riKi, &**** :#*&$ » ' hates everybody ; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams ; Desmoulins hates them both ; Poll loves none of them.' This was the domestic circle of that great intellect. Surely we may say that his heart was even greater, and that this is the part of Johnson's life most beautiful to us. ' If I did not assist them,' he said, ' no one else would.' But his charity and generosity were unbounded. It has been truly said by one who knew him well ' that the lame, the blind, and the sorrowful found in his house a sure retreat.' Once he found a poor woman lying exhausted in the street — one of the city waifs ; he took her on his back, carried her to his house, and had her tenderly taken care of till she was restored to health, and put in a better way of life. 16 DOCTOR JOHNSON But this ready and Christian charity was accompanied by a commonsense not less prompt. Of that there is no more comical instance than his method with Goldsmith in difficulties. The unfortunate poet sent word to Johnson that he was in great distress. Johnson at once sent a guinea, promising to follow it as soon as he was dressed. He went, and found the guinea had been changed, and that Goldsmith was sitting before a bottle of Madeira. Now comes the immortal touch. * I put the cork into the bottle and desired that he would be calm.' The benefactor then walked off with The Vicar of Wakefield in his pocket, and sold it for sixty pounds. He knew men well, with the exception, perhaps, of himself, for he was neither a 'good-humoured fellow* nor a polite fellow, as he proclaimed himself to be : his temper was extremely explosive, and no one could be so rude. But this contact with his fellows made him love the practical side of life. He 'loved business,. loved to have his wisdom actually operate on real life/ He liked to advise Boswell on domestic economy and the management of his estate, to dictate opinions on legal points, to act as a general referee. He delighted in bustling about the brewery as Thrale's executor,, with an inkhorn and pen in his buttonhole. Indeed he did not altogether escape the fatal fascination which Parliament exercises over literary men of high ability, Strahan wrote a letter, to be shewn to Lord North, pointing out the value of the support which Johnson could give as a member of the House of Commons ; a letter written probably with the privity of Johnson? And Johnson himself would sometimes regret that he had not made an attempt for fame in Parliament: a regret which has, perhaps, crossed the minds of most 17 DOCTOR JOHNSON able men, but which is at least comprehensible in one who claimed to have composed many of the speeches attributed to our great orators. But this was, perhaps, less a matter of ambition than an aspect of his humanity ; he wished to have a taste of everything that was savoury in life. This essentially human nature of Johnson, combined with his insular existence, for his trip to Paris scarcely counts, and his expedition to the Hebrides strictly speaking was insular too, is one great secret of his popularity. He was John Bull himself. He exalted the character, of which he may be regarded as its sublime type, but he embodied the spirit. His Toryism was part of his John Bullism; his love of London was rather that of the John Bull than the cockney ; his hatred of Scotland was that of the John Bull of his youth. When Foote threatened to caricature him, he furnished himself at once with an oaken cudgeL He asked the price of one, and, being told sixpence, demanded a shilling one. ' I'll have a double quantity.' Could anything be more John Bullish than this? Physically and combatively he embodied the character, not of the ordinary agricultural but of the literary John Bull. I must not, however, linger on this fancy. For we -have to consider him in his most famous character as a conversationalist, and to treat this ade- quately would require an essay of itself. Talk with him was not a luxury or an amusement, it was an article of prime necessity. He dreaded solitary or vacant moments, for he had then to cope with the terrors of constitutional melancholy, and as nothing but want of money could make him overcome his native indolence sufficiently to compel him to 18 DOCTOR JOHNSON write, he was thrown back on conversation both as a prophylactic and as the intellectual exercise necessary for his mental health. What is the impression that we derive from the vivid and careful reports of his talk ? Well, the first salient fact is that he sate at the receipt of custom, at the counter of his intellectual bank, ready to honour all drafts. He did not apparently start his own topics, Boswell or some crony had to lure him on. Then he would turn on the powerful mechanism of his mind, twist the subject about, defend, if possible, some glaring paradox, and, warming to his work, might not impos- sibly gore his opponent. He was * a tremendous com- panion,' as was happily said by one of the Garricks. Then one is struck with his choice of diction. He never seems to pause for a word ; they come to him spontaneously ; but he is never satisfied with the second best, it must always be that which exactly repre- sents his conception. It was not always graceful, it was often pompous or Latinified, but it was always exact and expressive. He, again likeBolingbroke, had perfected his conversational style by a long-standing determination to express himself as well as possible on every occasion, whether trivial or not, and so he had acquired without effort a singular vigour of phrase. Another signal feature of his conversation is this, that his little discourses spring forth unpremeditated but full-fledged ; he gives the number of his reasons before he utters them, as if what he were going to say was already complete in his mind though the subject has only just been put before him. And this extra- ordinary quality goes far beyond conversation. He is 19 DOCTOR JOHNSON ready at any moment, so far as one can judge, to dictate a paper admirable in argument, knowledge, and form on any topic that may be raised. Boswell brings him Scottish law cases, the great man bids him take the pen, pulls out as it were the necessary organ stop in his mind, and produces a remarkable essay. Take, for example, that which he dictated on the liberty of censure from the pulpit, an apparently mature produc- tion put forth on the spur of the moment, which earned the admiration of Burke. What a journalist he would have made ! — not merely from his readiness of ripe composition, but from the range of his mind and reading, as well as the ready and inexhaustible stores of his memory. One example must suffice to-day. At a dinner at Sir Joshua's, after Johnson has discoursed on the alleged fact that the brook which Horace describes in his voyage to Brindisi is still flowing, Mr. Cambridge quotes from a Spanish writer as to things fugitive surviving things seemingly permanent. Johnson at once caps this with a quotation from Janus Vitalis, a name which would remain un- known to most of us, did not the invaluable Birkbeck Hill tell us that he was a poet and theologian of Palermo who lived in the sixteenth century. No instance, though scores could be given, so well illus- trates his readiness, his range of reading, and his memory. Adam Smith, a high authority, said that Johnson knew more books than any man alive. Dr. Boswell called him * a robust genius born to grapple with whole libraries.' He seems indeed to have grappled with them. In his own strange way he tore the heart out of a book without reading it through, but carried away in his memory all that was abiding or material. 20 DOCTOR JOHNSON But though his learning was always at command, it never seems obtrusive : his manliness saved him from pedantry. Again, and as part of his John Bullism, note his robust commonsense. He abounded in commonsense, and also in some that was uncommon. But his commonsense never failed him. He would break in upon a discussion or sum it up with a sentence sometimes brutal, sometimes coarse, but always tersely expressing the core and commonsense of the matter. This quality made him intolerant of anything like sentimentalism or affectation. One of his special irritants was the idea that people composed better at some times and seasons than others, in spite of Milton, whose genius, we are told, flowed most happily ' from the autumnal equinox to the vernal.' For this he falls foul of Gray, not reluctantly, and of any one else who cherished this ' fantastic foppery.' He himself sate down, full or fasting, doggedly to work at one time as well as another, though we have to record that a whole year would sometimes pass without his producing anything at all. In the same spirit he would not admit that any one could be affected by the weather. That again was all stuff and fancy. This robustness carried him far. Though he became a water-drinker himself, he uttered many sentiments which teetotalers could not quote. Even in questions of morality he would often fail to satisfy the austere, or even some who are not. He could even on occasion slang a bargee in appropriate language. Johnson is always called our great moralist, and, indeed, in his writings he earns the title. But when in a mocking mood, or from his love of paradox, or his 21 DOCTOR JOHNSON honest scorn of cant, he often broaches opinions to which he certainly would not have given his deliberate authority. His epigrams should not be quoted as opinions or as anything but epigrams. He knew, indeed, that Boswell was preserving them for publication. But he probably gave posterity credit for discriminating between deliberate judgment and the caprice of easy conversation. In truth, his love of paradox and his delight in the exercise of his dialectic skill would make him sustain or controvert almost any imagin- able proposition. This sometimes puzzled the less nimble-witted Boswell, who, however, got to under- stand him at last, and would lure him or gently goad him. But there were moments when he would not be guided or restrained, when the noble animal broke through all nets and precautions. Woe, then, to his opponent, for he could be truculent and even brutal, and conversation with him was a battle- field. 'He fought on every occasion,' said Reynolds, * as if his whole reputation depended on the victory of the minute, and he fought with all the weapons. If he was foiled in argument he had recourse to abuse and rudeness.' In such a frenzy he could even insult Sir Joshua, the sweetest and most amiable member of his society. As Goldsmith said, who himself had suffered, quoting from a comedy of Cibber's : ' If his pistol does not go off, he knocks you down with the butt end.' But that is the way with all, or almost all, who claim predominance in conversation, and no one, when the fit was over, could be more anxious to appease the animosities that he had caused. With old Mr. Sheridan, whom he had hurt by a sarcasm, he sought reconciliation, but in vain. ' Great lords and ladies, 22 DOCTOR JOHNSON too,' he said once, 'I think, give me up ... . they don't like to have their mouths stopped.' Others, no doubt, shared the feelings of this sublime class, and after one trial remained away. Some categories of persons he did not seek to conciliate. He hated Whigs with a devout hatred : ' the first Whig,' he always said, 'was the devil.' He hated Scotsmen scarcely less, though his hatred came at last to be mainly an opportunity for jests, which now afford amusement to the most sensitive patriot. Freethinkers he detested most of all, though he could not resist Wilkes. And in his conversation there was this element of harmless and agreeable gambling. One never knew what side he would take ; one never could guess his line of argument, for that was never commonplace ; one never knew whether he would be warm or cold, irascible or serene. There was only this certainty, that he would be human, manly, and profoundly interesting. His natural melancholy made him dread solitude ; and he preferred his ' seraglio ' to a lonely home. But as visitors were not certain, he sought mankind where he could find it, haunted taverns and founded clubs. His own illustrious Club, of which I have the mis- fortune to be the father, was founded in 1764 at the instance of Reynolds, and still survives in pristine vigour ; successful candidates are still apprised of their election in the formula composed by Gibbon. We celebrated our founder's bi-centenary this year, as he would have wished, by a full dinner. That club he sedulously cherished so long as it was composed of a small knot of his most sympathetic friends ; there he long reigned supreme. But its fame drew many can- 23 DOCTOR JOHNSON didates of a kind impossible to exclude, but not all congenial. In 1777 it was proposed to increase the number of its members from twenty to thirty, which he approved. ' For as we have several in it,' he wrote, ' with whom I do not much like to consort with, I am for reducing it to a mere miscellaneous collection of conspicuous men without any determinate character.' Thenceforward then he attended it but little ; but he dined there on June 22nd, in the last year of his life. But such was his passion for this form of society that but a twelvemonth before his death he not merely resuscitated a small club of his early days which had met in Ivy Lane ; but, though moribund, and knowing himself to be on the verge of the grave, he founded a new club at the 'Essex Head,' which he ardently promoted. Reynolds objected to some of the company and refused to belong, but Johnson was less nice. To him, society of some kind was a necessity of life, a refuge from the dark terrors of solitude, he had known and enjoyed it in all forms, and so his new club with its dubious element continued, and was prolonged for some years after Johnson's death. What more remains ? The highest of all, the great Christian soul, the ardent champion and firm bulwark of the faith. It was not always so. For some years, Johnson tells us, he was wholly regardless of religion, indeed a ' lax talker ' against it. That was in youthful days. But when after meeting Boswell he comes under our close view, all that is changed. This is not to say that he was free from the anguish of doubt, for that is not the impression he gives. But first and last with him stands his religious faith. He was a High Churchman of the old school, sometimes intolerant 24 DOCTOR JOHNSON of Nonconformists, but on the whole of a broad em- bracing scope. * All Richard Baxter's books are good, read them all,' he would say. On other occasions he would speak warmly against the Church of Rome, sometimes defending it so warmly, when it was attacked, that one of his friends died under the belief that he was of that communion. Finally, he would declare that 'all denominations of Christians have really little difference in point of doctrine, though they may differ widely in external form.' He was, it may be seen, however strict and earnest an Anglican himself, large and generous in his comprehension. None the less did his extreme conscientiousness inspire him with an abnormal fear of death, much more than men of infinitely less virtue. ' Death, my dear, is very dreadful,' he wrote to his stepdaughter ten months before his end. But when he thought that it was near, he displayed a high composure, and he wrote the most striking of his letters. ' Dear Sir, it has pleased God this morning to deprive me of the power of speech ; and as I do not know but that it may be His farther good pleasure to deprive me soon of my senses, I request you will on receipt of this note come to me and act for me as the exigencies of my case may require.' And when the shadow was finally on him, he was able to recognise that what was coming was divine, an angel, though formidable and obscure ; and so he passed with serene composure beyond mankind. Men like this are the stay of religion in their time, and for those who come after. Laymen who hold high and pure the standard of their faith do more for Christianity, it may safely be averred, than a multitude of priests. To say this is not to disparage 25 DOCTOR JOHNSON the clergy ; rather the reverse, for it implies that their course is regular and habitual. But their champion- ship is felt to be the natural result of their profession and their vows, while the conspicuous layman, who is also a conspicuous Christian, has all the honours of a volunteer. No one, I think, can doubt that Samuel Johnson and William Ewart Gladstone were priceless champions of their faith, and that their places will not easily be filled. And now we have lingered long enough, perhaps too long, round this absorbing figure, and must perforce leave him. There is a human majesty about him which commands our reverence, for we recognise in him a great intellect, a huge heart, a noble soul. He lived under grievous torments, in dread of doubt, in dread of madness, in terror of death, yet he never flinched ; he stood four square to his own generation as he stands to posterity. We leave him more reluctantly than any of the dead, for he is the only one with whom we can hold converse, and so it is with the conviction that it will not be for long ; as life is insipid without him. There- fore we do not say good-bye. Rather let us think that we have only paid one more pilgrimage to his shrine; for though his dust rests with a whole Sahara of various kinds in Westminster Abbey, his memory, which lives throughout the Anglo-Saxon world, is especially green in Fleet Street and in Lichfield. We salute once more with reverence to-day the memory of that brave, manly, tender soul, and pass on with the hope that from his abundant store we may draw some measure of faith and courage to sustain our own lives. 26