36

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 proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman."

66

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.”

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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

38

"IRENE" ON THE STAGE.

to the boards of Drury Lane. But not without considerable difficulty even now; for Garrick had decided that without several alterations the play was unfitted for representation. Johnson proved rebellious, and a violent quarrel ensued. "Sir,” said he to a friendly mediator, "the fellow wants me to make Mahomet run mad, that he may have an opportunity of tossing his hands and kicking his heels." The enraged dramatist was at last prevailed upon to allow a few changes, that the tragedy might have at least a chance of success. Doctor Adams, who was present on the first night of its representation, gives the following description of the scene: "Before the curtain drew up, there were catcalls whistling, which alarmed Johnson's friends. The Prologue, which was written by himself in a manly strain, soothed the audience, and the play went off tolerably, till it came to the conclusion, when Mrs. Pritchard, the heroine of the piece, was to be strangled upon the stage, and was to speak two lines with the bow-string round her neck. The audience cried out 'Murder! Murder!' She several times attempted to speak; but in vain. At last she was obliged to go off the stage alive." This "damned" passage was afterwards deleted, and the lady, very properly declining to die so much against the will of the audience, allowed herself to be quietly despatched behind the scenes. But all would not suffice. The very best actors did their very best work in its behalf; but, after dragging out a weary existence of nine days (nine days of wonder that the thing was living so long), it peacefully gave up the ghost, and was seen no more. The author had his three nights' profits, however, and from Mr. Robert Dodsley he received. 100% as the price of the copy; so that, in a pecuniary respect, "Irene" was not such a failure after all.

When Johnson was asked how he brooked the ill-success of his tragedy, he replied, "like the Monument." He did not lash himself into fury because the public had declared him no dramatist; he had appealed to the public, and, as he himself said, "the public must, after all, be the judges of his pretensions." One little anecdote of his behaviour while his tragedy was being represented must not be omitted. becoming in a great dramatist to

He had decided that it was. dress differently and more

"IRENE" ON THE STAGE.

39

gorgeously while his work was before the world; he therefore appeared behind the scenes, and even in one of the side-boxes in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace, and a gold-laced hat. He observed to a friend that "when in that dress he could not treat people with the same ease as when in his usual plain clothes.' The sage moralist had not read "Sartor Resartus," but he had used his eyes too well not to see that clothes have a great deal to do with the making of a man.

There were two classes of people whom Johnson seems to have had almost a constitutional tendency to inveigh against: actors and Scotchmen. JOHNSON: "Players, Sir ! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint-stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs."-" But, allow that some players are better than others ?" "Yes, Sir, as some dogs dance better than others." attacks upon the Scotch there was no end.

Sir, you will
JOHNSON :
And of his

But circumstances were gradually bringing about a modification in his harsh judgments of both these classes. His dictionary labours connected him almost hourly with honest and hard-working Scotchmen, and the performance and rehearsal of his play had now shown him many good qualities in the much-despised actors and actresses. From this time forward to his death he kept up acquaintance with some of these, and was always ready to do them a kindness. For a good while after the public appearance of "Irene" Johnson was a pretty frequent visitor to the Green Room; but his virtue by-and-by took alarm, and he fled from this novel temptation. "I'll come no more behind your scenes, David; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities."

As a poem "Irene" is not devoid of merit, but it is not, in any sense, a drama. There is no life in it, no action, no characterization. All the dramatis persona are but the author himself under the flimsiest of veils; even Irene, the heroine, is only, in Garrick's words applied to a different case, "Johnson in petticoats." There is only one real person in the play, and that is the author. Every

40

"IRENE" ON THE STAGE.

body is like everybody else, and everybody else is like Johnson. Goldsmith was right when he said that if Johnson had tried to compose fables, after the fashion of Æsop, he would have made "the little fishes talk like great whales." The fact is, there was no vestige of the dramatic faculty in his nature; and his failure on this occasion was so complete that he never attempted this sort of work again. One or two small pieces excepted, "Irene" was the last of Johnson's poetical efforts also. And we are not sorry that this element in his life and work is dropping out of our sight thus early; for, with all our willingness to do justice to the thing called poetry in that period of our literature, the influences of a poetical school so utterly different, and, as we think, so infinitely grander, have played upon us so long and to such fine issues, that we can hardly allow the sacred name of poetry to anything which does not breathe and burn-as the verse-compositions of that age scarcely ever do. As little episodes in the writer's own inner life Johnson's poems were all-important to him, and are still interesting to us; but as solid contributions to the poetical literature of our country they are almost valueless. Yet the attempt was good, and did him good; and if the result of his endeavour was only one other proof of the "vanity of human wishes," the desire expressed in it to rise into the clear heaven of song, and to make his great thoughts march grandly to their own music, is something that must enter into the very foreground of any true picture of JOHNSON THE MAN.