these the artifice of Johnson's style be less patent, and he wear the fetters which all art imposes with something of a better grace and a more natural air, they are assuredly 'conversational' in no other sense than this: that they often reflect some of his pet theories, as, for example, the notion that 'true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction,' or that to imagine one's-self incapable of writing except at certain times, or at happy moments, is fantastic foppery.' 6 6 The truth, indeed, seems to be that even so well-found a critic as Mr. Matthew Arnold-who was a sincere admirer of Johnson and 'signified the same in the usual manner' by applying a French catchword to the Lives at least seven times in seven pages-failed to grasp the significance of the work which Johnson accomplished for English prose. Regularity, uniformity, precision, balance'-these, no doubt, are qualities requisite for a good prose style; but regularity, uniformity, precision, balance, had been imparted to English prose before Johnson translated the Voyage to Abyssinia. The movement begun by the taste of Charles II. had received its chief impetus from Dryden, had been materially assisted by Temple, and had been urged on to undisputed triumph by the genius of Steele, Addison, and Swift. A standard of good, working, pliant, serviceable prose was supplied to the community; and so happy were its ever-extending effects that, in 1778, Johnson, comparing the state of matters at the time to that which had existed at the beginning of the century, assured Boswell that books in general were then miserably written. There is now,' he declared, 'an elegance of style universally diffused. No man now writes so ill as Martin's Account of the Hebrides is written. A man could not write so ill if he should try. Set a merchant's clerk now to write, and he will do it better.' A style of which the conveniences have been so enormous it were 6 ungrateful and ridiculous to depreciate; nor, if we try it by a higher test, is that manner of writing to be lightly spoken of which Johnson commended with such discriminating, yet generous, warmth, as it manifested itself in Addison, and which reached its highest level of conscious strength in Swift, of scrupulous lucidity in Hume, of finished workmanship in Fielding, and of exquisite charm in Goldsmith. But this at least must be reckoned among its disadvantages: it fostered the notion that (if we may invert Johnson's phrase) not to write poetry is to write prose. Not, of course, that its vocabulary, or its constructions, or its cadences, are exactly those of every-day speech; a very cursory examination will make that plain enough; but that its convention, its scheme, which counterfeit the best colloquialism without being colloquial, are palpably closer to the convention and scheme of ordinary conversation than are those of, say, the Authorised Version, or the Areopagitica. Now every one at heart is willing to think that he possesses the gift of being 'familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious'; and a prose style where there are no inversions and no unexpected turns of language, where all seems to be simplicity and ease, and to promise plain-sailing, is readily believed by most men to be within the scope of their capacity. It was the peculiar function of Johnson, whencesoever he derived his inspiration, to dissipate such delusions, to 'straighten the marches' between what is literature and what is not, to revive the recollection of the truth that prose is no more a happy-go-lucky affair than poetry, to prove that English style has as close an affinity with the rotund, the majestic, the sonorous, as with the simple, the unpretending, and the unimpressive-in a word-to restore distinction to that branch of art. He has, to be sure, his faults; faults which have been harped upon with singular and jealous perseverance. There are the raέ λeyóμeva; there are the antitheses which are not antithetical; there are the harsh inversions; and so forth and so forth. But why is Johnson of all men to be judged by his worst instead of by his best? In the whole compass of the Lives, there are, perhaps, half a dozen far-fetched and truly 'alien' words; and some three passages or so where we catch the genuine 'Johnsonian' cadence in the cant meaning of the term, of which one is to be found in the Waller, another in the Dryden, and the third in the Savage. To refute the calumnies which criticism has heaped upon his style with the monotonous reiteration of an automaton, is, it may be hoped, unnecessary. But his detractors are invited to consider attentively two passages in the Lives, the one extremely short, the other of some length. The former is that in which, speaking about Otway and his friends he says of these: 'Their fondness was without benevolence and their familiarity without friendship.' The most fastidious 'Saxon' purist-the most enthusiastic devotee of 'those strong, plain words, Anglo-Saxon or NormanFrench, of which the roots lie in the inmost depth of the language'—might surely think himself uncommonly lucky could he contrive in twice the number of words half so pointed and exhaustive a description of Otway's companions as Johnson has here given in language of which no unimportant part, according to Lord Macaulay's foolish classification, is but half naturalised.' That will serve for a single instance of the unerring accuracy with which Johnson is accustomed to hit the mark. The second passage referred to as worthy of the attention of Johnson's detractors, is, it need scarce be said, that wherein he indulges himself in the remembrance' of Gilbert Walmsley; than which it would be hard to point to a nobler in the range of English literature. Compared to an achievement like this, the very best of Addison's writing even the Vision of Mirza itself—becomes almost insignificant. Take Addison's Westminster Abbey paper and set it for a moment beside any expression by Johnson of a similar train of thought. How thin, how savourless, how unsatisfying, how commonplace, seem the speculations of the earlier writer! How robust, how manly, how imposing, those of the later! No; Addison for patches, for hoops, for the fashions, for the Spectator's Club; but Johnson for serious criticism of literature, of morals, and of life. In one respect Johnson's fate has been a hard one. No man's fame ever suffered so much as his from the slavish adulation of stupid and incompetent imitators; no man's admirers ever did his reputation so many disobliging turns. For many years after his death, the sound and beneficial convention he had established was mimicked, distorted, burlesqued, almost beyond recognition, by the blundering ingenuity, not only of pedants and blockheads, but, of many people by no means to be placed in either of these classes. Of all such writers no more need be said than that they richly deserved to have applied to them what Burke in his happiest moment said of one Croft, who communicated to Johnson the greater part of the Life of Young: They had all the nodosity of the oak without its strength, and all the contortions of the Sibyl without the inspiration. But the blockheads and the pedants have long ago sought out other conventions; and the ghost of the sage may perhaps be further appeased by the reflection, that in the greater part of what has been written in the grand style' since he commenced author, his influence is, in some way or other, plainly discernible. To have had were it only Gibbon and Macaulay for pupils might well gratify a master's loftiest ambition. And even if Johnson, in respect of literary posterity, be after all per 6 |