age of reason,

of

son should be heard as the spokesman of the literary polish, and of artistic finish. Shall we accept him as a competent judge, or shall we turn to those whose ideas and sympathies are wholly different?

Just as he has made the lives of these men very real to us, he has given us a sympathetic but just appreciation of their work as no one else could do. It matters little in the long run. that he exalts Pope more highly than we should be inclined to do today. Certainly we scarcely assent to his fulsome praise of that poetical wonder of wonders, "the English Iliad,” nor do we think he has entirely proved his case when he endeavors to defend its boasted elegance on the ground that the poet's aim is to be read; nor again need we agree that Pope's was the "most perfect fabric of English verse," even while we find praise for its exquisite finish. But we do admire the author's splendid eulogy of Dryden's and Addison's prose styles, and are truly thrilled by his famous comparison of Dryden and Pope, in which he confesses to a partiality for the earlier poet. So just are his several criticisms of the works of these poets and so well did he comprehend their moods and intentions that it is doubtful if a century of criticism has improved upon him. Here Johnson was great because the objects of his criticisms. required no qualifications which he and his age could not be expected to possess, and because he brought sympathy and appreciation to the task of interpreting his century. There is no better way of approaching the study of eighteenth-century letters than through familiarity with Johnson's commentary and his point of view in making it.

CHAPTER X

Conclusion

As

we turn from particular phases of our author's work to a summary of it as a whole, and an evaluation of his accomplishment as a critic, we are confronted with several questions. How far, for example, may he be called a representative of neo-classicism, and what is the value of his exposition and application of the neo-classical creed? What is the value of his individual opinions, independent of any conformity to established principles; that is, what can we say for his taste and judgment? What does his relation to the romantic movement signify to us? What contribution did he make to Shakespearean criticism? What does the Lives of the Poets represent, and to what extent does it prove him a great constructive critic? Finally, and most important of all, what is his worth as one of the great humanists, and what is his message to us after a century of progress in literature and criticism? These are the questions to be answered by a brief review of the results of the preceding investigation.

First of all, to what extent did he conform to the neo-classical creed, and how did he prove himself greater than that very narrow school of literature and of criticism? Or, in other words, what distinctions can we make to show his acceptance of the humanistic discipline, which has its value in any age? Johnson by instinct and training was well fitted to become the mouthpiece of the criticism which endeavored to found its judgments upon traditional standards. A man of immense learning, with exceptional lexicographical and linguistic training, and with a remarkably thorough knowledge of both an

cient and modern literature and criticism, he became the best English example of the classical critic. He based his judgments upon rules evolved from the practice of the ancients, but he was no slavish conformist. In fact, he moved far more freely within the rules than any other English critic of his type. Like Boileau, he accepted truth and nature and reason as the bases for his criticism, and placed but a negative value upon formal laws of composition. In so far as they harmonized with the dictates of reason and common sense, they were worthy of acceptance; but he recognized that at best they were but a conventional check upon license, and that, whenever this convention had become outworn, as in the case of the unities of time and place, they should forthwith be cast aside. One of his chief services to criticism was his independent stand upon the rules when occasion demanded it; he freed Shakespeare from the shackles of the conventions which had bound him for a century and really prepared the way for the more appreciative, if not sounder, criticism of the following century. So, too, his prolonged campaign against all forms of conventional imitation whether mythological or pastoral is as far as possible removed from established methods of criticism.

In theory then Johnson accepted the rules only as they appealed to his reason as necessary checks upon a writer's genius; in practice too he proved himself a consistent upholder of general principles in his various critical judgments. His recognition of genius as something not to be defined or confined by petty laws, and of the imagination as a faculty to be fostered rationally and conservatively, his determined attack upon frigid mythological and pastoral imitations, and his defense of Shakespeare's violation of rules "merely positive," almost mark a transition to a newer criticism which was to be essentially unlike his own. His statement of general principles, in so far as they are in conformity with traditional standards, is so clear and reasonable that, although they had in no sense the

current popularity attained by Boileau's utterances in France, they yet remain the most acceptable exposition of neo-classicism to be found in the language. This is no small accomplishment for any critic.

Neo-classicism may, in fact, be defined as the ancient humanism codified and conventionalized and made formal within the narrow bounds of art. I have continually endeavored to show the degree in which Johnson was able to rise above literary convention, and utter truths of as much importance to us today as when he lived. We are living in a time curiously parallel in many of its aspects to the latter years of the eighteenth century, and we can learn much from a study of a great personality in its reaction from the current philosophy of the day. The various forms of naturalistic revolt - literary, educational, and social - are now, as then, uppermost in our consciousness, and whatever wisdom the older humanists may offer us out of their experience should be welcome. To show that Dr. Johnson is not the least of these has been the purpose of this study.

In certain phases of his applied criticism, however, he remained a close follower of some of the narrowest elements of the schools. The scantiness and inadequacy of his critical vocabulary and his various comments upon diction and versification have been noted. And his tendency to a technical analysis of faults and beauties proves how difficult it is for even a man of great mental gifts entirely to avoid the narrowing limitations of his age and creed.

As a conscious moralist, too, Johnson conformed to established custom in his literary judgments. As in his biographies, he has scattered through his criticism a good deal of philosophical and ethical comment, which is always the result of shrewd insight or deep reflection, though it need hardly be said that to a more modern mind he does bear down too hard on the moral aspect of the subject in hand. Occasionally, as I have pointed

out in connection with his writings on Shakespeare, his moral strictures become absurd, but as a rule his ever-ready common sense saves him from pedantry. His insistence upon novelty and variety as essentials of the poet's art, and his plea for pleasure as the aim of poetical composition, are far from the narrow restrictions a professed moralist might naturally set upon himself. His definition of the purposes of literary composition explains this position, "The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing." This has the proper didactic ring, and perhaps is but an echo of neoclassic theorizing upon the subject of aesthetics; but it also reveals a recognition of the other purpose of art which should be reinforced by other examples more unqualified in their praise of the pleasure side of art. For example, in speaking of Milton's digressions in Paradise Lost, he declares that the end of poetry is pleasure.' But, despite this sensible handling of the ancient neo-classical problem, Johnson never undertook to judge anything from the purely aesthetic point of view. He considered it the function of literature to teach the correct views of manners and morals and social relations; to repress evil and to encourage good; to vitalize the social organism with the principles of reason and justice. At times, it is true, gave what seems to us undue credit to the professed moralist with his abstract precepts, in preference to the artist who strives to interpret life through concrete selection of material; preferring, for example, the maxims of Richardson to Fielding's more vital creations. But literature was to him in a very real way a criticism of life, for he believed that authorship should serve as a means of attaining the greatest possible individual and social welfare.

he

This emphasis on the service of art in the cause of moral betterment deserves more attention than it is likely to receive in these days of shifting standards. Johnson often erred in

1. Lives, I, 175