The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [432]
Third month, 11. On a provocation, exercised a dumb resentment for two days, instead of scolding.
22. Scolded too vehemently.
23. Dogged again.
Fourth month, 29. Mechanically and sinfully dogged.’
Johnson laughed heartily at this good Quietist’s self-condemning minutes; particularly at his mentioning, with such a serious regret, occasional instances of ‘swinishness in eating, and doggedness of temper.’ He thought the observations of the Critical Reviewers upon the importance of a man to himself so ingenious and so well expressed, that I shall here introduce them.
After observing, that ‘There are few writers who have gained any reputation by recording their own actions,’ they say: –
‘We may reduce the egotists to four classes. In the first we have Julius Csesar: he relates his own transactions; but he relates them with peculiar grace and dignity, and his narrative is supported by the greatness of his character and atchievements. In the second class we have Marcus Antoninus: this writer has given us a series of reflections on his own life; but his sentiments are so noble, his morality so sublime, that his meditations are universally admired. In the third class we have some others of tolerable credit, who have given importance to their own private history by an intermixture of literary anecdotes, and the occurrences of their own times: the celebrated Huetius has published an entertaining volume upon this place “De rebus ad eum pertinentibus.”705 In the fourth class we have the journalists, temporal and spiritual: Elias Ashmole, William Lilly, George Whitefield, John Wesley, and a thousand other old women and fanatick writers of memoirs and meditations.’
I mentioned to him that Dr. Hugh Blair, in his lectures on Rhetorick and Belles Lettres, which I heard him deliver at Edinburgh, had animadverted on the Johnsonian style as too pompous; and attempted to imitate it, by giving a sentence of Addison in The Spectator, No. 411, in the manner of JOHNSON. When treating of the utility of the pleasures of imagination in preserving us from vice, it is observed of those ‘who know not how to be idle and innocent,’ that ‘their very first step out of business is into vice or folly;’ which Dr. Blair supposed would have been expressed in The Rambler thus: ‘Their very first step out of the regions of business is into the perturbation of vice, or the vacuity of folly.’a JOHNSON. ‘sir, these are not the words I should have used. No, Sir; the imitators of my style have not hit it. Miss Aikin has done it the best; for she has imitated the sentiment as well as the diction.’
I intend, before this work is concluded, to exhibit specimens of imitation of my friend’s style in various modes; some caricaturing or mimicking it, and some formed upon it, whether intentionally or with a degree of similarity to it, of which, perhaps, the writers were not conscious.b
In Baretti’s Review, which he published in Italy, under the title of Frusta Letteraria, it is observed, that Dr. Robertson the historian had formed his style upon that of Il celebre Samuele Johnson. My friend himself was of that opinion; for he once said to me, in a pleasant humour, ‘sir, if Robertson’s style be faulty, he owes it to me; that is, having too many words, and those too big ones.’
I read to him a letter which Lord Monboddo had written to me, containing some critical remarks upon the style of his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. His Lordship praised the very fine passage upon landing at Icolmkill;c but his own style being exceedingly dry and hard, he disapproved of the richness of Johnson’s language, and of his frequent use of metaphorical expressions. JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, this criticism would be just, if in my style, superfluous words, or words too big for the thoughts, could be pointed out; but this I do not believe can be done. For instance; in the passage which Lord Monboddo admires, ”We were now treading that illustrious region,” the word illustrious, contributes nothing to the mere narration; for the fact might be