An Ideal of Greatness: Ethical Implications in Johnson’s Critical Vocabulary

AN IDEAL OF GREATNESS: ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS IN JOHNSON'S CRITICAL VOCABULARY DONALD WESLING I Imlac's description of true literary greatness in Rasselas, chapter X, is a statement with an elevated call for something more than the ordinary neoclassic propriety. The demand which emerges from his speech is for two salient criteria of greatness: power and comprehensiveness of mind in a writer's "knowledge of nature," and the deeply moral outlook of the writer who in his normative preoccupations "must be acquainted likewise with all the modes of life." The poet must survey the "inexhaustible variety" of the "appearances of nature": nothing in the outer world "can be useless ... every idea is useful for the enforcement or decoration of moral or religious truth"; but comprehensive knowledge is "only half the task of the poet" : he is also obliged to "consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state"; he must rise to the general and write "as the interpreter of nature, and the legislator of mankind." When Imlac speaks thus he voices Johnson's own longing for greatness; Johnson 's "idea of poetry was magnificent indeed," Mrs. Thrale states, "and very fully was he persuaded of its superiority over every other talent bestowed by heaven on man.'" Still, Prince Rasselas, faced with Imlac's sweeping ideal of the poet's function, can only exclaim "Enough! thou hast convinced me, that no human being can ever be a poet." Imlac and Rasselas speak for two sides of Johnson's thought on literature; there is a yearning for impossible excellence, and a certain irony and self-awareness which does not allow the idealization to go too far. "No human being" can ever be a poet of this order because no human can ever deal always and fully with the infinitely strenuous ethical responsibility. Yet in all his critical writing Johnson gauges authors against such a model of the universal poet, and marks off deficiencies. This paper will explore his critical demand for vigorous intellection and a manly moral seriousness which interpenetrate to reinforce One another-his craving for the seamless fusion of ethical and literary qualities in a piece of writing-by examining a selection of his key critical terms. Clearly for Johnson the literary job is not narrowly or primarily aesthetic. T echnical accomplishment is included in lmlac's scheme, but Volume XXXIV, Number 2. January, 1965 134 DONALD WESLING last, and in a separate paragraph. After he fulfils the rigorous intellectual and moral criteria, the ideal poet's "labour is not yet at an end: he must know many languages and sciences; and, that his stile may be worthy of his thoughts, must, by incessant practice, familiarize to himself every delicacy of speech and grace of harmony." Even here, in a general description of technical prowess, the plea is for demonstrated power of mind and moral rigour in the writer and in his productions. In fact, Johnson's demand is especially clear-cut when he scrutinizes achievement in versification , where his vocabulary of praise and blame helps him to pass judgment by reference to psychological effects On the mind of the reader. For instance, Imlac's key word is "harmony," a term which has direct reference to a body of Johnsonian opinion on the "morality of prosody." Fussell points out that, in Johnson's belief, "prosodic regularity forces the ordering of the perceiver's mind sO that it may be in a condition to receive the ordered moral matter of the poem, just as, in ethics and religion, a conscious regularizing of principles and even of daily habits is the necessary condition for the growth of piety.'" Thus "harmony," as it is defined in one of a series of Ramblers on Milton's versification, IS closely linked with the power of verses to regulate the passions: However minute the employment may appear, and whatever ridicule may be incurred by a solemn deliberation upon accents and pauses, it is certain that without this petty knowledge no man can be a poet; and that from the proper disposition of single sounds results that harmony that adds force to reason, and gives grace to sublimity; that shackles attention, and governs passions.a...