Part 1

DR. JOHNSON'S WORKS.

THE

ADVENTURER AND IDLER.

THE

WORKS

OF

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

IN NINE VOLUMES.

VOLUME THE FOURTH.

MDCCCXXV.

PREFATORY NOTICE

TO

THE ADVENTURER.

The Adventurer was projected in the year 1752, by Dr. John Hawkesworth. He was partly induced to undertake the work by his admiration of the Rambler, which had now ceased to appear, the style and sentiments of which evidently, from his commencement, he made the models of his imitation.

The first number was published on the seventh of November, 1752. The quantity and price were the same as the Rambler, and also the days of its appearance. He was joined in his labours by Dr. Johnson in 1753, whose first paper is dated March 3, of that year; and after its publication Johnson applied to his friend, Dr. Joseph Warton, for his assistance, which was afforded: and the writers then were, besides the projector Dr. Hawkesworth, Dr. Johnson, Dr. Joseph Warton, Dr. Bathurst, Colman, Mrs. Chapone and the Hon. Hamilton Boyle, the accomplished son of Lord Orrery [1].

Our business, however, in the present pages, does not lie with the Adventurer in general, but only with Dr. Johnson's contributions; which amount to the number of twenty-nine, beginning with No. 34, and ending with No. 138.

Much criticism has been employed in appropriating some of them, and the carelessness of editors has overlooked several that have been satisfactorily proved to be Johnson's own[2].

Mr. Boswell relies on internal evidence, which is unnecessary, since in Dr. Warton's copy (and his authority on the subject will scarcely be disputed) the following remark was found at the end: "The papers marked T were written by Mr. S. Johnson." Mrs. Anna Williams asserted that he dictated most of these to Dr. Bathurst, to whom he presented the profits. The anecdote may well be believed from the usual benevolence of Johnson and his well-known attachment to that amiable physician, whose professional knowledge might undoubtedly have enabled him to offer hints to Johnson in the progress of composition. Thus we may account for the references to recondite medical writers in No. 39, which so staggered Boswell and Malone in pronouncing on the genuineness of this paper. Those who are familiar with Johnson's writings can have little hesitation, we conceive, in recognising his style, and manner, and sentiments in those papers which are now published under his name. They may be considered as a continuation of the Rambler. The same subjects are discussed; the interests of literature and of literary men, the emptiness of praise and the vanity of human wishes. The same intimate knowledge, of the town and its manners is displayed[3]; and occasionally we are amused with humorous delineation of adventure and of character[4].

From the greater variety of its subjects, aided, perhaps, by a growing taste for periodical literature, the sale of the Adventurer was greater than that of the Rambler on its first appearance. But still there were those, who "talked of it as a catch-penny performance, carried on by a set of needy and obscure scribblers[5]." So slowly is a national taste for letters diffused, and so hardly do works of sterling merit, which deal not in party-politics, nor exemplify their ethical discussions by holding out living characters to censure or contempt, win the applause of those, whose passions leave them no leisure for abstracted truth, and whom virtue itself cannot please by its naked dignity. But, by such, Johnson professed, that he had little expectation of his writings being perused. Keeping then our main object more immediately in view, the elucidation of Johnson's real character and motives, we cannot but admire the prompt benevolence, with which he joined Hawkesworth in his task, and the ready zeal, with which he embraced any opportunity of promoting the interests of morality and virtue. "To a benevolent disposition every state of life will afford some opportunities of contributing to the welfare of mankind," is the characteristic opening of his first Adventurer. And when we have admired the real excellence of his heart, we must wonder at the vigour of a mind, which could so abstract itself from its own sorrows and misfortunes, which too often deaden our feelings of pity, as to sympathize with others in affliction, and even to promote innocent cheerfulness. Bowed down by the loss of a wife[6], on whom he had called from amidst the horrors of a hopeless melancholy, to "hide him from the ills of life," and depressed by poverty, "that numbs the soul with icy hand," his genius sank not beneath a load, which might have crushed the loftiest; but the "incumbrances of his fortune were shaken from his mind, 'as dew-drops from a lion's mane[7].'"

The same pure and exalted morality, which stamps their chief value on the pages of the Rambler, instructs us in the lessons of the Adventurer. Here is no cold doctrine of expediency or dangerous speculations on moral approbation, no easy virtue which can be practised without a struggle, and which interdicts the gratification of no passion but malice: here is no compromise of personal sensuality, for an endurance of others' frailties, amounting to an indifference of moral distinctions altogether. Johnson boldly and, at once, propounds the real motives to Christian conduct; and does not, with some ethical writers, in a slavish dread of interfering with the more immediate office of the divine, hold out slender inducements to virtuous action, which can never give us strength to stem the torrent of passion; but holding with the acute Owen Feltham[8], "that, as true religion cannot be without morality, no more can morality, that is right, be without religion," Johnson ever directs our attention, not to the world's smile or frown, but to the discharge of the duty which Providence assigns us, by the consideration of the awful approach of that night when no man can work. To conclude with the appropriate words of an eloquent writer, "in his sublime discussions of the most sacred truths, as no style can be too lofty nor conceptions too grand for such a subject, so has the great master never exerted the powers of his great genius with more signal success. Impiety shrinks beneath his rebuke; the atheist trembles and repents; the dying sinner catches a gleam of revealed hope; and all acknowledge the just dispensations of eternal Wisdom[9]."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] For the general history of the Adventurer, the reader may be referred to Chalmers' British Essayists, xxiii, Dr. Drake's Essays on Rambler, Adventurer, &c. ii, and Boswell's Journal, 3rd edit. p. 240.

[2] Five of these, Nos. 39, 67, 74, 81, and 128, which Sir John Hawkins omitted to arrange among the writings of Johnson, are given in this edition.

[3] See particularly the Letters of Misagargyrus.

[4] The description in No. 84, of the incidents of a stage-coach journey, so often imitated by succeeding writers, but, perhaps, never surpassed, will exemplify the above remark.

[5] See Lounger, No. 30.

[6] "I have heard, he means to occasionally throw some papers into the Daily Advertiser; but he has not begun yet, as he is in great affliction, I fear, poor man, for the loss of his wife."--Letter from Miss Talbot to Mrs. Carter. Mrs. Johnson died March 17, 1752.

[7] See the Preface to Shakespeare.

[8] Owen Feltham's Resolves.

[9] Indian Observer, No. 1, 1793. See likewise Adventurers, Nos. 120, 126, 128.

PREFATORY NOTICE

TO

THE IDLER.

The Idler may be ranked among the best attempts which have been made to render our common newspapers the medium of rational amusement; and it maintained its ground in this character longer than any of the papers which have been brought forward by Colman and others on the same plan[1]. Dr. Johnson first inserted this production in the Universal Chronicle, or Weekly Gazette, April 15, 1758, four years after he had desisted from his labours as an essayist. It would seem probable, that Newbery, the publisher of the Chronicle, projected it as a vehicle for Johnson's essays, since it ceased to appear when its pages were no longer enlivened by the humour of the Idler.

It is well known, that Johnson was not "built of the press and pen[2]" when he composed the Rambler; but his sphere of observation had been much enlarged since its publication, and his more ample means no longer suffered his genius to be "limited by the narrow conversation, to which men in want are inevitably condemned[3]." "The sublime philosophy of the Rambler cannot properly be said to have portrayed the manners of the times; it has seldom touched on subjects so transient and fugitive, but has displayed the more fixed and invariable operations of the human heart[4]." But the Idler breathes more of a worldly spirit, and savours less of the closet than Johnson's earlier essays; and, accordingly, we find delineated in its diversified pages the manners and characters of the day in amusing variety and contrast.

Written professedly for a paper of miscellaneous intelligence, the Idler dwells on the passing incidents of the day, whether serious or light[5], and abounds with party and political allusion. Johnson ever surveyed mankind with the eye of a philosopher; but his own easier circumstances would now present the world's aspect to him in brighter, fairer colours. Besides, he could, with more propriety and less risk of misapprehension, venture to trifle now, than when first he addressed the public.

The World[6] had diffused its precepts, and corrected the fluctuating manners of fashion, in the tone of fashionable raillery; and the Connoisseur[7], by its gay and sparkling effusions, had forwarded the advance of the public mind to that last stage of intellectual refinement, in which alone a relish exists for delicate and half latent irony. The plain and literal citizens of an earlier period, who conned over what was "so nominated in the bend," would have misapprehended that graceful playfulness of satire, elegant and fanciful as ever charmed the leisure of the literary loungers of Athens. For, in the writings of Bonnel Thornton and Colman, the philosophy of Aristippus may indeed be said to be revived[8]. We would not, however, be supposed, by these allusions, to imply that all the papers of the Idler are light and sportive; or that Johnson for a moment lost sight of a grand moral end in all his discussions. His mind only accommodated itself to the circumstances in which it was placed, and diligently sought to avail itself of each varying opportunity to admonish and to benefit, whether from the chair of philosophic reproof or in the cheerful, social circle. Whatever faults have been charged upon the Idler may be traced, we conceive, to this source. Nobody at times, said Johnson, talks more laxly than I do[9]. And this acknowledged propensity may well be presumed to have affected the humorous and almost conversational tone of the work before us. In the conscious pride of mental might and in the easier moments of conversations, that illuminated the minds of Reynolds[10] and of Burke, Johnson delighted to indulge in a lively sophistry which might sometimes deceive himself, when at first he merely wished to sport in elegant raillery or ludicrous paradox. When these sallies were recorded and brought to bear against him on future occasions, irritated at their misconstruction and conscious to himself of an upright intention, or at most of only a wish to promote innocent cheerfulness, he was too stubborn in retracting what he had thus advanced. Hence, when menaced with a prosecution for his definition of Excise in his Dictionary, so far from offering apology or promising alteration, he called, in his Idler, a Commissioner of Excise the lowest of human beings, and classes him with the scribbler for a party[11]. So strange a definition and still less pardonable adherence to it can only be justified on the ground of Johnson's warm feelings for the comfort of the middle class of society. He knew that the execution of the excise laws involved an intrusion into the privacies of domestic life, and often violated the fireside of the unoffending and quiet tradesman. He, therefore, disliked those laws altogether, and his warm-hearted disposition would not allow him to calculate on their abstract advantages with modern political economists, who, in their generalizing doctrines, too frequently overlook individual comfort and interests. His remarks, in the same paper, on the edition of the Pleas of the Crown cannot be thus vindicated, and we must here lament an error in an otherwise honest and well-intentioned mind[12]. Every impartial reader of his works may thus easily trace to their origin Johnson's chief political errors, and his research must terminate in admiration of a writer, who never prostituted his pen to fear or favour; and who, though erroneous often in his estimate of men and measures, still, in his support of a party, firmly believed himself to be the advocate of morality and right. His tenderness of spirit, his firm principles and his deep sense of the emptiness of human pursuits are visible amidst the lighter papers of the Idler, and his serious reflections are, perhaps, more strikingly affecting as contrasted with mirthfulness and pleasantry.

His concluding paper and the one[13] on the death of his mother have, perhaps, never been surpassed. Here is no affectation of sentimentality, no morbid and puling complaints, but the dignified and chastened expression of sorrow, which a mind, constituted as Johnson's, must have experienced on the departure of a mother. A heart, tender and susceptible of pathetic emotion, as his was, must have deeply felt, how dreary it is to walk downward to the grave unregarded by her "who has looked on our childhood." Occasions for more violent and perturbed grief may occur to us in our passage through life, but the gentle, quiet death of a mother speaks to us with "still small voice" of our wasting years, and breaks completely and, at once, our earliest and most cherished associations. This tenderness of spirit seems ever to have actuated Johnson, and he is surely greatest when he breathes it forth over the sorrows and miseries of man. Even in his humorous papers, he never wounds feeling for the sake of raising a laugh, nor sports with folly, but in the hope of reclaiming the vicious and with the design of warning the young of the delusion and danger of an example, which can only be imitated by the forfeiture of virtue and the practice of vice. "In whatever he undertook, it was his determined purpose to rectify the heart, to purify the passions, to give ardour to virtue and confidence to truth[14]."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Genius was published by Colman in the St. James's Chronicle, 1761, 1762. The Gentleman, by the same author, came out in the London-Packet, 1775. The Grumbler was the production of the Antiquary Grose, and appeared in the English Chronicle, 1791.

[2] Owen Feltham.

[3] Preface to Shakespeare.

[4] Country Spectator, No. 1.

[5] Idler, No. 6.

[6] The World was published in 1753.

[7] The Connoisseur appeared in 1754.

[8] See Dr. Drake's Essays, II.

[9] Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.

[10] See life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, prefixed to his Works by Malone, i. 28, &c.

[11] See Idler, No. 65 and Mr. Chalmers' Preface to vol. 33 of the British Essayists.

[12] See Gentleman's Magazine 1706. p. 272.

[13] Idler, No. 41.

[14] See Pursuits of Literature, Dialogue I. note.

CONTENTS OF THE FOURTH VOLUME.

THE ADVENTURER.

34. Folly of extravagance. The story of Misargyrus

39. On sleep

41. Sequel of the story of Misargyrus

45. The difficulty of forming confederacies

50. On lying

53. Misargyrus' account of his companions in the Fleet

58. Presumption of modern criticism censured. Ancient poetry necessarily obscure. Examples from Horace

62. Misargyrus' account of his companions concluded

67. On the trades of London

69. Idle hope

74. Apology for neglecting officious advice

81. Incitement to enterprise and emulation. Some account of the admirable Crichton

84. Folly of false pretences to importance. A journey in a stagecoach

85. Study, composition, and converse equally necessary to intellectual accomplishment

92. Criticism on the Pastorals of Virgil

95. Apology for apparent plagiarism. Sources of literary variety

99. Projectors injudiciously censured and applauded

102. Infelicities of retirement to men of business

107. Different opinions equally plausible

108. On the uncertainty of human things

111. The pleasures and advantages of industry

115. The itch of writing universal

119. The folly of creating artificial wants

120. The miseries of life

126. Solitude not eligible

128. Men differently employed unjustly censured by each other

131. Singularities censured

137. Writers not a useless generation

138. Their happiness and infelicity

THE IDLER.

1. The Idler's character.

2. Invitation to correspondents.

3. Idler's reason for writing.

4. Charities and hospitals.

5. Proposal for a female army.

6. Lady's performance on horseback.

7. Scheme for news-writers.

8. Plan of military discipline.

9. Progress of idleness.

10. Political credulity.

11. Discourses on the weather.

12. Marriages, why advertised.

13. The imaginary housewife.

14. Robbery of time.

15. Treacle's complaint of his wife.

16. Drugget's retirement.

17. Expedients of idlers.

18. Drugget vindicated.

19. Whirler's character.

20. Capture of Louisbourg.

21. Linger's history of listlessness.

22. Imprisonment of debtors.

23. Uncertainty of friendship.

24. Man does not always think.

25. New actors on the stage.

26. Betty Broom's history.

27. Power of habits.

28. Wedding-day. Grocer's wife. Chairman.

29. Betty Broom's history continued.

30. Corruption of news-writers.

31. Disguises of idleness. Sober's character.

32. On Sleep.

33. Journal of a fellow of a college.

34. Punch and conversation compared.

35. Auction-hunter described and ridiculed.

36. The terrific diction ridiculed.

37. Useful things easy of attainment.

38. Cruelty shown to debtors in prison.

39. The various uses of the bracelet.

40. The art of advertising exemplified.

41. Serious reflections on the death of a friend.

42. Perdita's complaint of her father.

43. Monitions on the flight of time.

44. The use of memory considered.

45. On painting. Portraits defended.

46. Molly Quick's complaint of her mistress.

47. Deborah Ginger's account of city-wits.

48. The bustle of idleness described and ridiculed.

49. Marvel's journey narrated.

50. Marvel's journey paralleled.

51. Domestick greatness unattainable.

52. Self-denial necessary.

53. Mischiefs of good company.

54. Mrs. Savecharges' complaint.

55. Authors' mortifications.

56. Virtuosos whimsical.

57. Character of Sophron.

58. Expectations of pleasure frustrated.

59. Books fall into neglect.

60. Minim the critic.

61. Minim the critic.

62. Hanger's account of the vanity of riches.

63. Progress of arts and language.

64. Ranger's complaint concluded.

65. Fate of posthumous works.

66. Loss of ancient writings.

67. Scholar's journal.

68. History of translation.

69. History of translation.

70. Hard words defended.

71. Dick Shifter's rural excursion.

72. Regulation of memory.

73. Tranquil's use of riches.

74. Memory rarely deficient.

75. Gelaleddin of Bassora.

76. False criticisms on painting.

77. Easy writing.

78. Steady, Snug, Startle, Solid and Misty.

79. Grand style of painting.

80. Ladies' journey to London.

81. Indian's speech to his countrymen.

82. The true idea of beauty.

83. Scruple, Wormwood, Sturdy and Gentle.

84. Biography, how best performed.

85. Books multiplied by useless compilations.

86. Miss Heartless' want of a lodging.

87. Amazonian bravery revived.

88. What have ye done?

89. Physical evil moral good.

90. Rhetorical action considered.

91. Sufficiency of the English language.

92. Nature of cunning.

93. Sam Softly's history.

94. Obstructions of learning.

95. Tim Wainscot's son a fine gentleman.

96. Hacho of Lapland.

97. Narratives of travellers considered.

98. Sophia Heedful.

99. Ortogrul of Basra.

100. The good sort of woman.

101. Omar's plan of life.

102. Authors inattentive to themselves.

103. Honour of the last.

THE

ADVENTURER.

No. 34. SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 1753.

_Has toties optata exegit gloria pænas._ Juv. Sat. x. 187. Such fate pursues the votaries of praise.

TO THE ADVENTURER.

SIR,

Fleet Prison, Feb. 24.

To a benevolent disposition, every state of life will afford some opportunities of contributing to the welfare of mankind. Opulence and splendour are enabled to dispel the cloud of adversity, to dry up the tears of the widow and the orphan, and to increase the felicity of all around them: their example will animate virtue, and retard the progress of vice. And even indigence and obscurity, though without power to confer happiness, may at least prevent misery, and apprize those who are blinded by their passions, that they are on the brink of irremediable calamity. Pleased, therefore, with the thought of recovering others from that folly which has embittered my own days, I have presumed to address the ADVENTURER from the dreary mansions of wretchedness and despair, of which the gates are so wonderfully constructed, as to fly open for the reception of strangers, though they are impervious as a rock of adamant to such as are within them:

--_Facilis descensus Averni: Noctes utque dies patet atri janua Ditis: Sed revocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est_.--VIRG. Æn. vi. 126.

The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return and view the cheerful skies; In this the task and mighty labour lies. DRYDEN.

Suffer me to acquaint you, Sir, that I have glittered at the ball, and sparkled in the circle; that I have had the happiness to be the unknown favourite of an unknown lady at the masquerade, have been the delight of tables of the first fashion, and envy of my brother beaux; and to descend a little lower, it is, I believe, still remembered, that Messrs. Velours and d'Espagne stand indebted for a great part of their present influence at Guildhall, to the elegance of my shape, and the graceful freedom of my carriage.

--_Sed quæ præclara et prospera tanti, Ut rebus lætis par sit mensura malorum_? Juv. Sat. x. 97.

See the wild purchase of the bold and vain, Where every bliss is bought with equal pain!

As I entered into the world very young, with an elegant person and a large estate, it was not long before I disentangled myself from the shackles of religion; for I was determined to the pursuit of pleasure, which according to my notions consisted in the unrestrained and unlimited gratifications of every passion and every appetite; and as this could not be obtained under the frowns of a perpetual dictator, I considered religion as my enemy; and proceeding to treat her with contempt and derision, was not a little delighted, that the unfashionableness of her appearance, and the unanimated uniformity of her motions, afforded frequent opportunities for the sallies of my imagination.