Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 3Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 3
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English essays
assailed the ministry with obloquy which refuted itself, and regretted
the lost freedom and happiness of those golden days in which a writer
who had taken but one-tenth part of the license allowed to him would
have been pilloried, mangled with the shears, whipped at the cart's
tail, and flung into a noisome dungeon to die. He hated dissenters
and stockjobbers, the excise and the army, septennial parliaments,
and continental connections. He long had an aversion to the Scotch, an
aversion of which he could not remember the commencement, but which, he
owned, had probably originated in his abhorrence of the conduct of the
nation during the Great Rebellion. It is easy to guess in what manner
debates on great party questions were likely to be reported by a
man whose judgment was so much disordered by party spirit. A show of
fairness was indeed necessary to the prosperity of the Magazine. But
Johnson long afterwards owned that, though he had saved appearances, he
had taken care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it; and,
in fact, every passage which has lived, every passage which bears the
marks of his higher faculties, is put into the mouth of some member of
the opposition.
A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure labours, he
published a work which at once placed him high among the writers of his
age. It is probable that what he had suffered during his first year in
London had often reminded him of some parts of that noble poem in which
Juvenal had described the misery and degradation of a needy man of
letters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the tottering garrets which
overhung the streets of Rome. Pope's admirable imitations of Horace's
Satires and Epistles had recently appeared, were in every hand, and were
by many readers thought superior to the originals. What Pope had done
for Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal. The enterprise was bold
and yet judicious. For between Johnson and Juvenal there was much in
common, much more certainly than between Pope and Horace.
Johnson's London appeared without his name in May 1738. He received only
ten guineas for this stately and vigorous poem; but the sale was rapid,
and the success complete. A second edition was required within a
week. Those small critics who are always desirous to lower established
reputations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous satirist was
superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department of literature. It
ought to be remembered, to the honour of Pope, that he joined heartily
in the applause with which the appearance of a rival genius was
welcomed. He made inquiries about the author of London. Such a man, he
said, could not long be concealed. The name was soon discovered; and
Pope with great kindness, exerted himself to obtain an academical degree
and the mastership of a grammar school for the poor young poet. The
attempt failed; and Johnson remained a bookseller's hack.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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