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Johnson's Conception of the Beautiful, the Pathetic, and the Sublime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

J. H. Hagstrum
J. H. Hagstrum*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

The words beautiful, pathetic, sublime, and their synonyms appear often in Samuel Johnson's discussions of literary pleasure. Although I do not know that all three are ever used together in one sentence, the sublime and the pathetic, on the one hand, and the sublime and the beautiful, on the other, are among Johnson's most frequently recurring doublets. Each word becomes an important term of aesthetic meaning, clearly distinguished from the others; each expands under the pressure of contemporary theory; each is complicated and enriched by the vigorous personality of its user; and each is used as a tool of practical criticism to help account for the distinguishing excellence of a great English poet. For Johnson, Pope exemplified the beautiful, Shakespeare the pathetic, and Milton the sublime.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 64 , Issue 1: Issue 1 part 1 , March 1949 , pp. 134 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1949

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References

1 Works of Johnson (Oxford, 1825), ii, 431–432. This edition will hereafter be referred to as Works. Citations from the Dictionary come from the first edition unless otherwise noted. Rambler no. 92 is one of a series (86, 88, 90, 94) devoted chiefly to Milton's versification.

2 Works, i, 221 (Rasselas, Chap. x). In the first three editions of the Dictionary, elegance is defined as “Beauty of art; rather soothing than striking; beauty without grandeur.” Subsequent editions drop the phrase, “of art”, after “Beauty.” Having found the “elegantly little” in nature (see Imlac's speech) and having used elegance as a synonym for beauty either of nature or art, Johnson could not restrict the definition as he had originally done. The quotations from Johnson in the remainder of the paragraph come from Works, viii, 377–378; 402; vii, 135; 452; 213.

3 Letters of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1892), i, 224, 226, 253. Italics mine.

4 Henry Home Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism, 7 th ed. (Edinburgh, 1788), i, 196.

5 An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, 2d ed., corrected (1762), I, iv–v, x.

6 Works, viii, 325. Citations from Pope in this section come from ibid., pp. 326, 329, 332, 334, 337–338, 341, 343. Johnson's eloquent passage on Dryden and Pope (ibid., pp.324–325) is much like the conventional contrasts between Homer and Vergil, Shakespeare and Jonson, nature and art, that had appeared in Dryden, Pope, Addison, Johnson himself, and many others. But it also suggests the contrast between the sublime and the beautiful. The adjectives used of Pope are those associated with the types of beauty we have been discussing, even those relating to the beauties of external nature. They constitute a convenient summary of this section of the paper.

7 The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theories in XVIII-Century England (New York, 1935), p. 14. The extent of my indebtedness to this indispensable study will be apparent.

8 Works, v, 236 (preface to the Preceptor).

9 Works, viii, 15 (Life of Prior).

10 Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. by Walter Raleigh (Oxford, 1925), pp. 150–152.

11 Johnson on Shakespeare, p. 165; Works, vii, 175 (Life of Olway); vii, 408, 410 (Life of Rowe); Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. by G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1897), I, 283 (Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes) and ii, 196–197 (Anecdotes of Hannah More). Johnson's strong taste for the pathetic in drama also appears in his letters. On July 11, 1770, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale: “What is nearest touches us most. The passions rise higher at domestic than at imperial tragedies” (Letters of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill [Oxford, 1892], i, 162). I am indebted to Professor René Wellek for calling to my attention most of the examples used in this paragraph.

12 Works, v, 71 (Observations on Macbeth).

13 A Commentary, with notes, on the Four Evangelists and the Acts of the Apostles (1777), i, x. Allen T. Hazen (Samuel Johnson's Prefaces & Dedications [New Haven, 1937], pp. 155–156), who says “there can be no doubt that the Life is by Johnson”, gives a full bibliographical description.

14 Works, vii, 302. See Works, iii, 151 (Rambler no. 137), and viii, 20 (Life of Prior) and, for a summary and discussion of the Longinian echoes in Johnson, Percy Hazen Houston, Dr. Johnson: A Study in Eighteenth Century Humanism (Cambridge, Mass., 1923), pp. 44 ff.

15 In emphasizing the relationship of this passage to rhetoric in general and imagery in particular, I have followed Scott Elledge in his valuable study of “The Background and Development in English Criticism of the Theories of Generality and Particularity” in PMLA, lxii (March, 1947), esp. pp. 150–151. To Elledge's discussion, I should like to add only these qualifications: (1) Although the sublime in Johnson was, as we have seen, associated with generality to the extent that over-particularization destroyed grandeur and nobility of expression, generality was not exclusively associated with the sublime. Generality was also necessary in representations of the passions (cf. the passage under discussion and Imlac's speech in Rasselas) and in the representation of the beautiful. Imlac's famous tulip, had the streaks not been numbered and had it been given a sufficiently generalized description, could never, under Johnson's definition, have become sublime. It would have been beautiful. (2) Johnson's praise of Thomson does not represent so much a departure from the theory of generality as it does a continuation of Johnson's oft-repeated plea for originality of fancy and invention. Thomson “attends to the minute”, to be sure, but so had Imlac's hypothetical poet. And Thomson also “comprehends the vast”, “our thoughts expand with his imagery”, and “his descriptions of extended scenes and general effects bring before us the whole magnificense of nature …” (Works, viii, 377–378). The theory of generality in descriptive poetry appears, in part at least, to be operative here, even though Thomson is praised for attention to particulars. Johnson expected a poet to achieve both originality of observation and some generality of expression.

16 Johnson's journal of his journey to Wales in Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1887), v, 433–434.

17 Works, i, 200–201, 266. I do not wish to suggest that these solemn and dark contemplations arose in Johnson as a result of his reading Burke, even though they are what Burke would have called sublime. Johnson was a melancholy man by nature; this type of imaginative preoccupation was only natural to him. There is evidence in Rambler no. 80 (a kind of prose poem on the seasons) that his imagination had been stirred by Il Penseroso and by Thomson's Seasons. “Every season [he says] has its particular power of striking the mind.” In winter there arises “pensive and profound astonishment” and “the mind is swelled ....” “If we allot different duties to different seasons, he may be charged with equal disobedience to the voice of nature, who looks on the bleak hills and leafless woods, without seriousness and awe. Spring is the season of gaiety, and winter of terrour …” (Works, ii, 376). This essay was written for December 22, 1750—some seven years before Burke published his study. Burke did not alter Johnson's imagination; he merely sharpened Johnson's distinction between the sublime and the beautiful.

18 It may be well asked at this point why Dryden, who could not achieve the pathetic because there was too much swelling grandeur in him, did not become the leading exemplar of the sublime for Johnson. Milton was, of course, so much more sublime, but there are other reasons as well. Although Johnson praised Dryden highly and placed him above Pope in power of imagination (Works, viii, 324–325, Life of Pope), yet the sublimity of Dryden was not satisfactory. In the scenes of “illustrious depravity, and majestick madness” in the Conquest of Granada, which Johnson admired, “the ridiculous is mingled with the astonishing” (vii, 259). “He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness mingle; to approach the precipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy. This inclination sometimes produced nonsense …” (vii, 341). Sublimity and nonsense were too nearly allied in Dryden's plays for Johnson to have considered him the great exemplar of dignity or grandeur.

19 Works, vii, 134–135 (Life of Milton). For other references cited in connection with Milton, see ibid., pp. 133, 131.

20 Works, vii, 42–43 (Life of Cowley); 213 (Life of Waller). See also vii, 59 (Life of Denham).