The Sun.
London, England, 1853-08-23 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Samuel Johnson :an Essay. By Thomas Carlyle.
Chapman and Hall.
As the seventh instalment of the popular series
of volumes issuing from the press through the ester
a-
blishment of Messrs. Chapman and Hall, und
the title of Reading for Travellers,
we have a re-
print of this delightful essay, originally appearing
in 1832 in Fraser's l'lagazine. Scarcely any tra-
veller but will welcome the sketch before us, pen-
cilled with life-like touches by the it icentric hand of
Thomas Carlyle. It is a sketchat once so geniallY
true, and so quaintly and fantastically (12 tractor
istic. It does more justice to poor han anY
other of the numerous critics who have ever written
on his great biographical masterpiece. It dep
arshre-
cates in old phraseology enough " the grating h,
thunder, or vehement shrew-mouthed squeaklings'
by which the advent of Mr. Croker's edition had been
heralded in the periodicals. Nevertheless, thong?
it deprecates any very high eulogium upon this
edition as altogether uncalled-for by its merits, it
commends in comical terms the work's displah
not of religion and a devout Christian heart, " Yei_b
orthodoxy, and a cleanly shovel-hated look, whicu
[the critic adds], as compared with flat Nothing, is
something very considerable." Notwithstanding
which partial commendation of " Croker's Bos-
well's Johnson," we learn from Mr. Carlyle further
on in his essay that he regards the edition as faulty,

and that he does so thuswise—
" It is, that our Editor has fatally, and almost surpris:
ingly, mistaken the limits of an Editor's function ; and
so, instead of working on the margin with his pen, to,
elucidate as best might be, strikes boldly into the body el,
the page with his scissors, and there clips at discretion:
Four books Mr. C. had by him wherefrom to gather Ugh;
ut
for the fifth, which was Boswell's. What does he do b
now, in the placidest manner,—slit the whole five Wal
slips and sew these together into a sextuiri quid, exactly
his own convenience, giving Boswell the credit of the
whole ! By what art-magic, our readers ask, has he unite"
them? By the simplest of all : by brackets. Never be-
°ll
fore was the full virtue of the bracket made manifest. Y
begin a sentence under Boswell's guidance, thinking.tet
carried happily through it by the same ; but no : t
middle, perhaps after your semicolon, and some consequen
for!—starts up one of these bracket-ligatures, and stitches
you in from half a page to twenty or thirty, pages e,,ft
Hawkins, Tyers, Murphy, Piozzi ; so that often one in"-,
make the old sad reflection, Where we are we '
whither we go no man knowth." h
Having settled accounts thus summarily' Ynt
Mr. Croker, our essayist turns thereupon towards
Corsican Boswell, James Boswell, Esq., of AnebiT_
leck. Of this queer, prying, bizarre, incomparble_ '
prince among biographers, we then have the f°l,
lowing masterly portraiture—being a marvelloll
psofile of Bozzy in a sort of silhouette :
"In that cocked nose, cocked partly in triumph °I
his weaker fellow-creatures, partly to snuff up the sine,"
coming pleasure, and scent it from afar • in those
cheeks, hanging like half-filled wine-skinsstill able to on't
taM more ;in that coarsely protruded shelf-mouth, that
fat dewlapped chin; in all this, who sees not sensuah4
pretension, boisterous imbecility enough ; much t
could not have been ornamental in the temper of a great
man's overfed great man (what the Scotch name finlike'
though it had been more natural there ? The under gal
of Boswell's face is of a low, almost brutish character. t
But Carlyle does justice to him, though he eav- °
admit that there is one line of beauty in his "
nomy." Hear him speak of Mr. Boswell's Life °
Doctor Johnson ! He says—" That loose-flew
ing, careless-looking Work of his is as a Pieturie
by one of Nature's own Artists ; the best possib
resemblance of a Reality ; like the very iniagr
thereof in a clear mirror." Speaking of pt
Bozzy's " olaring mixture of the highest and t'
lowest" in his temperament, Mr. Carlyle observes,
rather grandly— a of
" What, indeed, is man's life generally but a —n ore
beast-godhead; the god in us triumphing more and Incior
over the beast ; striving fly
his and more to subdue it 11.„iii
his feet ? Did not the Ancients, in their wise, perenn r
significant way, figure nature itself, their sacred X 1
significant
Pan, as a portentous commingling of these two disec'rdi,),,
as musical, humane, oracular in its upper part, yet en 07
below in the cloven hairy feet of a goat? The unit,,n,
melodious, celestial Freewill and Reason with foul -1';
tionality and Lust ; in which, nevertheless, dwelt a
ssior
terious unspeakable Fear and half-mad panic Awe;
mortals there well might !"
Admirably and nobly is it said afterwards of )3°s'
, :d
well's feeling, in reference to the great Mall a.
S
pen has delineated—" his feeling was not e.Ol,
phancy, which is the lowest, but Reverence, w1:10
is the highest, of human feelings." A glimpse ao•
of the tree Hero-Worship for which our ess3Ji,
has so wise and exalted an admiration. 13e3tra
fully and touchingly is it then observed, in reg%,
to the fugitiveness of things and the eternising Ib4
fluence in reference to some of them, exercised
this marvellous Johnsoniad : but
" The Mitre Tavern still stands in Fleet-street :
where now
backingfilehacaaniiyten otadwewdilsthits
pot-bellieduscho te-ranslthal -and
brass-pans,
its
sgs,-
rosy-faced a$
larder-shelveswaiter,
h watery-mouthedn;
her
withcooks,
wreathed
hangers-onb oot
smiles,
mc) al
e,osand
1, a
,escrido
onedo-
po
to spread for Samuel and Bozzy their supper of the clods,
has long since pocketed his last sixpence ; and the
sixpences and all, like a ghost at cock-crowing.
they
bottles they drank out of are all broken, the chairs :000
sat on all rotted and burnt ; the very knives aria `OO
they ate with have rusted to the heart, and become lsl'
oxide of iron, and mingled with the indiscriminate 'tot
All, all has vanished ; in very deed and truth Ike TO
baseless fabric of Prospero's air-vision. Of the Mitre le' of
nothinc, but the bare walls remain there : of Loud°;0,1lo
Englanqi, of the world, nothing but the bare, ads
remain ; and these also decaying (were they c) t'e'peo
mant), only slower. The mysterious river of. E%r
rushes on : a new Billow thereof has arrival,. bat
lashes wildly es ever round the old embank
the former Billow with its loud mad eddying.s, is, pre'
is it ?—Where ! Now this Book of Boswell's, thiss
cisely a revocation of the edict of Destiny; so 11e9' love
shall not utterly, not so soon by several cants bur
dominion over us. A little row of Naphtha-lig?' vast j
clearly and holy through the dead Night of tl'eu y
they who are gone are still here ; though hidden, tioes,
revealed, though dead they yet speak. There t,O,
that little miraculously lamplit Pathway ; sheclui die
feebler and feebler twilight into the bounolesieeceP,-
Oblivion,—for all that our Johnson touched has ofin
illuminated for as on which miraculous little F 5
we can still travel, and see wonders." ,pl)9
Carlyle, later on, admirably calls the bieg' lily-oes
I
itself "this our English Odyssey," the ue
being, of course, no other than the greatas a
Johnson. And of Johnson he says, quite tore's
mirably, that his was a mind " stamped of 143 dio?
noblest metal, though in so ungainlY aioftie,'
What, again, can be better—what
or more touching than those allusions to 3.°
marriage ? porter 119
" Johnson's marriage with the good Widow oesa
been created with ridicule by many mortals who al;13 040'
had no understanding thereof. That the pur-blinire 004
faced Wildman, stalking lonely, woe stricken, I,', o_':d
Irish Gallowglass with peeled club, whose speeettodret
knew, whose look all men both laughed at ancl leigetpia
at, should find any brave female heart to ado° t
first sight and hearing of him, ' This is the wee 0(101100
gentler,
liosoo
eo
man I ever met with and then. with generous be 0,00
to take him to itself' and say, Be thou mine ;
warmed here and thawed to life !—in all this,
vin•
rias
widow's love and pity for him, in Johnson's loc •
o_io
titude, there is actually no matter for ridi l'7;( dri
wedded life, as is the common lot, was made eels
and dry weather ; but innocence and wontedness Poo
and when death had ended iti a certain savet,
son's deathless affection for hi Tetty Nr3S3IWO,YB
Pc
and noble." • eqa'''
Eulogising the Doctor's sublime &sr it°
o
Fame, Mr. Carlyle observes, in a veil'
re
quite his own : 5 if it 0.:011
"Most authors speak of their 'Fame e' ija 00. r
quite priceless matter ; the grand ultituatuua, 0111
if
Constantine's-Banner they octal, w t)
under.—Thy ' Fame ! ' Unhappy mor _ore
..0:1
and thou both be in some fifty years ? Sha.l'Pb,
has lasted but two hundred ; Homer (part:9jtv. 000,4)1.
had to follow, Toe 11
three thousand : and does not already an EterLti floret,'"
every Cease, th; e not,
utie...fiset,' popoielagiriliasti
shrieking with fierce hisses, like b..:00d
thou hatchingilre onan and every
Flatee
egg, if man shall or dare approach it !
ha: tholl, eel it ;
;ill not ate
me,
IT •
egg,hat
andm e not,
welcome:ra Brother God k:n
nmwask,de
believe it to be addle. 1)50111° fitlf°
The .close of that, we take it, is a._ the e
heious--30, for the most part, too2..._atilo,
e3say—the intaglio to the cameo of .51

Loy
Turkey and Christendom. Au Essay.
''''
--, and Company. , '7'. 11 r's '
I.
,ve 6 (100
As the forty-seventh part of the -4 I.- ,and I'o'l
brary, published by Messrs. Longmaili e last Ail
pony, we find a timely reprint within- t!),_.,s) fv,o
days of a contribution taken (with addit*/ coPf,
the Edinburgh. It could not possiblY Poo oPP:00
before the English public once agaill 1114iraesieoce
tunely. From its agreeable and sei'l'ab-000011
eloquent narrative the reader may gleanvrith °,,,eot
of valuable information. It depicts arranglove
lucidity of style and perspicacity of. whicti. do
the relations in regard to each other in , _io, ;4,
long been placed—Turkey and Christ.?
cie;voltio
reviewer begins with the downfall anci_d briug,or
meat of the old Byzantine empire, alL,riod r„-,,(ef
story of events graduall odorn to a Tgle reil.; ar
diately contemporary torlves.
and'L'-ts raplt4oo
traces the rise of Ottoman power _
,s.`f its ticie.4 tO
velopment--and. in defining the course'
pre i•P'OO.4
and decay, takes occasion, of course, .;',/-o.,iert_ 00'
inevitable its ulterior dissolution. , 4-i' jo tliv. fros!
the writer acknowledges himself tolisappeaor
core
jectures as to whether TuraikpeiYonlfaiatiYiaci_ aarbrflorgpetfopoiltio°o,
the map of the world by
by the force of conquest, by grnutturowing epot°ol
by abrupt dismembermellt•
As
es of tiiis t
table light upon the obscurer plias too the
folio
question the essayin.herneirgeep:tinrteeaddeliirs, i
doubt not' to many A
Lir6
sense of the phrase, acceptable.
to P- el'
-------- ------- .
Ativ
piTtoglseLrvlF:d oGuutalittopthe—Z.haendLsietfiheees::::::lo:96:ret:feo°,:rolo
as at present the carbine is ti n degree eiliil,ilo
able to put the butt-end with_?orvov
"e er, th,,,,eerd P'
against the polished cuirass•
ffil
halainulopsetrts.istehleesfer.eedom of the arms that a °''
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