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Doctor Johnson and William Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Katharine C. Balderston
Katharine C. Balderston*
Affiliation:
Wellesley College, Massachusetts
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Extract

Everyone who knows the life of Johnson remembers his revelation to Boswell of what first set him “thinking in earnest of religion,” after a youth spent mostly in indifference toward it, and in lax talking against it. This laxity, he said, “lasted till I went to Oxford, where it would not be suffered. When at Oxford I took up ‘Law's Serious Call to a Holy Life,‘ expecting to find it a dull book, (as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion, after I became capable of rational inquiry.” Everyone accepts this as a significant event in Johnson's life, and nearly every book written since either about Johnson or Law repeats it. There has been, however, a curious indifference among Johnsonian scholars toward examining its significance, or considering the possibility that Law's influence on him may have extended beyond this admittedly important event in his young manhood. Mrs. Thrale was the only person I know of in his own day who suspected a real debt to Law in his writings, and since his death, with the exception of those critics who have surmised an influence of Law's “portraits” on some of Johnson's character-sketches in the Rambler, there have been, I believe, only two who have seen Law's influence at work on the mature Johnson.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 75 , Issue 4-Part1 , September 1960 , pp. 382 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1960

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References

1 James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, rev. L. F. Powell (Oxford, 1934–50), I, 68. All subsequent references will be to this edition.

2 Thraliana, ed. K. C. Balderston (Oxford, 1942), ii, 421. See below, p. 392.

3 “Dr. Johnson and the Religious Problem,” English Studies (Amsterdam, 1938) XX, 2–6.

4 The Achievement of Samuel Johnson (New York, 1955), p. 134.

5 The Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson (London, 1787), pp. 162–163.

6 A. L. Reade, Johnsonian Gleanings (London, 1909–52), v, 27–28 and Appendix K.

7 Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford, 1952), No. 44.

8 For a full discussion, see my “Johnson's Use of William Law in the Dictionary,” which will appear in PQ.

9 Boswell, Life, I, 464.

10 Letters, No. 84, and note.

11 Life, ii, 122–123.

12 Life, ii, 122; iv, 286, ii. 3, 294, 311.

13 See below, p. 391, and n. 58. 384

14 Lije, i, 63, n. 1; Reade, Gleanings, v, 24–27, 31–44.

15 New York, 1955, p. 127.

16 S. G. Brown (op. cit., p. 5) first suggested that Johnson's earliest recorded good resolution, in Prayers and Meditations, “Desidiae valedixi; syrenis istius cantibus surdam posthac aurem obversus,” dated October 1729, was a direct result of his reading of the Serious Call. A large part of Law's 14th chapter is devoted to condemning the “crime of wasting great part of your time in bed.”

17 A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, Everyman edition (London, 1951), p. 279. All subsequent references will be to this edition, by page number only.

18 Johnson quotes this in the Dictionary, under refinement.

19 Italics mine. Katharine C. Balderston

20 About William Law (London, 1948), pp. 4–6.

21 Johnson quotes this in the Dictionary, under minister.

22 Sermon XIII, Works, Literary Club ed. (Troy, N. Y., 1903), XVI, 226–227. All subsequent references to the Sermons will be to this edition and volume.

23 Sermon xvi, p. 264.

24 Sermonxi, p. 201.

25 Johnson quotes this in the Dictionary, under gravity.

26 Life, i, 470. Italics mine. Katharine C. Balderston

27 Lives of the Poets, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1905), m, 207.

28 See above, p. 382.

29 Sermon vi, pp. 141, 148, 149.

30 See above, p. 382.

31 Mr. Brown has anticipated this point. See above, p. 382.

32 Johnson quotes this in the Dictionary, under rule.

33 Samuel Johnson, Diaries, Prayers, and Annals, ed. E. L. McAdam with Donald and Mary Hyde, Yale ed. of Works of Samuel Johnson (New Haven, 1958), i, 378. Future references to the Prayers will be to this edition.

34 Above, p. 384, ii. 16.

35 See above, p. 382.

36 Life, iii, 40–41, 189.

37 Life, iv, 295.

38 Life, ii, 359; iv, 417; Diaries, Prayers, and Annals, pp. 279, 306, 313, 314, 315, 319, 320.

39 Life, I, 436.

40 The six hours are, of course, the canonical hours of prayer. For Law's regimen of prayer see chapters 14 through 23, passim. Katharine C. Balderston

41 Diaries, Prayers, and Annals, passim, and pp. 43, SO, 57–60, 66–68, 96–98, 103, 300–301, 338, 361–362, 364, 417–418.

42 Life, I, 365; ii, 10, 435; Adventurer 126.

43 Rasselas, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford, 1927), p. 210. Future references will be to this edition.

44 Life, v, 62.

45 Rassdas, p. 211. See also Ramblers 7, 28, 110; Idler 52.

46 Article on “Charity, Christian,” Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (New York, 1908–22), Vol. iii.

47 This theory was reenforced by the Puritan belief, which R. H. Tawney has pointed out (in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism), that prosperity was God's reward for thrift and poverty his punishment for laziness.

48 Johnson quotes this sentence in the Dictionary, under money.

49 Life, in, 56.

50 Hester Lynch Piozzi, “Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson,” Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. G. B. Hill (New York, 1897), i, 204.

51 Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson, p. 395. Katharine C. Balderston

52 Life, iv, 132.

53 Sermon xi, pp. 205–206. Italics mine.

54 See particularly W. C. B. Watkins, Perilous Balance (Princeton, 1939), pp. 80–92; F. A. Pottle, “The Dark Hints of Sir John Hawkins and Boswell,” MLN (1941), LVI, 325–329; J. W. Krutch, Samuel Johnson (New York, 1944), pp. 547–550; J. H. Hagstrum, “On Dr. Johnson's Fear of Death,” ELH (1947), xiv, 308–319; W. J. Bate, op. cit., pp. 152–154.

65 See above, p. 384.

56 See above, p. 386.

57 Sermon xvi, p. 265.

58 Life, iv, 294. This close resume of Law's argument, in a conversation of the year 1784, shows how thoroughly Johnson had assimilated Law's book, and is persuasive evidence that his other uses of it were not all unconscious echoings. It is the only instance, however, where he explicitly quotes Law, either in his works or in the Life.

69 Thraliana, ii, 421.

60 This argument runs through the whole of Christian Perfection, Law's earlier work. Katharine C. Balderston

61 Portsmouth, N. H., 1822 (1st American ed.), p. 325.

62 As quoted by John B. Green, in John Wesley and William Law (London, 1945), p. 125.

63 Rasselas, p. 125.