Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes, and Biographical Criticism

Samuel Johnson,mlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA The Vanity of Human Wishes, and Biographical Criticism TH O M AS JEM IELITYgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA When the Johnsonian critic warns that the writings of no other fig­ ure in English literature have been so frequently interpreted by re­ course to the details of his biography than Samuel Johnson, surely no one would disagree. Patrick O'Flaherty, for example, in his study of Johnson's RQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA I d le r , has sounded a representative caution: "The critic of Johnson," he insists, "has to be especially wary of permitting bio­ graphical details to interfere with his business of analysis and judg­ ment."1 As critics over the past two or three decades have discussed the satiric quality of T h e V a n it y o f H u m a n W is h e s , they have resorted frequently to details of Johnson's life to buttress their positions. In­ deed, while preparing and completing an essay which argues that T h e V a n it y o f H u m a n W is h e s succeeds as satire,21 was struck not only by the extent to which incidents from Johnson's life were used to support the counterthesis—that the poem fails as satire—but even more by the degree to which that evidence was univocally inter­ preted and often selectively used. In this essay I do not object to the use and presence of biographical evidence as such. I do assert, however, that in the case of Johnson's great poem biographical material has often been used very selectively and sometimes with little indication of its really ambiguous quality when seen in the wider context from which this material is drawn. In the first section of this paper, I focus on three portraits in the poem where interpretations have resorted to questionable biographical 227 228 / JEMIELITY support: the sketches of Charles XII of Sweden, of virtuous old age, and of the young, fantasy-filled, entering college student. Then, in the second and concluding section of the essay, I consider the manner in which biographical details from Johnson's life have supported the wider but equally questionable claim that Johnson could not write satire at all.3RQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA I In her analysis of T h e V a n it y o f H u m a n W is h e s , Mary Lascelles draws on biography to support her claim that the sketch of Charles XII in the poem appears with tragic rather than satiric insight. Lascelles ob­ serves that at the time he published the poem, Johnson "was about to put to the proof his cherished vocation as tragic poet," a claim which the reception of I r e n e "did not vindicate." In the analysis of the sketch itself she says that "'Swedish Charles' had seized Johnson's imagination: he had written, and intended to write further, upon him."4 The allusion here is to a 1742 letter of Johnson's to his friend John Taylor informing him that "I propose to get Charles of Sweden ready for this winter, and shall therefore, as I imagine be much engaged for some Months with the Dramatic Writers into whom I have scarcely looked for many years."5 Although Edmond Malone assumed John­ son's project to be either a drama or a history, twentieth-century crit­ ics assume only a drama and, specifically, a tragedy. Leopold Damrosch , indeed, calls the sketch in the poem "a miniature tragedy," and adds that "Johnson actually contemplated writing one on this sub­ ject."6 Yet Lascelles admits that, in the poem, Charles XII runs true "to Johnson's lifelong conviction that war must be assessed in terms of its cost in human misery—together with the hope that it may be abolished by satirizing military ambition."7 In the poem, after all, Charles serves as one of three examples of a military ambition that has found irresistible the attraction, among other things, of "the sen­ ate's thanks and the gazette's pompous tale" (177), inducements that appear more ludicrous than dignified. Evidence from Johnson's life and writings warrants hesitation in...