IV, 34.