'Full of Assertions and Contradictions'

In 1995, R.L. Barth published a slender chapbook titled Samuel Johnson: Selected Latin Poems Translated by Various Hands. Included are twenty-three of Johnson’s poems prepared by ten poets including Turner Cassity, Timothy Steele, John Finlay and Barth himself. Steele’s translation is titled “Pater benigne” (“Kind Father”):

“Kind Father, always and supremely kind,

Relieve the guilt that weighs so on my mind

Grant me true contrition; may I lead

My life according to what You’ve decreed;

Direct with holy light my steps, my will,

Protect me, banish soul-corrupting ill.

To a sincere petitioner, release

The grace petitioned and the joys of peace

That, tranquil, he may trust You, who are free

Of Human error and anxiety.

Grant this which Christ, in dying, won for me.”

 

Seldom is piety so human. This most tormented of men asks not for carte blanche absolution but for “true contrition.” He understands that human pleas are so often conditional: “Just forgive me and I’ll never do it again.” Cassity’s translation is titled “Summe dator vitae” (“He is the Supreme Giver of Life”):

 

“Highest Giver of Life, Eternal King,

From Whom, link unto link, all causes flow,

Regard one whom both age and pain of age

Inform, whose life the end of life constricts.

Look on his useless days, his real regrets,

And punish, that You may forgive, Just Lord.”

 

Johnson was forever fearful of idleness, which he equated with madness. Boswell reports his friend saying: “Idleness is a disease which must be combated; but I would not advise a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.” This is the man who gave us his Dictionary, “The Vanity of Human Wishes,” the Rambler, Adventurer and Idler essays, Rasselas, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and who edited Shakespeare. He was among the most learned men of his age, despite poverty, illness and the absence of a university degree. Yet he chronically feared idleness.

 

I recently discovered the English literary journalist Henry Oliver, whose website carries the Johnsonian title “The Common Reader.” On May 4 he posted an essay called “Growling in a corner: Samuel Johnson’s lost years.” Oliver understands Johnson was profoundly human, like us, only more so, and fully embraces his contradictions:

 

“Above all, this man was full of assertions and contradictions. He was so often an outsider who became an insider. About him, there are open questions of masochism and insurrection. He had no degree but became the foremost scholar of his times. He had no wife for much of his life, but wrote powerfully about marriage. He was so genuinely troubled by the thought that he might go insane, that he asked his friend Hester Thrale to lock him in his room all day (he performed mathematical calculations to keep himself occupied). He wrote his own prayers. He worried, more and more darkly as he aged, with an increasingly real terror, that he would go to hell.”