Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/35

Rh imposed on his drudgery were never broken. He made no personal attacks on others, and answered none on himself. He never complied with temporary curiosity, nor enabled his readers to discuss the topic of the day. He never degraded virtue by the meanness of dedication. There was nothing in his writings to disclaim and nothing to regret, for he always thought it the duty of an anonymous author to write as if he expected to be hereafter known. When at last he was known, there was still no escape from hack-work and the necessities of the day. The books which he has added to the English Classics were written for bread—the Dictionary, the periodical papers, Rasselas, the Preface and Notes to Shakespeare (which will some day be recognized for what they are, the best and most luminous of eighteenth century commentaries on Shakespeare’s drama), and the Lives of the Poets.

This is the greatness of Johnson, that he is greater than his works. He thought of himself as a man, not as an author; and of literature as a means, not as an end in itself. Duties and friendships and charities were more to him than fame and honour. The breadth and humanity of temper which sometimes caused him to depreciate the importance of literature, have left their mark on his books. There are some authors who exhaust themselves in the effort to endow posterity, and distil all their virtue in a book. Yet their masterpieces have something inhuman about them, like those jewelled idols, the work of men’s hands, which are worshipped by the sacrifice of man’s flesh and blood. There is more of comfort and dignity in the view of literature to which Johnson has given large utterance: ‘Books without the knowledge of life are useless; for what should books teach but the art of living?’