Having come to the end of Bate's first-rate biography of Dr Johnson, it is natural to scan again my own brief review of Johnson's life, in my Authors category, and to contemplate possible corrective measures. I think my nod at the end in the direction of his orthodox Christian faith was too easy. He indeed was the author of the Prayers and Meditations I mentioned. Bate however points out that theological subjects are hardly ever the immediate subject of his diverse work product; also, that he confessed to being, as a young man, "a lax talker against religion"; and that in the last days of his life he destroyed large portions of a journal in which he may have confided some measure of skepticism. Whatever his faith was, it wasn't serene. Bate I think would say that Johnson, perhaps because he knew his own mind, and put a premium on honesty, deliberately chose not to address himself to religious themes. Philosophical themes, yes. And the recurring motif here puts one in mind of the Book of Ecclesiastes rather more than anything written by Paul or one of the evangelists. Quoheleth, the preacher of Ecclesiastes:
Then I saw that wisdom excels folly as light excels darkness. The wise man has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness; and yet I perceived that one fate comes to all of them. . . . So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a man who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by a man who did not toil for it. What has a man from all the toil and strain with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of pain, and his work is a vexation; even in the night his mind does not rest. This also is a vanity.
Johnson:
Enlarge my Life with Multitude of Days,
In Health, in Sickness, thus the Suppliant prays;
Hides from Himself his State, and shuns to know,
That Life protracted is protracted Woe.
Quoheleth:
Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all. For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds which are caught in a snare, so the sons of men are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.
Johnson:
Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promise of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas prince of Abissinia. . . . Human life is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.
I first found out about Ecclesiastes in a college course on the Old Testament. We had made our way through the Pentateuch, and the historical books, and the prophets, and coming now to Ecclesiastes, the instructor related an anecdote concerning how, in a previous year, a student had at this point in the term visited him in his office and said: "Finally, something I can believe in!" It's hard to know how this slim masterpiece was admitted into the canon, and in a similar way the works of Johnson are bracing in comparison to the conversation of the confident Tory and Church of England stalwart immortalized by Boswell.
