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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
To understand the ironic force of Johnson's 1755 letter to the Earl of Chesterfield, we must appreciate not only their personal relationship, centered in 1746-48, and Chesterfield's indirect attempt to sponsor the Dictionary in 1754, but their literary and political relationship as well. Both men played a complex role in the politics of the 1737-44 period, Chesterfield as a leading member of the opposition, Johnson as political journalist. During these years, Johnson used Chesterfield's 1737 speech against the Playhouse Bill as basis for some arguments in his Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage (1739), and later wrote Chesterfield's part in a number of “Parliamentary Debates.” Though Johnson favored the opposition position before 1740, in his “Debates,” under the requirement of appearing impartial, he often created for opposition speakers, especially Chesterfield, ironic arguments which redound to their discredit. Johnson's ability as ironist was considerable: comparison of the speeches he wrote for Chesterfield with collateral sources for these debates reveals that he intensified Chesterfield's opposition negativeness by increasing his ironical attacks upon the ministry in power. The effect is to satirize Chesterfield, rendering him ineffectual, divisive, and ridiculous through the creation of a literary and political persona. It is unlikely that Johnson forgot this persona during his hopeful personal relationship with and later neglect by Chesterfield. When the opportunity arose in 1755 for Johnson to address Chesterfield personally again, he fortified the “civil irony” of his celebrated letter with an ironic attack which recalls, and was perhaps influenced by, the satiric criticism he had leveled against Chesterfield through similar ironic techniques a dozen years earlier in the “Parliamentary Debates.”
An abbreviated version of this essay was read at the Group Meeting of English 8 at the 1968 MLA Annual Meeting, 27 Dec. 1968.
1 See Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, rev. L. F. Powell, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1934–50), i, 256–267; Boswell published The celebrated Letter from Samuel Johnson, LL.D. to Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield in 1790.
2 Life, i, 264. Chesterfield's essays appear in The World, 28 Nov. and 5 Dec. 1754 (Nos. 100–101); the passage of more than two months between these writings and Johnson's letter may tend to minimize their importance as the catalyst of Johnson's anger; but cf. Benjamin Boyce, “Johnson and Chesterfield Once More,” PQ, xxxii (1953), 93–96.
3 See Sir John Hawkins, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (London, 1787), pp. 189–190; and cf. pp. 175–191 for Hawkins' extremely prejudicial account of Johnson's dealings with Chesterfield; see also Boswell, Life, I, 257.
4 The attitude of other writers, especially Boswell, to Chesterfield is discussed by Sidney L. Gulick, Jr., “Johnson, Chesterfield, and Boswell,” The Age of Johnson, ed. Frederick W. Hilles (New Haven, Conn., 1949), pp. 329–340.
5 The most authoritative discussion of Johnson's personal relationship with Chesterfield is James H. Sledd and Gwin J. Kolb, Dr. Johnson's Dictionary: Essays in the Biography of a Book (Chicago, 1955), pp. 85–104.
6 Sledd and Kolb, Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, pp. 89–90. The “Scheme” is the original draft of The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language (1747) and is printed in facsimile in The R. B. Adam Library Relating to Dr. Samuel Johnson and His Era, 4 vols. (London and New York, 1929–30), n; for Sledd's and Kolb's description, see pp. 46–66.
7 The precise chronology is not known, but since the fair copy of the Plan is addressed to Chesterfield as “one of his Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State,” it must be laterthan 29 Oct. 1746, the date of Chesterfield's acceptance of the cabinet post. See Sledd and Kolb, p. 90.
8 As Sledd and Kolb observe (p. 93), “Chesterfield's reputation as a man of wit and sense will not be enhanced by these eight remarks.” Cf. pp. 91–93.
9 See Sledd and Kolb, pp. 98–99.
10 Life, i, 260.
11 Life, in, 351, and n. 1; cf. Miscellaneous Works of the Late Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, ed. J. Justamond, 2 vols. (London, 1777), i, part ii, 228. Dr. Matthew Maty, Chesterfield's first biographer, died before completing his edition, which was finished by his son-in-law, Justamond.
12 See Journals of the House of Lords, xxv (1736–41), 137a, for the proceedings concerning the Playhouse Bill; Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England, 36 vols. (London, 1806–20), xii, 1293, 1368, for the dating of each speech.
13 The Gentleman's Magazine, vii (1737), 409–411, simply reprints this speech from Fog's Journal; the full version, which shows no trace of Johnson's hand, first appeared in the London Magazine, vi (Aug. 1737), 401–409.
14 Miscellaneous Works, I, ii, 228.
15 Birch's manuscript Diary, B.M. Add. MS. 4478C, f. 24v, records his attendance in the House of Lords on the occasion of the debate on the Playhouse Bill, 2 June 1737. Johnson himself seems to have attended a Parliamentary debate on not more than one occasion; cf. Boswell, Life, I, 503–504.
16 See Benjamin ?. Hoover, Samuel Johnson's Parliamentary Reporting (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1953), pp. 19–20, 27, 214; Edward A. Bloom, Samuel Johnson in Grub Street (Providence, R. I., 1957), pp. 53–57; Donald J. Greene, The Politics of Samuel Johnson (New Haven, Conn., 1960), p. 92. Cf. Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1952), i, 8 (No. 9); Life, i, 503; and A. L. Reade, Johnsonian Gleanings, 11 vols. (London, 1909–52), vi, 88.
17 MS annotation in Walpole's copy of Chesterfield's Miscellaneous Works (1777), i, i, 5, now in the British Museum, press mark C.60.O.4. See also John, Lord Hervey, Some Materials Towards Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ed. Romney Sedgwick, 3 vols. (London, 1931), iii, 738–739.
18 Gentleman's Magazine, x (1740), 99–103, 227–230; see 101–102. The anonymous author of “The Autobiography of Sylvanus Urban,” Gentleman's Magazine, N.S., i (1856), 672, attributes these “Characters” to Guthrie without stating any authority; Donald J. Greene, “Some Notes on Johnson and the Gentleman's Magazine,” PMLA, LXXIV (1959), 76–77, points out that Johnson may have contributed several paragraphs to these two articles, which would imply that he was familiar with the whole.
19 Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of the 'Reign of King George the Second, ed. Lord Holland, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (London, 1847), ii, 143–149, esp. p. 145. Walpole ob serves (p. 149) that “Pitt's wit was genuine, not tortured into the service, like the quaintnesses of Lord Chesterfield,” which, he adds, now had fallen into disuse.
20 See Norman Knox, The Word Irony and Its Context, 1500–1755 (Durham, N. C, 1961), pp. 90–92, 187–221, on derisive attack, raillery, and ridicule.
21 The word “opposition” is inadequate to describe a group of men constantly shifting in attitudes and loyalties, like the anti-Walpole factions of the 1730's. During the period up to Walpole's resignation in Feb. 1742, the Whig opposition included Lord Carteret, William Pulteney, Henry Pelham, Chesterfield, and a number of other prominent figures. Dur ing the Carteret administration (Feb. 1742-Nov. 1744), Pulteney and Chesterfield continued to oppose most adminis tration policies. Only in the Pelham or Broad-Bottom minis try did Chesterfield finally receive the reward of a place in the Cabinet, the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland. A good recent account of these two changes in ministry appears in John W. Wilkes, A Whig in Power: The Political Career of Henry Pelham (Evanston, 111., 1964), pp. 26–61.
22 See A. S. Foord, His Majesty's Opposition, 1714–1830 (Oxford, 1964), pp. 239–256.
23 The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, ed. Bonamy Dobrée, 6 vols. (London, 1932), vi, 467–470 (8 Aug. 1741).
24 Old England, No. 1, 5 Feb. 1743, in Miscellaneous Works, I, ii, 111–112.
25 This phase of Johnson's political development, with emphasis on the Whiggish inclination of many of his opin ions, is thoroughly discussed by Donald J. Greene, The Politics of Samuel Johnson, pp. 80–111.
26 The editor of the 1825 collection of Johnson's works suggests a comparison of the “sarcastic strokes” of the Vindication “with the serious arguments of Lord Chester-field's speech in the House of Lords against the bill for licensing the stage.” See The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 11 vols. (Oxford, 1825), v, 329, n. The point, of course, is that Chesterfield, in being mildly ironical, opens the door for Johnson's extended treatment of the same theme. Samuel Shellabarger, Lord Chesterfield (London, 1935), p. 167, unaccountably asserts that Johnson “re-wrote [this] speech for the magazines,” without presenting any evidence or mentioning in which magazines it appeared.
27 See the comment of Dr. Matthew Maty, “Memoirs of Lord Chesterfield,” Miscellaneous Works, I, i, 83.
28 London Magazine, vi (1737), 405–406.
29 London Magazine, vi (1737), 408. This possibility becomes the central point of Johnson's ironic attack upon Guslavus Vasa in the Vindication; he too readily makes the “Application” of numerous personal attacks upon the Crown and ministry.
30 Five issues of The Craftsman deal with the Playhouse Bill: 28 May, 4, 18, 25 June, and 2 July 1737. Common Sense for 4 June 1737, attributed to Chesterfield, also attacks the Bill; see Miscellaneous Works, i, ii, 46–51. The only other person of note to speak against it was William Pulteney; see Hervey, Materials Towards Memoirs of George II, iii, 738.
31 See Greene, The Politics of Samuel Johnson, pp. 99–104, esp. p. 99.
32 Works, v, 342–343. Johnson, in his Dtmciad-like vision, is not alone in alluding to Chesterfield's 1737 Playhouse Bill speech. Pope also recognizes his efforts; see The Dunciad, In Four Books (1743), iv, 43–44, and note.
33 Works, v, 344.
34 See James L. Clifford, Young Sam Johnson (New York, 1955), pp. 222–235.
35 The Politics oj Samuel Johnson, pp. 112–113.
36 See Hoover, Samuel Johnson's Parliamentary Reporting, pp. 77–78, 130; John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, 9 vols. (London, 1812–16), v, 40–41, comments that Cave “was indefatigable in getting the Debates made as perfect as he could,” in this case, with the help of Thomas Birch.
37 This statement is suppositious, for very few authentic texts of Parliamentary speeches of this period survive. The manuscript notes, really abstracts of debates in the House of Lords from 1735 to 1743 made by Bishop Thomas Seeker, B.M. Add. MS. 6043, listed in Parliamentary History, xii, Sig. [a]3v-[a]4v, are often too condensed for us to determine the accuracy of the magazines' reports, which were often partly fictional, but occasionally Seeker gives a clearly ironical passage which we find reproduced but much expanded by Johnson. See, e.g., Seeker's abstract of Chesterfield's first speech against the Spirituous Liquors Bill, Parliamentary History, xii, 1289–99, which adumbrates the much greater ironies of Johnson's version of the same speech (PH, xii, 1340–45). The other chief collateral authority for debates in the Lords is the London Magazine but, as Hoover shows, it is often guilty of favoring the cause of the opposition; see Samuel Johnson's Parliamentary Reporting, p. 77.
38 Tlie History of England, from the Revolution to the Death of George the Second, 5 vols. (London, 1800), iii, 26.
39 London Magazine, viii (1739), 496.
40 For the popularity of these ironic methods, see Knox, The Word Irony and lis Context, pp. 42–76, 78–84.
41 “An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.,” Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. G. B. Hill, 2 vols. (London, 1897), I, 379.
42 See Hoover, Samuel Johnson's Parliamentary Reporting, pp. 55–57, Greene, The Politics of Samuel Johnson, pp. 311–312, ii. 9; F. V. Bernard, “Johnson and the Authorship of Four Debates,” PMLA, LXXXII (1967), 411. Medford Evans, “Johnson's Debates in Parliament,” unpubl. diss. (Yale, 1933), pp. 223–238, doubts that Johnson ever made the statement about the Whig Dogs and suggests that, in any case, his real interest was to see that Cave's opposition, the London Magazine, did not get the best of it in their versions of the debates.
43 “Johnson and the Authorship of Four Debates,” pp.411–419.
44 See The Politics of Samuel Johnson, pp. 272–279; cf. The Sentiments of a Tory, in respect to a late Important Transaction, and in regard to the Present Situation of Affairs (London, 1741), pp. 8, 31–40, 61–62. The author declares, e.g., that in the present crisis “we stand not in need of Demagogues but Counsellors” (p. 62).
45 See Hoover, Samuel Johnson's Parliamentary Reporting, p. 130; Greene, The Politics of Samuel Johnson, p. 133.
46 This is especially evident in his periodical essays; see, e.g., Fog's Journal, 24 Jan. 1736 (Misc. Works, I, ii, 8–14); Common Sense, 19 Feb. 1737 (Misc. Works, i, ii, 26–31); Seeker's minutes on Chesterfield's first speech in the Spirituous Liquors debate, Parliamentary History, xii, 1298–99, clearly reveal his use of ridicule. Many similar examples might also be cited.
47 Marmor Norfolciense and A Compleat Vindication are the two best examples of Johnson as ironist in the Swiftian manner; he abandons this kind of slashing virtuosity after 1740, though such pieces as the original Idler 22 show his continued ability. The narrow, orthodox definitions which he gives for the word “Irony' 'and its derivatives in the Dictionary compare strikingly with the many significations of the term at the time; this may be indicative of his reluctance to turn frequently to intricate ironic devices in later life.
48 F. V. Bernard, “Johnson and the Authorship of Four Debates,” p. 419, argues that irony may sometimes reveal Johnson's own displeasure. Greene, The Politics of Samuel Johnson, p. 122, suggests that Johnson can make a speaker appear riduculous as, in the case cited, he does Philip Gybbon's speech against the Mutiny Bill of 1741, where Gybbon is frequently ironical (see Parliamentary History, xi, 1454–85).
49 It is instructive to compare Bishop Seeker's abstract (Parliamentary History, xii, 650–651) with Johnson's version of Chesterfield's speech. Seeker gives the notes of what was evidently a sharply critical speech, yet implies virtually none of the mock panegyric and strong ridicule which Johnson creates, despite the strong affinities of the address in the Gentleman's Magazine with what, according to Seeker, Chesterfield actually said.
50 Gentleman's Magazine, xii (1742), 565.
51 Gentleman's Magazine, xii (1742), 669; Seeker, Parliamentary History, xii, 756, records a single paragraph of straightforward statement for Chesterfield on this occasion.
52 E.g., see A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage (London, 1739), pp. 17–18.
53 Gentleman's Magazine, xiii (1743), 462. I have changed “Hanevro” and “Lillipul” in the original text to the more comprehensible “Hanover” and “Great Britain.”
54 Gentleman's Magazine, xiii (1743), 466, 467, 510. On Newcastle's part in the cabinet, see Wilkes, A Whig in Power, p. 38. Newcastle's strongly critical attitude is wholly absent from Seeker's minutes (see Parliamentary History, xii, 1066–67), and it seems unlikely that Johnson would have allowed the ministry, through Newcastle, to rebut Chesterfield's manner so sharply, unless he wanted to make the opposition forces in the Lords, whose motion to discharge the Hanoverian mercenaries was defeated 90–35 (PH, xii, 1180), look especially bad in defeat.
55 “Zeal” is an ambiguous word in the eighteenth century and in the “Debates,” where it occurs frequently. The NED, s.v. “Zeal,” sb., 4, takes little cognizance, in its defs. And quots., of misdirected zeal, but Johnson, in his quots. For this word and for its derivatives in the Dictionary, clearly distinguishes between acceptable zeal, defined as “passionate ardour for any person or cause,” and excessive, fanatic zeal, like that of Zeal-of-the-Land Busy in Bartholomew Fair. In its pejorative sense, with its connotations of enthusiasm and false inspiration, Johnson frequently places it into the texts of Chesterfield's speeches, tending to identify him with demagoguery.
56 See London Magazine, xii (1743), 486–490; xiii (1744), 58–61; these two addresses are only about half as long as those written by Johnson. Seeker's notes, Parliamentary History, xii, 1298–99, 1372–73, are revealing, for while the second speech appears to have been mildly ironical, the first was evidently extremely sarcastic, filled with ironic exaggeration and ridicule. Johnson intensifies Chesterfield's actual ironies considerably in his report of the first and adds his own full-throated irony to his account of the second speech.
57 Gentleman's Magazine, xiii (1743), 564–575.
58 Gentleman's Magazine, xiii (1743), 627.
59 Gentleman's Magazine, xiv (1744), 11. Knox, The Word Irony and Its Context, pp. 129–130, cites part of this passage in his section on “Burlesque,” apparently unaware that Johnson is the author.
60 Gentleman's Magazine, xiv (1744), 13, 14.
61 This, in fact, is strikingly similar to what Seeker's terse notes record Hay as saying; see Parliamentary History, xii, 1373.
62 Seeker's notes provide the basic arguments of the debates, often exact phrases as well. For six of the speeches Johnson wrote for Chesterfield, Seeker's abstracts are extant (Parliamentary History, xii, 223–226, 650–651, 756, 1065–66, 1298–99, 1372–73) ; in all but one of these, there is no hint of the degree of irony which Johnson introduces into his version of each address.
63 See Bernard, p. 419.
64 In Feb. 1742, when many of the prominent opposition Whigs received places in power, Chesterfield was excluded from the Carteret cabinet; it is interesting that Johnson's speeches for him grow steadily more strident after this point. William Coxe, Memoirs of Horatio, Lord Walpole, 3 vols. (London, 1798–1802), i, 372–373, implies, as have most other writers on the period, that Chesterfield's opposition was unmitigated in its virulence from 1733 until he joined the Broad-Bottom Ministry in 1744, but a close study of the manner of his speeches refutes this position; Johnson is responsible for the last and strongest of these invectives.
65 Life, i, 183.
66 Sledd and Kolb, p. 99, remind us of Chesterfield's cordial reception of Johnson and his “great professions” to Johnson. It is difficult to accept, however, that Johnson could have been too hopeful of the fruits of this association, especially when we recall his grim descriptions of Savage's difficulties with his patrons, Lord Tyrconnel and Queen Caroline. See The Life of Savage (1744), Lives, ii, 368–369, 408–409. Savage lived “without any other support than accidental favours and uncertain patronage afforded him” (ii, 356); Johnson tells how the great professions of Sir Robert Walpole came to naught when Savage, having obtained a promise of his patronage, “soon found that his confidence was ill-grounded, and this friendly promise was not inviolable” (ii, 391–392; Johnson's italics). Again, Walpole, “who valued himself upon keeping his promise to others, broke it to him without regret” (II, 408–409). Johnson's acquaintance with Savage was intimate; when he found himself in a position similar to that of his friend, he undoubtedly recalled without pleasure the uncertainty of patronage and the dependence of the author. We may suppose, then, that Johnson might well have been suspicious of Chesterfield's bounty from the start.
67 See Sledd and Kolb, pp. 100–101.
68 See Letters of Samuel Johnson, I, 64–65 (No. 61).
69 An alternative explanation for Johnson's ironic letter is that Johnson might have been influenced by other letters in the genre of the repudiation. Thus, as Paul Fussell, Jr., has suggested in a recent Gauss Seminar (Winter 1968), Johnson's abusive letter to Macpherson (Letters, ii, 3; No. 373) could have been modeled upon Savage's letter of 1735 to Lord Tyrconnel, beginning “Right Honourable Brute and Booby”; see Boswell, Life, i, 161–162; and Clarence Tracy, The Artificial Bastard: A Biography of Richard Savage (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), p. 129 and n. 65. Johnson's letter to Chesterfield could have been influenced in a similar manner by Pope's ironic epistle to Lord Halifax; see Lives, in, 127; cf. The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1956), ii, 271.
