Samuel Johnson, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds around 1769.

Every serious artist must take a position with regards to truth. Samuel Johnson’s position is fascinating, because it seems to involve vast contradictions and yet manages to resolve them in a world view that is consistent.

Adherence to truth is a fundamental tenet for Johnson, as we see throughout his own writings and his conversations in Boswell’s Life of Johnson.  Here is one of the best descriptions from Boswell’s Life:

Next morning, while we were at breakfast, Johnson gave a very earnest recommendation of what he himself practised with the utmost conscientiousness: I mean a strict attention to truth, even in the most minute particulars. ‘Accustom your children (said he), constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end.
Life of Johnson by James Boswell, page 899.

Johnson goes on to say: ‘It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.’

As Mrs Thrale herself objects, it seems hardly possible to follow such a practice. Indeed, throughout Boswell’s Life of Johnson we see countless contradictions between what he says and what he does. But Johnson was wise enough to understand that within these contradictions lies the essence of humanity. As he says in Rambler 14:

Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues, which he neglects to practise; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory.

Johnson is only too aware of man’s inability to live how he knows he ought. ‘A man writes much better than he lives.’ But as Philip Davis says in his essay ‘The life of Samuel Johnson’ (published in The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson):

Precisely because the whole of his meaning was never contained in a single great work, Johnson stands for the life that always lies outside literature as well as within it. In that way, by refusing to make great writing separate from efforts at ordinary living, Johnson is the the finest of human encouragers.

Johnson’s truth, then, exists in the balance between idealism and practicality. It is fully conscious of the contradiction, and even encourages it, for it is in this gap that the human condition takes place. Johnson’s essay in Adventurer 11 provides the kind of encouragement Davis was referring to (quoted by Philip Davis in ‘The life of Samuel Johnson’):

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next, is to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; and if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility.

This is what makes us human, and it is only a full commitment to truth that makes this possible. As he says to Boswell in the Life of Johnson: ‘Without truth there is a dissolution of society’.

Samuel Johnson, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

I finally finished Bowell’s Life of Johnson. At 1402 pages, this is probably the longest book I’ve ever read, but it was worth every minute.

While a couple of the members of The Culture Club were unhappy with its weight, and thought it needed serious editing, there were three of us who thought its great breadth and detail one of its major strengths. And while it’s impossible to deny that there is superfluous matter, what would you cut? Everyone would choose differently, and I am glad that it’s survived the editor’s scalpel.

The Johnson that emerges through the pages of Boswell was one of the great wits of his age, a genius writer, lexicographer and conversationalist. Anyone familiar with his work and the representation of him in Boswell’s Life will have their favourite Johnson quotes. Here are some of mine, chosen for their humanity, wisdom and wit:

A gentleman having to some of the usual arguments for drinking added this: ‘You know, Sir, drinking drives away care, and makes us forget whatever is disagreeable. Would not you allow a man to drink for that reason?’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir, if he sat next you.’ Quoted by James Boswell, Life of Johnson, page 493.

In a letter to James Boswell, regarding Boswell’s wife, who hated having Johnson to stay: ‘She is a sweet lady, only she was so glad to see me go, that I have almost a mind to come again, that she may again have the same pleasure.’ Quoted by James Boswell, Life of Johnson, page 559.

‘No, Sir: before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding; and those who are conscious of their inferiority, have the modesty not to talk. When they have drunk wine, every man feels himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impudent and vociferous: but he is not improved; he is only not sensible of his defects.’
Life of Johnson, page 746.

‘Every man is to take existence on the terms on which it is given to him. To some men it is given on condition of not taking liberties, which other men may take without much harm. One man may drink wine, and be nothing the worse for it; on another, wine may have effects so inflammatory as to injure him both in body and mind, and perhaps, make him commit something for which he may deserve to be hanged.’
Life of Johnson, page 757.

‘A great city is, to be sure, the school for studying life; and “The proper study of mankind is man,” as Pope observes.’
Life of Johnson, page 918.

‘All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.’
Life of Johnson, page 947.

‘Without truth there must be a dissolution of society.’
Life of Johnson, page 948.

‘Society is held together by communication and information.’
Life of Johnson, page 949.

‘Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.’
Life of Johnson, page 1295.

Johnson having argued for some time with a pertinacious gentleman; his opponent, who had talked in a very puzzling manner, happened to say, ‘I don’t understand you, Sir:’ upon which Johnson obsserved, ‘Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.’
Life of Johnson, page 1308.

For a comprehensive collection of Samuel Johnson quotes visit the Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page.

More articles on Johnson on the Culture Club blog:

• Samuel Johnson and the End of Certainty

Samuel Johnson, as painted by his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Johnson’s character betrays striking contradictions, which are particularly interesting because they represent his age, a turning point in human ideas that was so profound it continues to resonate with us today.

What marks Johnson is the contrast between what might be called his ‘weighty assertiveness’ and on the other hand his radical scepticism. Or to put it another way, the conflict between certainty and doubt.

The ‘weighty assertiveness’ is the public side of Johnson, the writer, scholar, essayist and conversationalist. Boswell’s Life of Johnson depicts this side of Johnson magnificently, capturing in extraordinary detail his rational observations and quickness of thought.

This is often associated, by Boswell and others, with his masculinity. The printer William Strahan’s description of Johnson’s character in a letter to one of the Secretaries of the Treasury, designed to secure Johnson a seat in the House of Commons, is typical of those who knew him:

He possesses a great share of manly, nervous, and ready eloquence; is quick in discerning the strength and weakness of an argument; can express himself with clearness and precision, and fears the face of no man alive.

There is a strong sense of this ‘assertive’ Johnson as being at the centre of London society. The Reverend Dr Maxwell says of him (quoted in Boswell’s Life of Johnson):

He generally had a levee of morning visitors, chiefly men of letters; Hawksworth, Goldsmith, Murphy, Langton, Steevens, Beauclerk, &c. &c… He seemed to me to be considered as a kind of publick (sic) oracle, whom every body thought they had a right to visit and consult; and doubtless they were well rewarded.

This is an apt observation, because what society clearly needed at this revolutionary time was an oracle. During the age of rationalism and enlightenment, the huge steps forward in ideas and thought were bought at a cost, that being the loss of all certainty. There emerged a philosophy of scepticism, notably the writing and thinking of David Hume and George Berkeley, which radically altered the way that the universe was considered, and left all previous certainties in doubt, including such strongholds as the relationship between cause and effect, the reality of material objects and the existence of God.

Johnson’s staunch, masculine, ineluctable views on all topics that he came to consider were a powerful corrective to the decline in certainties. One famous anecdote in Boswell’s Life of Johnson illustrates this beautifully:

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, ‘I refute it thus.

Johnson’s inner scepticism

The contrasting side of Johnson’s character is displayed in his more private, inward life. In Boswell’s biography of Johnson this often emerges through his fear of madness, death and the afterlife. Whenever these subjects are discussed his mood changes and the doubts come flooding in:

Boswell (to Johnson): ‘But may we not fortify our minds for the approach of death?’ Here I am sensible I was in the wrong, to bring before his view what he ever looked upon with horrour (sic); for although when in a celestial frame, in his ‘Vanity of human Wishes’, he has supposed death to be ‘kind Nature’s signal for retreat,’ from this state of being to ‘a happier seat’, his thoughts upon this aweful (sic) change were in general full of dismal apprehensions. His mind resembled the vast amphitheatre, the Coliseum at Rome. In the centre stood his judgement, which, like a mighty gladiator, combated those apprehensions that, like the wild beasts of the Arena, were all around in cells, ready to be let out upon him. After a conflict, he drove them back into their dens; but not killing them, they were still assailing him. To my question, whether we might not fortify our minds for the approach of death, he answered, in a passion, ‘No, Sir, let it alone. It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.’ He added, (with an earnest look,) ‘A man knows it must be so, and submits. It will do him no good to whine.’ I attempted to continue the conversation. He was so provoked, that he said, ‘Give us no more of this;’ and was thrown into such a state of agitation, that he expressed himself in a way that alarmed and distressed me; shewed an impatience that I should leave him, and when I was going away, called to me sternly, ‘Don’t let us meet to-morrow.’

And another instance from Boswell’s Life of Johnson:

…while his friends in their intercourse with him constantly found a vigorous intellect and a lively imagination, it is melancholy to read in his private register, ‘My mind is unsettled and my memory confused. I have of late turned my thoughts with a very useless earnestness upon past incidents. I have yet got no command over my thoughts; an unpleasing incident is almost certain to hinder my rest.’ What philosophick (sic) heroism was it in him to appear with such manly fortitude to the world, while he was inwardly so distressed!

Duality in the History of Rasselas

Of Johnson’s own writings, the work which best expresses this duality of thought is The History of Rasselas. Fred Parker describes this novel (in his essay ‘The skepticism of Rasselas’, published in the Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson) as ‘resting on the notion of the instability of the human mind’. Here the two conditions of his attitude are perfectly poised, so artfully that it is easy to overlook how difficult a balance this is to achieve.

Consider the opening sentence of Rasselas, which uses the typical ‘assertive’ Johnsonian voice to sow the seeds of a profound scepticism:

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope, who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

It is the great irony of The History Rasselas that the wise generalisations typical of Johnson are ‘precisely what Rasselas goes in search of, but under the pressure of experience finds continually to break down’ (Fred Parker, The skepticism of Rasselas). The interplay between Rasselas and the poet Imlac is key to this irony, and the following exchange is perhaps its highest pitch – here we see the two sides of Johnson, the assertive and the cynical, in perfect balance, as Imlac describes the qualities that constitute a poet:

(Imlac) ‘He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age and country; he must consider right and wrong in their abstracted and invariable state; he must disregard present laws and opinions, and rise to general and transcendental truths, which will always be the same…’ Imlac now felt the enthusiastic fit, and was proceeding to aggrandize his own profession, when the prince cried out, ‘Enough! thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be a poet. Proceed with thy narration.’

It is impossible to detect which side of this dialogue Johnson himself would represent, and this is because Johnson stands for the interplay of them both.

The extraordinary scene in the catacombs that precedes the final chapter confirms this dualism. Death is considered, and the existence of the soul discussed. But this is not the final but the penultimate chapter, and here even death is not treated as a conclusion, but a kind of stasis, wherein the whole company stand awhile ‘silent and collected.’

The dualism is sustained right through to the work’s final irony, with the ‘Conclusion in which nothing is concluded’. What could be more divorced from our view of the assertive ‘Dr Johnson’ than an inability to conclude? It is this quality that makes the work very difficult to sum up, as Fred Parker observes in his essay ‘The skepticism of Rasselas’:

The History of Rasselas can’t be defined as positive, negative, or even balanced in its view of life. Rather than being a statement about life it is ‘imbued with life itself’.

This is the central problem of Johnson’s age, the age of rationalism and so-called ‘enlightenment’, in which the human condition requires new certainties to replace the ones which are being eradicated. Johnson is still relevant today because this central conflict between certainty and doubt has yet to be resolved.

Diane Middlebrook, the author of Hughes and Plath: A Marriage, discusses her book, and the influence that these two great poets had on each other and their work, in a podcast produced by Stanford University. It’s well worth listening to for an understanding of the context of their poetry, as well as providing an insight into the drama surrounding this extraordinary literary couple.

There are two free audio files, which you can listen to on your computer or download onto your iPod. The following links will take you directly to the audio files on the iTunes store , if you have iTunes installed on your computer. If you don’t, click on this link first to download iTunes:

• Her Husband: Hughes and Plath, A Marriage: Interview (15:00)
• Her Husband: Hughes and Plath, A Marriage: Discussion (1:07:38)