Johnson’s “Divided Self”
- Johnson’s “Divided Self”
Professor of English, Brown University; author of Samuel Johnson in Grub Street (1957), and (with others) The Order of Poetry (1961) and the forthcoming Willa Gather’s Gift of Sympathy
notes
1. Sören Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton, 1941), 134; The Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford, 1952), no. 906.
2. Cf. Erich Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion (New Haven, 1950), 24.
3. Sir John Hawkins, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (London, 1787), 563–4.
4. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (London, 1922), 189.
5. See James L. Clifford, Hester Lynch Piozzi (Oxford, 1941), 75; Diaries, Prayers, and Annals, ed. E. L. McAdam, Jr., with Donald and Mary Hyde (New Haven, 1958), 119 (hereafter referred to as Prayers, this volume will provide the text of Johnson’s prayers); Letters, nos. 326, 423; Thraliana, ed. Katharine C. Balderston (Oxford, 1942), 138, 454–5, 1008. Boswell, who also knew of the aversion to birthdays, was obviously excluded from Johnson’s confidence. See Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill and L. F. Powell (Oxford, 1934; 1950), III, 157, and V, 222 (The Tour to the Hebrides).
6. The French Journals of Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson, ed. Moses Tyson and Henry Guppy (Manchester, 1932), 69ff.; Thraliana, 318; Prayers, 228; cf. 218; Clifford, 75.
7. C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion: West and East (vol. II of the Collected Works), trans. R. F. C. Hull (New York, 1958), 14; W. B. C. Watkins, Perilous Balance (Princeton, 1939), 71ff.
8. See J. H. Hagstrum, “On Dr. Johnson’s Fear of Death,” ELH, XIV (1947), 308–19.
9. The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York, 1902), 166ff., 171.
10. Jung, 10.
11. See Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. Hill (Oxford, 1897), I, 219; Thraliana, 180; Life, II, 93; III, 153; IV, 374; William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life [1728] (Everyman’s Library, 1955), 339; C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York, 1951), 28. For important parallels between Law and Johnson, see K. C. Balderston, “Doctor Johnson and William Law,” PMLA LXXV (1960), 382–94. Miss Balderston, who read an earlier draft of this essay, has made several useful suggestions.
12. Life, II, 440 (cf. I, 446–7; II, 178; III, 135). See Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets, ed. Hill (Oxford, 1905), I, 31; Letters, no. 79; James, 464–5, 477; Walter Jackson Bate, The Achievement of Samuel Johnson (Oxford, 1955), 159ff.
13. English Poets, I, 292; 181–2; The Works of Samuel Johnson, ed. F. P. Walesby (Oxford, 1825), “Taxation no Tyranny,” VI, 234; also “Cheynel,” VI, 415; and E. A. Bloom, Samuel Johnson in Grub Street (Providence, 1957), 232ff.; Fromm, 35.
14. Cf. Balderston, “Dr. Johnson and William Law,” 389.
15. See Hawkins, 84, 271; Life, II, 421, 423; V, 62; Prayers, passim; Thraliana, 191; Raymond Carter Sutherland, “Dr. Johnson and the Collect,” MLQ, XVII (1956), 111–17.
16. Life, IV, 123–5, 299; Rambler, no. 110; Johns. Misc., I, 268; II, 387; Jung, 48–9 (and 350, 352). Cf. James, 128; Fromm, 50ff., William Ames, Of Conscience (London, 1642), Bk. IV, chap. xv.
17. Watkins, 50ff.; Frederick A. Pottle, “The Dark Hints of Sir John Hawkins and Boswell,” MLN, LVI (1941), 325–9.
18. See also Rambler, nos. 80, 85, 108, 111; Adventurer, nos. 108, 119; Idler, nos. 1, 3, 21, 31, 48; Rasselas, chap. iv. Cf. The Whole Duty of Man (London, 1714), 156–7, a work known to Johnson since boyhood.
19. For an extended discussion of this parable, see The Interpreter’s Bible, ed. George Arthur Buttrick, et al. (New York and Nashville, 1951–7), VII, 558–62. Cf. Luke 19.11–27, ibid; VIII, 327–34. Also see Law, 130–2, et passim; The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree (New Haven, 1960), II, 22.
20. English Poets, I, 182; Hawkins, 540–1; Life, IV, 226, et passim; Prayers, 106–7.
21. Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory (London, 1673), 133, 278, 448, et passim; John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. J. Allen (London, 1838), Bk. III, chap. vii, 4, 5...
