with
reverence, with pity, with awe." That Church of St. Clement Danes,
where Johnson still _
worshipped_ in the era of Voltaire, is to me a
venerable place.
It was in
virtue of his _
sincerity_, of his
speaking still in some sort
from the heart of Nature, though in the current
artificialdialect, that
Johnson was a Prophet. Are not all
dialects "
artificial"? Artificial
things are not all false;--nay every true Product of Nature will infallibly
_shape_ itself; we may say all
artificial things are, at the starting of
them, _true_. What we call "Formulas" are not in their
origin bad; they
are indispensably good. Formula is _method_, habitude; found
wherever man
is found. Formulas fashion themselves as Paths do, as
beaten Highways,
leading toward some
sacred or high object, whither many men are bent.
Consider it. One man, full of heartfelt
earnestimpulse, finds out a way
of doing somewhat,--were it of uttering his soul's
reverence for the
Highest, were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. An
inventor was
needed to do that, a _poet_; he has articulated the dim-struggling thought
that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is his way of doing that;
these are his footsteps, the
beginning of a "Path." And now see: the
second men travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer, it is the
_easiest_ method. In the footsteps of his foregoer; yet with improvements,
with changes where such seem good; at all events with enlargements, the
Path ever _widening_ itself as more travel it;--till at last there is a
broad Highway
whereon the whole world may travel and drive. While there
remains a City or Shrine, or any Reality to drive to, at the farther end,
the Highway shall be right welcome! When the City is gone, we will forsake
the Highway. In this manner all Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things
in the world have come into
existence, and gone out of
existence. Formulas
all begin by being _full_ of substance; you may call them the _skin_, the
articulation into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is
already there: _they_ had not been there
otherwise. Idols, as we said,
are not idolatrous till they become
doubtful, empty for the
worshipper's
heart. Much as we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant
withal of the high
significance of _true_ Formulas; that they were, and
will ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our
habitation in this
world.--
Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his "
sincerity." He has no
suspicion of his being particularly sincere,--of his being particularly
anything! A hard-struggling, weary-hearted man, or "scholar" as he calls
himself,
trying hard to get some honest
livelihood in the world, not to
starve, but to live--without stealing! A noble unconsciousness is in him.
He does not "engrave _Truth_ on his watch-seal;" no, but he stands by
truth, speaks by it, works and lives by it. Thus it ever is. Think of it
once more. The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first
of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him in
capableof being _in_sincere! To his large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a
Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the
unspeakablegreatness of this Mystery of
Life, let him
acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to forget it
or deny it, is ever present to _him_,--fearful and wonderful, on this hand
and on that. He has a basis of
sincerity; unrecognized, because never
questioned or
capable of question. Mirabeau, Mahomet, Cromwell, Napoleon:
all the Great Men I ever heard of have this as the
primary material of
them. Innumerable
commonplace men are debating, are talking everywhere
their
commonplace doctrines, which they have
learned by logic, by rote, at
second-hand: to that kind of man all this is still nothing. He must have
truth; truth which _he_ feels to be true. How shall he stand
otherwise?
His whole soul, at all moments, in all ways, tells him that there is no
standing. He is under the noble necessity of being true. Johnson's way of
thinking about this world is not mine, any more than Mahomet's was: but I
recognize the
everlasting element of _heart-
sincerity_ in both; and see
with pleasure how neither of them remains ineffectual. Neither of them is
as _chaff_ sown; in both of them is something which the seedfield will
_grow_.
Johnson was a Prophet to his people; preached a Gospel to them,--as all
like him always do. The highest Gospel he preached we may describe as a
kind of Moral Prudence: "in a world where much is to be done, and little
is to be known," see how you will _do_ it! A thing well worth preaching.
"A world where much is to be done, and little is to be known:" do not sink
yourselves in
boundless bottomless abysses of Doubt, of wretched
god-forgetting Unbelief;--you were
miserable then,
powerless, mad: how
could you _do_ or work at all? Such Gospel Johnson preached and
taught;--coupled, theoretically and practically, with this other great
Gospel, "Clear your mind of Cant!" Have no trade with Cant: stand on the
cold mud in the
frosty weather, but let it be in your own _real_ torn
shoes: "that will be better for you," as Mahomet says! I call this, I
call these two things _joined together_, a great Gospel, the greatest
perhaps that was possible at that time.
Johnson's Writings, which once had such
currency and
celebrity, are now as
it were disowned by the young
generation. It is not wonderful; Johnson's
opinions are fast becoming obsolete: but his style of thinking and of
living, we may hope, will never become obsolete. I find in Johnson's Books
the indisputablest traces of a great
intellect and great heart;--ever
welcome, under what obstructions and perversions soever. They are
_sincere_ words, those of his; he means things by them. A
wondrous buckram
style,--the best he could get to then; a measured grandiloquence, stepping
or rather stalking along in a very
solemn way, grown obsolete now;
sometimes a tumid _size_ of phraseology not in
proportion to the contents
of it: all this you will put up with. For the phraseology, tumid or not,
has always _something within it_. So many beautiful styles and books, with
_nothing_ in them;--a man is a malefactor to the world who writes such!
_They_ are the avoidable kind!--Had Johnson left nothing but his
_Dictionary_, one might have traced there a great
intellect, a
genuine man.
Looking to its
clearness of
definition, its general solidity, honesty,
insight and successful method, it may be called the best of all
Dictionaries. There is in it a kind of
architectural nobleness; it stands
there like a great solid square-built
edifice, finished, symmetrically
complete: you judge that a true Builder did it.
One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted to poor Bozzy. He passes
for a mean, inflated, gluttonous creature; and was so in many senses. Yet
the fact of his
reverence for Johnson will ever remain note
worthy. The
foolish
conceited Scotch Laird, the most
conceited man of his time,
approaching in such awe-struck attitude the great dusty irascible Pedagogue
in his mean
garret there: it is a
genuinereverence for Excellence; a
_
worship_ for Heroes, at a time when neither Heroes nor
worship were
surmised to exist. Heroes, it would seem, exist always, and a certain
worship of them! We will also take the liberty to deny
altogether that of
the witty Frenchman, that no man is a Hero to his valet-de-chambre. Or if
so, it is not the Hero's blame, but the Valet's: that his soul,
namely, is
a mean _valet_-soul! He expects his Hero to advance in royal
stage-trappings, with measured step, trains borne behind him, trumpets
sounding before him. It should stand rather, No man can be a _Grand-
Monarque_ to his valet-de-chambre. Strip your Louis Quatorze of his
king-gear, and there _is_ left nothing but a poor forked radish with a head
fantastically carved;--admirable to no valet. The Valet does not know a
Hero when he sees him! Alas, no: it requires a kind of _Hero_ to do
that;--and one of the world's wants, in _this_ as in other senses, is for
most part want of such.
On the whole, shall we not say, that Boswell's
admiration was well
bestowed; that he could have found no soul in all England so
worthy of
bending down before? Shall we not say, of this great
mournful Johnson too,
that he guided his difficult confused
existencewisely; led it _well_, like
a right
valiant man? That waste chaos of Authorship by trade; that waste
chaos of Scepticism in religion and
politics, in life-theory and
life-practice; in his
poverty, in his dust and dimness, with the sick body
and the rusty coat: he made it do for him, like a brave man. Not wholly
without a loadstar in the Eternal; he had still a loadstar, as the brave
all need to have: with his eye set on that, he would change his course for
nothing in these confused vortices of the lower sea of Time. "To the
Spirit of Lies,
bearing death and
hunger, he would in nowise strike his
flag." Brave old Samuel: _ultimus Romanorum_!
Of Rousseau and his Heroism I cannot say so much. He is not what I call a
strong man. A morbid, excitable, spasmodic man; at best,
intense rather
than strong. He had not "the
talent of Silence," an
invaluabletalent;
which few Frenchmen, or indeed men of any sort in these times, excel in!
The
suffering man ought really "to
consume his own smoke;" there is no good
in emitting _smoke_ till you have made it into _fire_,--which, in the
metaphorical sense too, all smoke is
capable of becoming! Rousseau has not
depth or width, not calm force for difficulty; the first
characteristic of
true
greatness. A
fundamental mistake to call
vehemence and rigidity
strength! A man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits; though six men
cannot hold him then. He that can walk under the heaviest weight without
staggering, he is the strong man. We need forever, especially in these