Complete Works of Samuel Johnson, page 653
This is not to say that relations between the two men were always cordial. Courtenay was evidently a non-believer, and the two men often differed on religious matters. Boswell condemned Courtenay’s “wild ravings” in favor of the French revolution, and once confessed his deep regret about quarreling with so close a friend on this subject.10 They also differed on the question of slavery, and Boswell good-naturedly chided Courtenay and William Windham as abolitionists in his poem, No Abolition of Slavery; or the Universal Empire of Love (1791).11 It is clear, too, that as Boswell’s depression grew, Courtenay’s power to brighten his spirits waned considerably. Their friendship, nevertheless, seems to have ended on a happy note, for Boswell’s final mention of Courtenay in his journal includes the remark that with Courtenay he had spent a “good day.”12
Courtenay’s Poetical Review, characterized by Donald A. Stauffer as an embodiment of the “vice-and-virtue philosophy” in biography, was one of the most spirited pieces of Johnsoniana to appear.13 The poem begins with disdain, but at line sixty-one reverses direction and becomes vigorously commendatory. Courtenay did not attempt to add fresh information about Johnson’s life and career. Consequently, the unfavorable portion of the poem is a conventional catalog of Johnson’s often publicized foibles and prejudices, just as the favorable section is in part a commonplace survey of his artistic achievement.
This contrast, as Stauffer remarks, renders Courtenay’s praise more powerful.14 More important, the play between scorn and praise reflects the ambivalence which colors contemporary accounts of Johnson. We are now accustomed to the notion of great art as the product of a flawed life. But in the eighteenth century, an age largely devoted to the idea of discreet biography which concealed or minimized the subject’s weaknesses, a man like Johnson presented formidable problems to the biographer and his readers. Although Courtenay merely versified material which other writers had discussed in much more detail, his poem is important because it synthesizes the conflicting attitudes towards Johnson which prevailed immediately after his death. Courtenay, like many others, saw in Johnson a powerful mixture of great virtues and vices; and though he is not impartial, he effects, through his honesty, an admirable balance between Johnson’s strengths and weaknesses. The final forty lines of the Review constitute one of the most balanced of all contemporary tributes to Johnson as a human being.
For the most part, the commendatory section of the poem is an unsystematic tracing of Johnson’s moral and literary merits. Courtenay’s rhapsodizing on the Dictionary, the Rambler, and the Lives of the Poets is conventional. Clearly, he admired the wide scope of Johnson’s learning and his ability to communicate his knowledge of men and manners in his writings. But his admiration occasionally betrays him; for instance, in describing the “brilliant school” through which Johnson’s influence was perpetuated, he overestimated the extent to which Reynolds, Malone, Burney, Jones, Goldsmith, Steevens, Hawkesworth, and Boswell were indebted to Johnson’s writings.15 Usually, however, he was on firmer ground. Courtenay was the only writer before Boswell to praise Johnson’s Latin verse, a body of poetry virtually ignored by other contemporary biographers and memorialists.16 Furthermore, he employs footnotes skillfully. Though they impede the progress of the poem, they do support poetic statement with factual evidence and explain and amplify certain points made in the verses.
The clearest evidence for the care which Courtenay took with the Review can be found upon examination of his revisions. He made few substantial changes in the second edition, but the third edition contains important revisions. Courtenay added ten lines and five footnotes in the final version, and lightened some of the scorn in the first portion by substituting weaker phrases for stronger ones. He also enclosed lines seven through twenty in quotation marks to make it appear that the sentiment expressed therein was not his own, but a judgment he had heard elsewhere.
But the most significant revisions are concerned with organization. By transferring segments of certain verse paragraphs to others, he achieves a more unified portrait of Johnson. By means of such revision, he forms his general evaluation of Johnson’s writing into one unit and his comments on individual works into another, where before they had been awkwardly interwoven.
Courtenay’s Review did not go unnoticed at the time, though for obvious reasons it was given less attention by the reviewers than the more notorious Johnsoniana. Extracts from the poem were printed in several magazines. The reviewers were almost unanimous in damning the poem’s inelegance, unevenness, and lack of harmony, but reserved praise for the sentiments and candor.17 Chesterfield’s apologist in William Hayley’s Two Dialogues; Containing a Comparative View of the Lives, Characters, and Writings of Philip, the Late Earl of Chesterfield, and Dr. Samuel Johnson (1787) protested that Courtenay was too kind to Johnson. The severest indictment of the Review came from the anonymous author of A Poetical Epistle from the Ghost of Dr. Johnson, mentioned earlier, who charged Courtenay with poor taste and with belaboring the obvious by proving that Johnson was “not quite destitute of brains.”18
The greatest champion of the Review was, of course, Boswell. The Life is sprinkled with quotations from the third edition, 118 lines in all, mostly from Courtenay’s commendatory verses. In view of the many published attacks on Johnson, Boswell must have appreciated Courtenay’s sentiments all the more. Doubtless Courtenay’s warm praise of the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides also found favor with Boswell.19 Perhaps Boswell’s final and least partial judgment of the Review was expressed in his letter to James Abercrombie of Philadelphia dated 11 June 1792. He sent Abercrombie a copy of the poem, commenting that “though I except to several passages, you will find some very good writing.”20
Courtenay’s Review, together with several other little known memorabilia concerning Johnson, stimulated one of the most energetic and splenetic literary controversies of the late eighteenth century. In addition, the Review and pieces like it aroused a considerable amount of useful, if vitriolic, discussion about the art of biography.
University of Iowa
A POETICAL REVIEW &c.
A Generous tear will Caledonia shed?
Her ancient foe, illustrious Johnson’s dead;
Mac-Ossian’s sons may now securely rest,
Safe from the bitter sneer, the cynick jest.21
The song of triumph now I seem to hear,
And these the sounds that vibrate on my ear:
“Low lies the man, who scarce deigns Gray to praise,
But from the tomb calls Blackmore’s sleeping lays;
A passport grants to Pomfret’s dismal chimes,
To Yalden’s hymns, and Watts’s holy rhimes;22
By subtle doubts would Swift’s fair fame invade,
And round his brows the ray of glory shade;23
With poignant taunt mild Shenstone’s life arraigns,
His taste contemns, and sweetly-flowing strains;
At zealous Milton aims his tory dart,
But in his Savage finds a moral heart;
At great Nassau despiteful rancour flings,24
But pension’d kneels ev’n to usurping kings:
Rich, old and dying, bows his laurel’d head,
And almost deigns to ask superfluous bread.”25
A sceptick once, he taught the letter’d throng
To doubt the existence of fam’d Ossian’s song;
Yet by the eye of faith, in reason’s spite,
Saw ghosts and witches, preach’d up second sight:
For o’er his soul sad Superstition threw
Her gloom, and ting’d his genius with her hue.
On popish ground he takes his high church station,
To sound mysterious tenets through the nation;26
On Scotland’s kirk he vents a bigot’s gall,27
Though her young chieftains prophecy like Saul!28
On Tetty’s state his frighted fancy runs,29
And Heaven’s appeas’d by cross unbutter’d buns:30
He sleeps and fasts,31 pens on himself a libel,32
And still believes, but never reads the Bible.33
Fame says, at school, of scripture science vain,
Bel and the Dragon smote him on the brain;34
Scar’d with the blow, he shun’d the Jewish law,
And eyed the Ark with reverential awe:35
Let priestly S — h — n in a godly fit
The tale relate, in aid of Holy Writ;
Though candid Adams, by whom David fell,36
Who ancient miracles sustain’d so well,
To recent wonders may deny his aid,37
Nor own a buzy zealot of the trade.
A coward wish, long stigmatiz’d by fame,
Devotes Mæcenas to eternal shame;38
Religious Johnson, future life to gain,
Would ev’n submit to everlasting pain:
How clear, how strong, such kindred colours paint
The Roman epicure and Christian saint!
O, had he liv’d in more enlighten’d times,
When signs from heaven proclaim’d vile mortals’ crimes,
How had he groan’d, with sacred horrors pale,
When Noah’s comet shook her angry tail;39
That wicked comet, which Will Whiston swore
Would burn the earth that she had drown’d before!40
Or when Moll Tosts, by throes parturient vext,
Saw her young rabbets peep from Esdras’ text!41
To him such signs, prepar’d by mystick grace,
Had shewn the impending doom of Adam’s race.
But who to blaze his frailties feels delight,
When the great author rises to our sight?
When the pure tenour of his life we view,
Himself the bright exemplar that he drew?
Whose works console the good, instruct the wise,
And teach the soul to claim her kindred skies.
By grateful bards his name be ever sung,
Whose sterling touch has fix’d the English tongue!
Fortune’s dire weight, the patron’s cold disdain,
“Shook off, as dew-drops from the lion’s mane;”42
Unknown, unaided, in a friendless state,43
Without one smile of favour from the great;
The bulky tome his curious care refines,
Till the great work in full perfection shines;
His wide research and patient skill displays
What scarce was sketch’d in Anna’s golden days;44
What only learning’s aggregated toil
Slowly accomplish’d in each foreign soil.45
Yet to the mine though the rich coin he trace,
No current marks his early essays grace;
For in each page we find a massy store
Of English bullion mix’d with Latian ore:
In solemn pomp, with pedantry combin’d,
He vents the morbid sadness of his mind;46
In scientifick phrase affects to smile,
Form’d on Brown’s turgid Latin-English style:47
Too oft the abstract decorates his prose,48
While measur’d ternaries the periods close:
But all propriety his Ramblers mock,
When Betty prates from Newton and from Locke;
When no diversity we trace between
The lofty moralist and gay fifteen — 49
Yet genius still breaks through the encumbering phrase;
His taste we censure, but the work we praise:
There learning beams with fancy’s brilliant dyes,
Vivid as lights that gild the northern skies;
Man’s complex heart he bares to open day,
Clear as the prism unfolds the blended ray:
The picture from his mind assumes its hue;
The shades too dark, but the design still true.
Though Johnson’s merits thus I freely scan,
And paint the foibles of this wond’rous man;
Yet can I coolly read, and not admire,
When Learning, Wit and Poetry conspire
To shed a radiance o’er his moral page,
And spread truth’s sacred light to many an age?
For all his works with innate lustre shine,
Strength all his own, and energy divine.
While through life’s maze he sent a piercing view,
His mind expansive to the object grew.
With various stores of erudition fraught,
The lively image, the deep-searching thought,
Slept in repose; — but when the moment press’d,
The bright ideas flood at once confess’d;50
Instant his genius sped its vigorous rays,
And o’er the letter’d world diffus’d a blaze:
As womb’d with fire the cloud electrick flies,
And calmly o’er the horizon seems to rise;
Touch’d by the pointed steel, the lightning flows,
And all the expanse with rich effulgence glows.
In judgment keen, he acts the critick’s part,
By reason proves the feelings of the heart;
In thought profound, in nature’s study wise,
Shews from what source our fine sensations rise;
With truth, precision, fancy’s claims defines,
And throws new splendour o’er the poet’s lines.51
When specious sophists with presumption scan
The source of evil, hidden still from man;52
Revive Arabian tales53, and vainly hope
To rival St. John, and his scholar, Pope;54
Though metaphysicks spread the gloom of night,
By reason’s star he guides our aching sight;
The bounds of knowledge marks; and points the way
To pathless wastes, where wilder’d sages stray;
Where, like a farthing linkboy, Jennings stands,
And the dim torch drops from his feeble hands.
Impressive truth, in splendid fiction drest,55
Checks the vain wish, and calms the troubled breast;
O’er the dark mind a light celestial throws,
And sooths the angry passions to repose;
As oil effus’d illumes and smooths the deep,56
When round the bark the foaming surges sweep. —
But hark, he sings! the strain ev’n Pope admires;
Indignant Virtue her own bard inspires;
Sublime as Juvenal, he pours his lays,57
And with the Roman shares congenial praise: —
In glowing numbers now he fires the age,
And Shakspeare’s sun relumes the clouded stage.58
So full his mind with images was fraught,
The rapid strains scarce claim’d a second thought;
And with like ease his vivid lines assume
The garb and dignity of ancient Rome. —
Let college versemen trite conceits express,
Trick’d out in splendid shreds of Virgil’s dress;
From playful Ovid cull the tinsel phrase,
And vapid notions hitch in pilfer’d lays;
Then with mosaick art the piece combine,
And boast the glitter of each dulcet line:
Johnson adventur’d boldly to transfuse
His vigorous sense into the Latian muse;
Aspir’d to shine by unreflected light,
And with a Roman’s ardour think and write.
He felt the tuneful Nine his breast inspire,
And, like a master, wak’d the59 soothing lyre:
Horatian strains a grateful heart proclaim,
While Sky’s wild rocks resound his Thralia’s name. —
Hesperia’s plant, in some less skillful hands,
To bloom a while, factitious heat demands;
Though glowing Maro a faint warmth supplies,
The sickly blossom in the hot-house dies:
By Johnson’s genial culture, art, and toil,
Its root strikes deep, and owns the fost’ring soil;
Imbibes our sun through all its swelling veins,
And grows a native of Britannia’s plains.
Soft-ey’d compassion, with a look benign
His fervent vows he offer’d at thy shrine;
To guilt, to woe, the sacred debt was paid,60
And helpless females bless’d his pious aid:
Snatch’d from disease, and want’s abandon’d crew,
Despair and anguish from their victims flew;
Hope’s soothing balm into their bosoms stole,
And tears of penitence restor’d the soul.
Nor did philanthrophy alone expand
His liberal heart, and ope his bounteous hand;
His talents ev’n he gave to friendship’s claim,61
And by the gift imparted wealth and fame:
His mind exhaustless sped its vivid force,
Yet with unbated vigour held its course;
As some fix’d star fulfills heaven’s great designs,
Lights other spheres, yet undiminish’d shines.
How few distinguish’d of the studious train
At the gay board their empire can maintain!
In their own books intomb’d their wisdom lies;
Too dull for talk, their slow conceptions rise:
Yet the mute author, of his writings proud,
For wit unshewn claims homage from the crowd;
As thread-bare misers, by mean avarice school’d,
Expect obeisance from their hidden gold. —
In converse quick, impetuous Johnson press’d
His weighty logick, or sarcastick jest:
Strong in the chace, and nimble in the turns,62
For victory still his fervid spirit burns;
Subtle when wrong, invincible when right,
Arm’d at all points, and glorying in his might,
Gladiator-like, he traverses the field,
And strength and skill compel the foe to yield. —
Yet have I seen him, with a milder air,
Encircled by the witty and the fair,
Ev’n in old age with placid mien rejoice
At beauty’s smile, and beauty’s flattering voice. —
With Reynolds’ pencil, vivid, bold, and true,
So fervent Boswell gives him to our view.
