From boyhood throughout his life his companions naturally deferred to him,and he dominated them without effort.But what overcame the harshness of this autocracy,and made it reasonable,was the largeness of a nature that loved men and was ever hungry for knowledge of them.'Sir,'said he,'I look upon every day lost in which I do not make a new acquaintance.'And again:'Why,Sir,Iam a man of the world.I live in the world,and I take,in some degree,the color of the world as it moves along.'Thus he was a part of all that he met,a central figure in his time,with whose opinion one must reckon in considering any important matter of his day.
His love of London is but a part of his hunger for men.'The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it.''Why,Sir,you find no man at all intellectual who is willing to leave London:No,Sir,when a man is tired of London,he is tired of life;for there is in London all that life can afford.'
As he loved London,so he loved a tavern for its sociability.
'Sir,there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man,by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.''Atavern chair is the throne of human felicity.'
Personal words are often upon his lips,such as 'love'and 'hate,'and vast is the number,range,and variety of people who at one time or another had been in some degree personally related with him,from Bet Flint and his black servant Francis,to the adored Duchess of Devonshire and the King himself.To no one who passed a word with him was he personally indifferent.Even fools received his personal attention.Said one:'But I don't understand you,Sir.''Sir,I have found you an argument.I am not obliged to find you an understanding.''Sir,you are irascible,'said Boswell;'you have no patience with folly or absurdity.'
But it is in Johnson's capacity for friendship that his greatness is specially revealed.'Keep your friendships in good repair.'As the old friends disappeared,new ones came to him.For Johnson seems never to have sought out friends.He was not a common 'mixer.'He stooped to no devices for the sake of popularity.He pours only scorn upon the lack of mind and conviction which is necessary to him who is everybody's friend.
His friendships included all classes and all ages.He was a great favorite with children,and knew how to meet them,from little four-months-old Veronica Boswell to his godchild Jane Langton.
'Sir,'said he,'I love the acquaintance of young people,...young men have more virtue than old men;they have more generous sentiments in every respect.'At sixty-eight he said:'I value myself upon this,that there is nothing of the old man in my conversation.'Upon women of all classes and ages he exerts without trying a charm the consciousness of which would have turned any head less constant than his own,and with their fulsome adoration he was pleased none the less for perceiving its real value.
But the most important of his friendships developed between him and such men of genius as Boswell,David Garrick,Oliver Goldsmith,Sir Joshua Reynolds,and Edmund Burke.Johnson's genius left no fit testimony of itself from his own hand.With all the greatness of his mind he had no talent in sufficient measure by which fully to express himself.He had no ear for music and no eye for painting,and the finest qualities in the creations of Goldsmith were lost upon him.But his genius found its talents in others,and through the talents of his personal friends expressed itself as it were by proxy.They rubbed their minds upon his,and he set in motion for them ideas which they might use.But the intelligence of genius is profounder and more personal than mere ideas.It has within it something energic,expansive,propulsive from mind to mind,perennial,yet steady and controlled;and it was with such force that Johnson's almost superhuman personality inspired the art of his friends.Of this they were in some degree aware.Reynolds confessed that Johnson formed his mind,and 'brushed from it a great deal of rubbish.'Gibbon called Johnson 'Reynolds'oracle.'
In one of his Discourses Sir Joshua,mindful no doubt of his own experience,recommends that young artists seek the companionship of such a man merely as a tonic to their art.Boswell often testifies to the stimulating effect of Johnson's presence.Once he speaks of 'an animating blaze of eloquence,which roused every intellectual power in me to the highest pitch';and again of the 'full glow'of Johnson's conversation,in which he felt himself 'elevated as if brought into another state of being.'He says that all members of Johnson's 'school''are distinguished for a love of truth and accuracy which they would not have possessed in the same degree if they had not been acquainted with Johnson.'He quotes Johnson at length and repeatedly as the author of his own large conception of biography.He was Goldsmith's 'great master,'Garrick feared his criticism,and one cannot but recognize the power of Johnson's personality in the increasing intelligence and consistency of Garrick's interpretations,in the growing vigor and firmness of Goldsmith's stroke,in the charm,finality,and exuberant life of Sir Joshua's portraits;and above all in the skill,truth,brilliance,and lifelike spontaneity of Boswell's art.It is in such works as these that we shall find the real Johnson,and through them that he will exert the force of his personality upon us.
Biography is the literature of realized personality,of life as it has been lived,of actual achievements or shortcomings,of success or failure;it is not imaginary and embellished,not what might be or might have been,not reduced to prescribed or artificial forms,but it is the unvarnished story of that which was delightful,disappointing,possible,or impossible,in a life spent in this world.