The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [221]
Mrs. Montagu, a lady distinguished for having written an Essay on Shakspeare, being mentioned; Reynolds. ‘I think that essay does her honour.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir; it does her honour, but it would do nobody else honour. I have, indeed, not read it all. But when I take up the end of a web, and find it pack-thread, I do not expect, by looking further, to find embroidery. Sir, I will venture to say, there is not one sentence of true criticism in her book.’ GARRICK. ‘But, Sir, surely it shews how much Voltaire has mistaken Shakspeare, which nobody else has done.’Johnson. ‘Sir, nobody else has thought it worth while. And what merit is there in that? You may as well praise a schoolmaster for whipping a boy who has construed ill. No, Sir, there is no real criticism in it: none shewing the beauty of thought, as formed on the workings of the human heart.’
The admirers of this Essaya may be offended at the slighting manner in which Johnson spoke of it; but let it be remembered, that he gave his honest opinion unbiassed by any prejudice, or any proud jealousy of a woman intruding herself into the chair of criticism; for Sir Joshua Reynolds has told me, that when the Essay first came out, and it was not known who had written it, Johnson wondered how Sir Joshua could like it. At this time Sir Joshua himself had received no information concerning the authour, except being assured by one of our most eminent literati,277 that it was clear its authour did not know the Greek tragedies in the original. One day at Sir Joshua’s table, when it was related that Mrs. Montagu, in an excess of compliment to the authour of a modern tragedy,278 had exclaimed, ‘I tremble for Shakspeare;’ Johnson said, ‘When Shakspeare has got — for his rival, and Mrs. Montagu for his defender, he is in a poor state indeed.’
Johnson proceeded: ‘The Scotchman279 has taken the right method in his Elements of Criticism. I do not mean that he has taught us any thing; but he has told us old things in a new way.’ Murphy. ‘He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for years anatomising the heart of man, and peeping into every cranny of it.’ GOLDSMITH. ‘It is easier to write that book, than to read it.’ JOHNSON. ‘We have an example of true criticism in Burke’s Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful; and, if I recollect, there is also Du Bos; and Bou-hours, who shews all beauty to depend on truth. There is no great merit in telling how many plays have ghosts in them, and how this Ghost is better than that. You must shew how terrour is impressed on the human heart. In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness, – inspissated gloom.’
Politicks being mentioned, he said, ‘This petitioning is a new mode of distressing government, and a mighty easy one. I will undertake to get petitions either against quarter-guineas or half-guineas, with the help of a little hot wine. There must be no yielding to encourage this. The object is not important enough. We are not to blow up half a dozen palaces, because one cottage is burning.’
The conversation then took another turn. Johnson. ‘It is amazing what ignorance of certain points one sometimes finds in men of eminence. A wit about town,280 who wrote Latin bawdy verses, asked me, how it happened that England and Scotland, which were once two kingdoms, were now one: – and Sir Fletcher Norton did not seem to know that there were such publications as the Reviews.’
‘The ballad of Hardyknute281 has no great merit, if it be really ancient. People talk of nature. But mere obvious nature may be exhibited with very little power of mind.’
On Thursday, October 19, I passed the evening with him at his house. He advised me to complete a Dictionary of words peculiar to Scotland, of which I shewed him a specimen. ‘Sir, (said he,) Ray has made a collection of north-country words. By collecting those of your country, you will do a useful thing towards the history of the language.’ He