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, frolic, 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." This was written late in life, long after he had put the case, as was his custom, in a somewhat different light. “If a life be delayed till interest and envy are at an end, we may hope for impartiality, but must expect little intelligence; for the incidents which give excellence to biography are of a volatile and evanescent kind, such as soon escape the memory, and are rarely transmitted by tradition. We know how few can portray a living acquaintance except by his most prominent and observable peculiarities, and the grosser features of his mind; and it may be easily imagined how much of this little knowledge may be lost in imparting it, and how soon a succession of copies will lose all resemblance of the original. If the biographer writes from personal knowledge and makes haste to gratify the public curiosity, there is danger lest his interest, his fear, his gratitude, or his tenderness overpower his fidelity, and tempt him to conceal, if not to invent. There are many who think it an act of piety to hide the faults or failings of their friends, even when they can no longer suffer by their detection; we therefore see whole ranks of characters adorned with uniform panegyric, and not to be known from one another but by extrinsic and casual circumstances. • Let me EDITOR'S PREFACE. XV remember,' says Hale, when I find myself inclined to pity a criminal, that there is likewise a pity due to the country.' If we regard the memory of the dead, there is yet more respect to be paid to knowledge, to virtue, and to truth."4 Where Johnson does not cite his authorities in footnotes, he leaves the reader to infer that he has obtained his information from accessible materials. Yet - and mark his incessant love of truth-where he introduces new matter, he is particularly careful to name the persons from whom he derived it. Thus we find him citing his father, an old bookseller, in illustration of the sale of Absalom and Achitophel,' and the characteristic story he has given of the preaching of Burnet and Sprat. His friends in early life are frequently appealed to. From Walmsley (most enduringly remembered in these Lives) he derives a story about Rag Smith and Addison. Andrew Corbet of Shropshire is his authority for the anecdote of Addison and the barring out. Mr. Ing and "the well-known Ford" (Hogarth's Ford) are cited in support of passages in his Life of Broome. Mr. Locker of the Leather-sellers' Company, and Mr. Clark of Lincoln's Inn, are two more authorities to whom he refers, and of whom I have learnt nothing. I would that Boswell had known them! Dr. Madden 66 a name which Ireland ought to honour"—is produced thrice as his authority in his Lives of Addison and Swift. Dr. Hawkesworth he acknowledges as his authority for an anecdote of modest Foster (no common man). He draws at times on booksellers of name in support of what he states. Thus we find him referring to Mr. Draper,-to Osborne, whom he knocked down, and in two or three places to Mr. Dodsley. Persons of still greater reputation occasionally occur. What Lord Orrery told him of Swift he has introduced into Swift's Life; and what Lord Marchmont, Bishop Warburton, Richardson the painter, and Dobson the scholar, told him about Pope, he has given on their authority. "Miller, the great gardener," "the late learned Mr. Dyer," Dr. Gregory, Mr. Thyer, Mr. Hampton (the translator of Polybius), and Mrs. Porter the actress, are 'Rambler,' No. 60. cited by name; and his own wife, Miss Boothby, and Mrs. Piozzi are referred to, though unnamed, in other places. But his greatest obligation was to Savage, to whose information, afforded nearly forty years before these exquisite Lives were undertaken, he makes valuable and (to the credit of Savage's truthfulness) frequent reference. In thus appealing to his authorities, he no doubt kept in view the caution he had addressed to Warton and others many years before, on the danger and weakness of trusting too readily to information. "Nothing," he says, "but experience could evince the frequency of false information, or enable any man to conceive that so many groundless reports should be propagated as every man of eminence may hear of himself. Some men relate what they think as what they know; some men of confused memories and habitual inaccuracy ascribe to one man what belongs to another; and some talk on without thought or care. A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters." 5 He has been accused of giving too much importance to the attacks of Tom Brown and the criticisms of Dennis, but most improperly so. True it is that Dryden and Pope have outlived their antagonists, but both Brown and Dennis exercised an important influence on the reputations of the writers they attacked. Let us not be too severe : "Ev'n such small critics some regard may claim, Brown and Dennis, both able men, will now live chiefly through the great poets they attacked and the proper importance which Johnson gave to their writings from his knowledge of the influence such satire and criticism exercised on the age in which he himself chose to be (and was) a poet. When writing the Lives of Wordsworth and Keats, we must not forget the injurious criticisms of the Edinburgh,' or the bitter notice of the Quarterly. The next generation will no doubt wonder in what way poetic reputations could have been injured by such 5 Review of Warton's Essay on Pope. EDITOR'S PREFACE. xvii criticisms, as we ourselves wonder in what way Dryden could have been hurt by Brown's light shafts or Milbourne's heavy artillery, or Pope's reputation (high as it was) injured, even for a season, by the sullen asperities of Dennis. Though his great undertaking was unforeseen, and not of his seeking, Johnson was not unprepared for it. He had been an author of high reputation for forty years, and Cowley, the earliest poet of whom he undertook to treat, had died within less than half a century of his own birth. One of the dreams of his youth had been a Life of Dryden,' and we casually learn that (with this very view) he sought for information about him from Cibber, whose means of information had indeed been great. His first poem ('London') was admired by Pope, who dragged it out from a mass of anonymous poems by the dunces of the day, and foresaw (if I may use his own expression) the greatness of his young admirer. Johnson considered the Life of Cowley as the best of the series on account, says Boswell, of the dissertation it contains on the Metaphysical Poets, and the careful discrimination to be found in it of the characteristics of Wit. Yet few will agree with him in his preference, and we may perhaps trace his partiality to another cause. It was the first written of the series, and cost more trouble than any of the others--for he had to turn to books, and read not only Cowley, Donne, and Cleveland, but to elucidate his metaphysical extracts with a commentary on what, when he began, he knew but imperfectly; whereas in his Lives of Dryden and Pope he was writing from memory and from materials immediately within reach. His noble panegyric on Paradise Lost' might have been pronounced at Sir Joshua's table, and his famous parallel between Dryden and Pope was, it is easy to see, and as his MS. shows us, written at a heat. As a piece of English composition there is no better life of Milton than Johnson's brief and admirable narrative; Todd is more full and accurate, and Brydges more enthusiastic and impartial, but the former is cumbrous and unmethodical, the latter Life of Pope.' He applies it to Dryden. VOL. I. b pleasant but superficial. Johnson (he had no predecessor of name) has not been outstripped. Passing over the political objections to the life-for mankind (I fear) will long differ and dispute about the political character of Milton-I would venture to affirm that no one has written finer or truer things about Paradise Lost' than Johnson in this Life. His alleged virulence is indeed always more in the manner of his matter than the matter itself. He had no inclination to narrate the events of Milton's career; and tells us in the very outset of the memoir, that he would have contented himself with the addition of a few notes to Fenton's elegant Abridgment, but that a new narrative, for uniformity's sake, was thought necessary. What was forced upon him he at least performed with sincerity; and the hold that his memoir has had upon mankind may be best illustrated by a passage in Lord Byron : "Milton 's the prince of poets,- so we say, A little heavy, but no less divine: An independent being in his day Learn'd, pious, temperate in love and wine: But his life falling into Johnson's way, We're told this great high-priest of all the Nine That Milton suffered the indignity of corporal correction at college is now, among those that read, pretty generally exploded; but it will be long before the impression is thoroughly rooted out, advanced as it is by Johnson, and countenanced by Byron in a poem like Don Juan.' That Shakespeare stole deer, and that Milton was whipt at college, will long continue (I fear) among the vulgar errors of our literature. The Life of Addison was the first of the second series of his prefaces, and contains some of his happiest characteristics. Disliking Addison for his politics, he loved him for his humour, his exquisite English, and the moral tendency of his pages. There is little to correct in Johnson's Life of Swift, and research since he wrote has rather added to our information, than called in question the statements he put forth. |