One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to perform.He had received large subscriptions for his promised edition of Shakspeare; he had lived on those subscriptions during some years: and he could not without disgrace omit to perform his part of the contract.His friends repeatedly exhorted him to make an effort; and he repeatedly resolved to do so.But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his resolutions, month followed month, year followed year, and nothing was done.He prayed fervently against his idleness; he determined, as often as he received the sacrament, that he would no longer doze away and trifle away his time; but the spell under which he lay resisted prayer and sacrament.His private notes at this time are made up of self-reproaches."My indolence," he wrote on Easter Eve in 1764, "has sunk into grosser sluggishness.A kind of strange oblivion has overspread me, so that I know not what has become of the last year." Easter 1765 came, and found him still in the same state."My time," he wrote, "has been unprofitably spent, and seems as a dream that has left nothing behind.My memory grows confused, and I know not how the days pass over me."Happily for his honour, the charm which held him captive was at length broken by no gentle or friendly hand.He had been weak enough to pay serious attention to a story about a ghost which haunted a house in Cock Lane, and had actually gone himself with some of his friends, at one in the morning, to St John's Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of receiving a communication from the perturbed spirit.But the spirit, though adjured with all solemnity, remained obstinately silent; and it soon appeared that a naughty girl of eleven had been amusing herself by ****** fools of so many philosophers.Churchill, who, confidant in his powers, drunk with popularity, and burning with party spirit, was looking for some man of established fame and Tory politics to insult, celebrated the Cock Lane Ghost in three cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pomposo, asked where the book was which had been so long promised and so liberally paid for, and directly accused the great moralist of cheating.This terrible word proved effectual;and in October 1765 appeared, after a delay of nine years, the new edition of Shakspeare.
This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty, but added nothing to the fame of his abilities and learning.The preface, though it contains some good passages, is not in his best manner.
The most valuable notes are those in which he had an opportunity of showing how attentively he had during many years observed human life and human nature.The best specimen is the note on the character of Polonius.Nothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelm Meister's admirable examination of Hamlet.But here praise must end.It would be difficult to name a more slovenly, a more worthless edition of any great classic.The reader may turn over play after play without finding one happy conjectural emendation, or one ingenious and satisfactory explanation of a passage which had baffled preceding commentators.Johnson had, in his prospectus, told the world that he was peculiarly fitted for the task which he had undertaken, because he had, as a lexicographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider view of the English language than any of his predecessors.That his knowledge of our literature was extensive is indisputable.But, unfortunately, he had altogether neglected that very part of our literature with which it is especially desirable that an editor of Shakspeare should be conversant.It is dangerous to assert a negative.Yet little will be risked by the assertion, that in the two folio volumes of the English Dictionary there is not a single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan age, except Shakspeare and Ben.Even from Ben the quotations are few.
Johnson might easily, in a few months, have made himself well acquainted with every old play that was extant.But it never seems to have occurred to him that this was a necessary preparation for the work which he had undertaken.He would doubtless have admitted that it would be the height of absurdity in a man who was not familiar with the works of Aeschylus and Euripides to publish an edition of Sophocles.Yet he ventured to publish an edition of Shakspeare, without having ever in his life, as far as can be discovered, read a single scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, Webster, Marlow, Beaumont, or Fletcher.
His detractors were noisy and scurrilous.Those who most loved and honoured him had little to say in praise of the manner in which he had discharged the duty of a commentator.He had, however, acquitted himself of a debt which had long lain on his conscience; and he sank back into the repose from which the sting of satire had roused him.He long continued to live upon the fame which he had already won.He was honoured by the University of Oxford with a Doctor's degree, by the Royal Academy with a professorship, and by the King with an interview, in which his Majesty most graciously expressed a hope that so excellent a writer would not cease to write.In the interval, however, between 1765 and 1775 Johnson published only two or three political tracks, the longest of which he could have produced in forty-eight hours, if he had worked as he worked on the life of Savage and on Rasselas.