The Light Reading of Dr. Johnson

THE LIGHT READING OF DR. JOHNSON FLORENCE A. SMITH E VERY great n1an has his lighter. moments. Dr. Johnson composed the "great whale" periods of the Rambler~ made a Dictionary (itself at times very good light reading), edited Shakespeare, and in his old 'age wrote comfortably mellow and acute Lives of the Poets. He was much concerned about politics and religion. Prodded judiciously at intervals by Bos. well, he discoursed wisely and wittily on such diverse subjects as matrimony, methods .of shaving, and the ·wretchedness of a sea-life. He noted, as a traveller with an inquiring mind, the treelessness of Scotland and the grossness of French manners. Btit he had his undress moments, when he was neither author nor sage nor observer, and some of- them were spent in reading novels. An earnest friend recently. told me that she felt it a duty to read as many new novels as possible, "in order to understand the spirit of one's own day." Against such an indigestible doctrine of the whole duty of novelreading Johnson is a formidable and welcome ally. Hawkins implies that theoretically he rather disapproved of novels in·general. Certainly his reading of them was desultory. He took what came his way, when he had time or inclination, or when no one was at hand to talk to~ Thus, when Mrs. Thrale handed the first volume of Evelina in at the window of the coach, he occupied himself with it during his journey to town, found it entertaining, and clamoured for more; but of his own volition he would not have opened it. Once under way, however, he was an ideal novel-reader. No set plan, no book-of-thementh dictation for him! He browsed with glorious 118 THE LIGHT READING OF DR. JOHNSON inconsequence, and surrendered wholeheartedly to a book he liked. He read Fielding's .Amelia through without stopping, and was properly indignant ·over the heroine's broken nose. He sat up all night over Carleton's Memoirs. For the merely whimsical he had little use. Boswell assures us that he "saw_ the merit of The Picar of _Wakefield;"· perhaps he did, as a vendible article, but he told Mrs. Thrale that it was "a mere fanciful performance .'' With the new sentimental school, the brood of Steele and Richardson, he had still less sympathy. Even in Richardson himself it was not the pathos he admired. "Given a sick-bed and a dying lady," he said, "and I'll be pathetic myself." He "found nothing in" Mackenzie's 1'?-chrymose Man of the Worfd, and he once questioned whether Mrs. Sheridan, another harrowing novelist, had "a right to make your readers suffer so much." He denied pathos to Sterne and relegated Tristram Shandy to a limbo of past oddities-HTristram Shandy did notlast ;'' though when Goldsmith once called Sterne a very dull fellow, Johnson answered mildly, "Why, no, Sir." Some of his preferences must surely have been dictated by personal regard. "Poor Charlotte Lennox" was a woman of some talent who managed to earn bread, without butter, by her pen. The publishers of her poems introduced her to Johnson, and Johnson introduced her to ·Richardson: "Poor Charlotte Lennox!" continued he, ''When we came to the house she desired me to leave her, for, says she, 'I am under great restraint in your presence, but if you leave me alone with Richardson, .I'll give you a very good account of him:' however, I fear poor Charlotte was disappointed, for she gave me no-account at all!, When Charlotte's first literary child, The Life of Harriet Stuart, appeared in December, 17so-one o{ the very large family of novels which were the offspring of Richard119 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY son-Johnson "proposed to celebrate the event by a whole night spent in revelry." "Our supper," says Hawkins, for once an adequate substitute for .Boswell, "was elegant, and Johnson had directed that a magnificent , hot apple-pie should make a part of it, and this he would have stuck with bay-leaves, because, forsooth, Mrs. Lennox was an authoress, and had written verses; and further, he had prepared for her a crown of laurel, with which...