Johnson: Rambler #17 (May 15, 1750) *
It's not such a strange thing, is it, that even in our grief that those of us that live and work in books should turn to books for comfort? Where better? At such times, friends and family know only what we know of our losses, more or less, if that and we can not ask them to say what we can not, not yet, anyway. Those conversations, however necessary to us, we have just among ourselves. If the loss is not so much a private grief as a more general misfortune there is all the more reason to turn for the articulation of it to those whose griefs have been memorialized in language which has survived both the loss and the speaker, no?
"When a friend is carried to his grave, we at once find excuses for every weakness, and palliations of every fault; we recollect a thousand endearments which before glided off our minds without impression, a thousand favors unrepaid, a thousand duties unperformed, and wish, vainly wish for his return, not so much that we may receive, as that we may bestow happiness, and recompense that kindness which before we never understood."
Johnson: Rambler #54 (September 22, 1750)
We count too many losses lately, or so at least it seems tonight. The truth is of course that death is ever present. We can not allow for that fact without contemplation of the corollary; that life goes on even in the midst of seemingly irreparable loss. Again, as Johnson said to Boswell, "If one was to think constantly of death, the business of life would stand still." We go on.
"To be always afraid of losing life is, indeed, scarcely to enjoy a life that can deserve the care of preservation. He that once indulges idle fears will never be at rest. Our present state admits only of a kind of negative security; we must conclude ourselves safe when we see no danger, or none inadequate to our powers of opposition. Death, indeed, continually hovers about us, but hovers commonly unseen, unless we sharpen our sight by useless curiosity."
Johnson: Rambler #126 (June 1, 1751)
Johnson addressed the subject regularly, both publicly and privately. In his essays, in his poetry, his conversation, his letters, his prayers. We are uniquely fortunate in having so much still to hand of what the great man said, on every occasion and condition of a man's life, from birth to death. If generally the reader turns to him more often to be entertained by his conversation and charmed by his company, and to be educated as much in morals as in literature, the Doctor is nonetheless, I find, a great guide and solace in his more somber reflections.
"We, to whom the shortness of life has given frequent occasions of contemplating mortality, can, without emotion, see generations of men pass away, and are at leisure to establish modes of sorrow and adjust the ceremonial of death. We can look upon funeral pomp as a common spectacle, in which we have no concern, and turn away from it to trifles and amusements, without dejection of look or inquietude of heart."
Johnson: Rambler #78 (December 15, 1750)
He knew whereof he spoke. When his mother died, he hadn't the money to bury her. (He wrote his one novel, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, originally titled, 'The Choice of Life", in a week, to pay for her funeral.) His beloved wife, Tetty, died without seeing his success and the fame his Dictionary brought him. Johnson told many friends, including his greatest biographer -- the greatest who ever lived -- James Boswell, that after her death "I have ever since seemed to myself broken off from mankind; a solitary wander in the wild of life, without any direction, or fixed point of view: a gloomy gazer on the world to which I have little relation." Every year, for the rest of his life, on her birthday, on their anniversary and the anniversary of her death, he would mark the day with prayers of gratitude and overwhelming sadness. This, briefly, from 1782:
"This is the day on which in 1752 dear Tetty died. I have now uttered a prayer of repentance and c.; perhaps Tetty knows that I prayed for her. Perhaps Tetty is now praying for me. God help me. Thou, God, art merciful, hear my prayers, and enable me to trust in Thee.
We were married almost seventeen years, and have now been parted thirty."
When I learned of the untimely death of a coworker today, it seemed to me that everything I was already reading lost it's savour. Without even thinking what I was doing or why, I wandered my shelves looking, although I did not know it, for the consolation of an old friend, and found Samuel Johnson. I picked up his essays from The Idler, and read:
"The loss of a friend upon whom the heart was fixed, to whom every wish and endeavour was tended, is a state of dreary desolation, in which the mind looks abroad impatient of itself, and finds nothing but emptiness and horror. The blameless life, the artless tenderness, the pious simplicity, the modest resignation, the patient sickness, and the quiet death, are remembered only to add value to the loss, to aggravate regret for what cannot be amended, to deepen sorrow for what cannot be recalled."
Johnson: Idler #41 (January 27, 1759)
I kept reading well into the night. When Johnson neared the end of his own life, Boswell tells us, his deepest regret came when he could himself no longer read "during his hours of restlessness. 'I used formerly, (he added,) when sleepless in bed, to read like a Turk.'"
Among the last prayers he offered at the end, were the words, "Bless my friends, have mercy upon all men."
I offer the simple words here, as a first memorial to my friend, comfort to his family and a most fervent blessing on Johnson's memory and a hope for us all.
*I am grateful for most of these quotes to the rather appallingly named, but extremely good site, The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page.
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