It had been generally supposed that this great work would be dedicated to the eloquent and accomplished nobleman to whom the prospectus had been addressed.He well knew the value of such a compliment; and therefore, when the day of publication drew near, he exerted himself to soothe, by a show of zealous and at the same time of delicate and judicious kindness, the pride which he had so cruelly wounded.Since the Ramblers had ceased to appear, the town had been entertained by a journal called the World, to which many men of high rank and fashion contributed.In two successive numbers of the World the Dictionary was, to use the modern phrase, puffed with wonderful skill.The writings of Johnson were warmly praised.It was proposed that he should be invested with the authority of a Dictator, nay, of a Pope, over our language, and that his decisions about the meaning and the spelling of words should be received as final.His two folios, it was said, would of course be bought by everybody who could afford to buy them.It was soon known that these papers were written by Chesterfield.But the just resentment of Johnson was not to be so appeased.In a letter written with singular energy and dignity of thought and language, he repelled the tardy advances of his patron.The Dictionary came forth without a dedication.In the preface the author truly declared that he owed nothing to the great, and described the difficulties with which he had been left to struggle so forcibly and pathetically that the ablest and most malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, Horne Tooke, never could read that passage without tears.
The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full justice, and something more than justice.The best lexicographer may well be content if his productions are received by the world with cold esteem.But Johnson's Dictionary was hailed with an enthusiasm such as no similar work has ever excited.It was indeed the first dictionary which could be read with pleasure.The definitions show so much acuteness of thought and command of language, and the passages quoted from poets, divines, and philosophers are so skilfully selected, that a leisure hour may always be very agreeably spent in turning over the pages.The faults of the book resolve themselves, for the most part, into one great fault.Johnson was a wretched etymologist.He knew little or nothing of any Teutonic language except English, which indeed, as he wrote it, was scarcely a Teutonic language; and thus he was absolutely at the mercy of Junius and Skinner.
The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's fame, added nothing to his pecuniary means.The fifteen hundred guineas which the booksellers had agreed to pay him had been advanced and spent before the last sheets issued from the press.It is painful to relate that, twice in the course of the year which followed the publication of this great work, he was arrested and carried to spunging-houses, and that he was twice indebted for his liberty to his excellent friend Richardson.It was still necessary for the man who had been formally saluted by the highest authority as Dictator of the English language to supply his wants by constant toil.He abridged his Dictionary.He proposed to bring out an edition of Shakspeare by subscription; and many subscribers sent in their names and laid down their money; but he soon found the task so little to his taste that he turned to more attractive employments.He contributed many papers to a new monthly journal, which was called the Literary Magazine.Few of these papers have much interest; but among them was the very best thing that he ever wrote, a masterpiece both of reasoning and of satirical pleasantry, the review of Jenyn's Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil.
In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a series of essays, entitled the Idler.During two years these essays continued to appear weekly.They were eagerly read, widely circulated, and indeed, impudently pirated, while they were still in the original form, and had a large sale when collected into volumes.The Idler may be described as a second part of the Rambler, somewhat livelier and somewhat weaker than the first part.
While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, who had accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield.It was long since he had seen her; but he had not failed to contribute largely, out of his small means, to her comfort.In order to defray the charges of her funeral, and to pay some debts which she had left, he wrote a little book in a single week, and sent off the sheets to the press without reading them over.A hundred pounds were paid him for the copyright; and the purchasers had great cause to be pleased with their bargain; for the book was Rasselas.
The success of Rasselas was great, though such ladies as Miss Lydia Languish must have been grievously disappointed when they found that the new volume from the circulating library was little more than a dissertation on the author's favourite theme, the Vanity of Human Wishes; that the Prince of Abyssinia was without a mistress, and the princess without a lover; and that the story set the hero and the heroine down exactly where it had taken them up.The style was the subject of much eager controversy.The Monthly Review and the Critical Review took different sides.
Many readers pronounced the writer a pompous pedant, who would never use a word of two syllables where it was possible to use a word of six, and who could not make a waiting woman relate her adventures without balancing every noun with another noun, and every epithet with another epithet.Another party, not less zealous, cited with delight numerous passages in which weighty meaning was expressed with accuracy and illustrated with splendour.And both the censure and the praise were merited.
About the plan of Rasselas little was said by the critics; and yet the faults of the plan might seem to invite severe criticism.