BOOKS.

SHAKESPEARE ON JOHNSON.*

IT often happens that criticism, and especially criticism of Shakespeare, is mainly interesting for the light which it throws upon the critic. This is so much the case in the delightful collection of Dr. Johnson's Shakespearean work which Professor Raleigh has put together that, as every reader of it must feel, the volume would be far more correctly described by an inversion of the title. Shakespeare, for all of us, is one of those facts about which we stand in no need of comment ; our relation to him—like our relation to the stars of heaven—is something quite definite, although, of course, in neither case could we express in words what that rela- tion is. Thus the critic of Shakespeare resembles a poet who is read, not for the information which he gives us about the universe, but for his attitude towards it. As we turn over Dr. Johnson's notes and prefaces we become aware that his intellect, his taste, in some sense even his character, are being brought up for judgment before a superior power. And Shakespeare's comments on Dr. Johnson stand in need of no interpretation; be who runs may read. " This play," says Johnson, " is one of the most pleasing of our Author's performances. The scenes are busy and various, the incidents numerous and important, the catastrophe irresistibly affecting, and the process of the action carried on with such probability, at least with such congruity to popular opinions, as tragedy requires." The play is Romeo and Juliet ; and who will deny that observa- tions of that kind, while they tell us nothing of Shakespeare, tell us a great deal of Dr. Johnson

Undoubtedly the most abiding impression produced by the present volume is that of Johnson's eminence. Whether it is the eminence of a critic is far more open to doubt. Johnson's merits are supreme within certain boundaries;' but those boundaries are narrow, and absolutely fixed. Thus it happens that when one agrees with him, it is with r'aptur•e, and when one disagrees, it is with rage. Nothing can be more " pleasing "—to use his own expression—than to find thoughts of one's own amplified, invigorated, and brought into life in Johnson's admirable style ; and nothing more exasperating than to come upon the same strength and the same clarity enforcing groundless premisses or drawing absurd conclusions. The greatness of Johnson—apart from his mastery of English—lies entirely in the breadth and sanity of his outlook upon life. In this respect, as every one knows—for who has not read Boswell P—he was unequalled, not only by the most distinguished of his contemporaries, but by very few men who ever lived. But powers of that kind— the Johnsonian largeness of vision and sobriety of tempera- ment—though they are indispensable parts of every critic's

* Johnson on Shakespeare. Essays and Notes Selected and Set Forth, with an Introduction, by Walter Raleigh. London; Henry Frowde. [2s. 6d. net.]

equipment, are not sufficient in themselves to make a good critic, for the simple reason that life and literature are different things. Johnson was not, in essence, a critic of literature; he was a critic of life ; and it is this fact that accounts alike for the merits and the defects of his treatment of Shakespeare. Nowhere, indeed, are the advantages of common-sense and sanity in criticism more evident than among the short notes in his edition of the plays, where, as Professor• Raleigh truly says, we are "able to hear him talking without the intervention of Boswell." When Warburton, referring to Hotspur's

"Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here, In quantity equals not one of yours,"

observes that "Hotspur is here just such a divider as the

Irishman who made three halves; therefore, for the honour of Shakespeare, I will suppose that he wrote portion," Johnson's

comment is quite final : "I will not suppose it." [Curiously enough, we believe that the Courts have held that in a will a moiety may mean a third.] In the elucidation of the text, though he was without the learning of a Theobald or a Malone,

his most characteristic qualities made themselves felt to no small purpose, and Professor Raleigh in an interesting passage pays a high tribute to his powers:— "Most of the really difficult passages in Shakespeare are obscure not from the rarity of the words employed, but from the confused and rapid syntax. Johnson's strong grasp of the main thread of the discourse, his sound sense, and his wide knowledge of humanity, enable him, in a hundred passages, to go straight to Shakespeare's meaning, while the philological and antiquarian commentators kill one another in the dark, or bury all dramatic life under the far-fetched spoils of their learning. A reader of the new Variorum edition of Shakespeare soon falls into the habit, when he meets with an obscure passage, of consulting Johnson's note before the others. Whole pages of complicated dialectic and minute controversy are often rendered useless by the few brief sentences which recall the reader's attention to the main drift, or remind him of some perfectly obvious circum- stance."

In the wider field of general criticism the same qualities appear as those which enabled Johnson to triumph over difficulties of text. He refuses to be dazzled by his author.

After pointing out what decency and probability require in the closing act of All's Well that Ends Well, be adds truly and wittily : " Of all this Shakespeare could not be ignorant, but Shakespeare wanted to conclude his play." And referring to the pardon of Angelo at the conclusion of Measure for Measure, he says with perfect justice : "I believe every reader feels some indignation when he finds him spared." His

appreciations are often no less weighty and brilliant than his strictures. How masterly is his exposition of the character of Polonius, with its splendid opening sentence : " Polonius is a man bred in courts, exercised in business, stored with observa- tion, confident of his knowledge, proud of his eloquence, and

declining into dotage." After Johnson has spoken there is nothing more to be said.

But if we turn to his limitations, we find that they are no less remarkable, and that they become obvious immediately he passes from the discussion of men and things to the con- sideration of poetry. This is his verdict upon the lyrics of Aria :—" Ariel's lays, however seasonable and efficacious, must be allowed to be of no supernatural dignity or elegance ; they express nothing great, nor reveal anything above mortal dis- covery." Do they not reveal a power of evoking enchanting imaginations by means of exquisite melody which has been discovered by very few mortals indeed, before or since ? But such a question would have conveyed very little to Dr.

Johnson. His paper on Macbeth, originally published in the Rambler, in which, by means of "an example from Shake- speare," he indicates how poetry may be "debased by mean

expressions," illustrates his incapacity to judge of the pro- priety of words,—an incapacity which he seems to have shared with most of the critics of the eighteenth century. His judgments are dictated merely by convention : " knife,"

" peep," and " blanket " are " mean expressions," and therefore Shakespeare was writing badly when he made Macbeth

exclaim.:— "Come, thick night!

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes ; Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark To cry, Hold! hold !"

Johnson did not understand Shakespeare's bold and imagi- native use of words; he could not see that it was in the very

expressions to which he objected that the whole force and mystery of Macbeth's invocation lay ; he completely failed, in fact, to realise the nature of the object which he believed himself to be discussing. His comparison in the "Preface " between Shakespeare's comedy and tragedy is marked by a similar kind of misapprehension :- "In tragedy," he says, Shakespeare "often writes, with great appearance of toil and study, what is written at last with little felicity ; but in his comick scenes, he seems to produce without labour what no labour can improve. In tragedy he is always struggling after some occasion to be comick ; but in comedy he seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking con- genial to his nature. In his tragick scenes there is always some- thing wanting, but his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire. His comedy pleases by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy for the greater part by incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct."

Is it not deplorable that the critic who can speak so finely and so sympathetically of one half of his subject should, in

the very same breath, fail so utterly in his estimate of the other ? "In his tragick scenes there is always something

wanting" ! What was this "something" that Dr. Johnson missed ? It was, no doubt, that common-sense, that broad and sober view of human nature, the presence of which so delighted him in the comedies. The only " tragick scene" which he seems to have thoroughly admired is that between

Queen Katharine and her attendants in the fourth act of Henry VIII. This, he declares, is "tender and pathetick,

without gods, or furies, or poisons, or precipices, without the help of romantick circumstances, without improbable sallies of poetical lamentation, and without any throes of tumultuous misery." Clearly enough, he could understand as well as any man Shakespeare's great tragic situations,—the " incident and action," as he calls it, of the tragedies. " I am glad," he

bursts out, after his notes to the last scene of Othello, "that I have ended my revisal of this dreadful scene. It is not to be endured." And in his discussion of the conclusion of Lear, "I might relate," he says, "that I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia's death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play till I

undertook to revise them as an editor." That these appalling climaxes of passion and horror moved Johnson to the very

depths of his being it is impossible to doubt; but they moved him through their humanity and not their poetry. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that Johnson's criticisms are such as might have been made by a foreigner of great ability

and immense experience who was acquainted with Shake- speare solely in a prose translation.

Yet, after all, though it is true that the interest of the present volume lies mainly in its revelation of the nature of Johnson's genius, it would be unfair to that great man not to confess that there is another impression which his work must produce upon the mind of every reader. The greatness of Shakespeare needs no enhancements ; yet., after reading what Johnson has to tell us of him, we begin to realise that greatness more fully. Johnson sums up his judgment thus :—

" This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirrour of life ; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious extasies, by reading human sentiments in human language, by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions."

If this had been said by a critic of Johnson's power and experience of any other writer in the world, it would have been too high a eulogy; when it is said of Shakespeare it strikes us as completely true, but quite insufficient. Johnson has taken us up on to the vast spur of a mountain ; be has measured it, he has told us of its beauties and its wonders, and he would have us believe that we have reached the top- most peak. But we can look upward, and we can still see the mighty bulk of the mountain above us, looming, inaccessible, among the clouds.