Johnson’s England

THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY JOHNSON'S ENGLAND* A. S. P. WooDHOUSE A decade ago, when Mr. Walpole remarked on the increasing contemporary interest in, and sympathy for, the eighteenth century, he ran little risk of being reminded that Queen Anne was dead. That would no longer be the case to-day. The reaction in favour of the despised century has reached even the lecture-haJls devoted to English literature, and its praise is perhaps already becoming as tiresome (though not, I think, as unintelligent) as the earlier condemnations. Be this as it may: a gain in understanding, even if it runs to some excess, is a permanent acquisition, and the eighteenth century need never again fear the gross injustice from which it has suffered in the past. It would be pleasant (but irrelevant) to trace the history of the long eclipse, to chronicle some of the sillier sayings of the Romantics and Victorians (none surpasses Hazlitt's description of Dryden and Pope, the masters of the artificial style, as opposed to Milton-of all people-the master of the natural), and to pay tribute to such heretics as Stephen and Courthope and Austin Dobson, who dared to praise the century-though not always for the right things. One may, however, relevantly observe the contribution to the better understanding of the eighteenth century made in our own day by the Oxford Press. It begins with Sir Walter Raleigh's best book, his Six Essays on Johnson, published in 1910. Though Johnson's own works had been neglected (and in consequence ignorantly reviled), he had kept his hold on the English mind and heart, through the pages of Boswell. He offered, then, ·an obvious point d'appui for the rehabiiitation of the *Johnson's England: An Account of the Life and Manners of his Age, edited by A. S. Turberville, Oxford University- Press, 2 vols. REVIEWS century: if a generation could be got to appreciate the real Johnson, it would understand his age. HTo picture him against the background of any other century ·is ' unthinkable: he belongs inevitably and completely to the eighteenth." And in Raleigh, Johnson, at least, found his almost perfect critic, devoted to, but not obsessed by Boswell. The next landmark was the publication, in 1926, of the Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse, edited by Mr. Nichol Smith, which pu.t·the century in the enviable position of being the only period, beside the · Victorian, to receive one of the celebrated Oxford books of poetry. And now comes 'Johnson's England. The two sumptuous volumes, profusely illustrated and written by scholars of recognized standing, are designed as a companion to the already-famous Shakespeare's England (1916). As this examination proceeds, some serious reservations will have to be made: let us at the outset say that 'Johnson's England is the not-unworthy culmination of a worthy effort, and one for which every student of the eighteenth century and every admirer of that great age must be sincerely thankful. It may not be the book one had hoped for; but it is a mine ~f information , and it is in outlook essentially sane, touched at every point by the sobering influence of accurate scholarship. In the past the eighteenth century has sometimes suffered at the hands of its friends: they have presented it as a golden age of security and freedom from modern cares, a perpetual masquerade, a world of picturesque costumes and polished phrases, a delicate exotic which time has taken away. This is the work of the idyllic imagination carrying the spirit of romanticism into the enemy's stronghold! Very different is the note struck by Professor Trevelyan on the first page of 'Johnson 's England.· 397 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY ...A more illuminating picture of the eighteenth century -would be supplied by a vision of something more robustClive planted four-square across the breach of Arcot; Wolfe and his men scrambling up the precipitous forest track towards Quebec; Captain Cook's sails sweeping into Botany Bay; Wesley's lean face and long white hair, as he preaches to mass meetings of miners and throws powerful men into- fits of hysteria; James Watt working...