This is the first of what promises to be a series of care­fully reflec­tive com­men­taries on the works of Dr Samuel John­son, LL. D., in – one hopes – a form that is acces­si­ble to mod­ern audi­ences, who – for all their virtues – are not inclined to read at length some­thing writ­ten in the style of Eigh­teenth Cen­tury Eng­lish Lan­guage and Let­ters. While I admit that the com­mon opin­ion regard­ing John­son is that he wrote a sort of John­sonese – defined as a lit­er­ary style that is var­i­ously char­ac­ter­ized by pedan­tic eru­di­tion, Latinisms, heav­i­ness, pom­pos­ity, and obscu­fa­tion – John­son him­self never wrote John­sonese. The pil­ing up of rea­sons, the cumu­la­tion of argu­ment – set­ting off epi­gram against epi­gram – that mark Johnson’s lit­er­ary style are its dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures. He is pro­found, but always lucid. The word – John­sonese – was coined by a man who had nei­ther the patience to read John­son nor the abil­ity to com­pre­hend him. Nev­er­the­less, most read­ers of John­son today will meet with a sim­i­lar impa­tience and will deny him a fair read­ing, a read­ing that offers one keen insights on any num­ber of sub­jects. I have there­fore decided that if John­son is not to be taken up by the masses and read that at least I might – with vary­ing pro­fi­ciency – dis­till his ideas that those who would by nature avoid him taste the ambrosial virtue of his thought.

There is no obser­va­tion more fre­quently made by such as employ them­selves in sur­vey­ing the con­duct of mankind, than that mar­riage, though the dic­tate of nature, and the insti­tu­tion of Prov­i­dence, is yet very often the cause of mis­ery, and that those who enter into that state can sel­dom for­bear to express their repen­tance, and their envy of those whom either chance or cau­tion had with­held from it.

John­son here admits some­thing that while hard is nev­er­the­less true, that mar­riage “is very often the cause of mis­ery,” and that those who are mar­ried fre­quently regret hav­ing entered into that state and envy those that are not so bound. While this is – espe­cially for those who hope to enter into mat­ri­mony with good will and open hearts – a painful admis­sion, it can­not be pre­tended that it is not a truth wor­thy of con­sid­er­a­tion. It is inter­est­ing that in the above para­graph John­son describes mar­riage as “the dic­tate of nature” and “the insti­tu­tion of prov­i­dence,” though else­where he is recorded as hav­ing said that noth­ing is more unnat­ural than the vows of mar­riage and that they per­sist only inso­far as the grace of God sup­ports them.

This gen­eral unhap­pi­ness has given occa­sion to many sage max­ims among the seri­ous, and smart remarks among the gay; the moral­ist and the writer of epi­grams have equally shewn their abil­i­ties upon it; some have lamented, and some have ridiculed it; but as the fac­ulty of writ­ing has been chiefly a mas­cu­line endow­ment, the reproach of mak­ing the world mis­er­able has been always thrown upon the women, and the grave and the merry have equally thought them­selves at lib­erty to con­clude either with declam­a­tory com­plaints, or satir­i­cal cen­sures, of female folly or fick­le­ness, ambi­tion or cru­elty, extrav­a­gance or lust.

John­son is here defend­ing women against the prej­u­dice latent in lit­er­a­ture – which until the mid-​Nineteenth cen­tury was chiefly the domain of men and thus sub­ject to their whims, as he describes in the fol­low­ing paragraph.

Led by such a num­ber of exam­ples, and incited by my share in the com­mon inter­est, I some­times ven­ture to con­sider this uni­ver­sal griev­ance, hav­ing endeav­oured to divest my heart of all par­tial­ity, and place myself as a kind of neu­tral being between the sexes, whose clam­ours being equally vented on both sides with all the vehe­mence of dis­tress, all the appar­ent con­fi­dence of jus­tice, and all the indig­na­tion of injured virtue, seem enti­tled to equal regard. The men have, indeed, by their supe­ri­or­ity of writ­ing, been able to col­lect the evi­dence of many ages, and raise prej­u­dices in their favour by the ven­er­a­ble tes­ti­monies of philoso­phers, his­to­ri­ans, and poets; but the pleas of the ladies appeal to pas­sions of more forcible oper­a­tion than the rev­er­ence of antiq­uity. If they have not so great names on their side, they have stronger argu­ments: it is to lit­tle pur­pose that Socrates, or Euripi­des, are pro­duced against the sighs of soft­ness, and the tears of beauty. The most frigid and inex­orable judge would at least stand sus­pended between equal pow­ers, as Lucan was per­plexed in the deter­mi­na­tion of the cause, where the deities were on one side, and Cato on the other. CONTINUE BENEATH THE FOLD

{ 0 comments }

Jennifer and I were given the excit­ing oppor­tu­nity to see our lit­tle fel­low at the twenty week ultra­sound, which because of sched­ul­ing conflicts was held at twenty-​one weeks. He was squirm­ing and mov­ing around in there, peri­od­i­cally shak­ing his tiny balled-​up fists and kick­ing his feet. After an excep­tion­ally detailed set of images were taken — from bone mea­sure­ments to count­ing the lobes of the brain and the cham­bers of the heart — we learnt that Char­lie was exactly where he needed to be devel­op­men­tally. He was 13 ounces and about 10 inches long. He had all of his fingers and toes and his nose suggested that he might take after his father — much to his mother’s cha­grin. Alto­gether the event was reas­sur­ing and assuaged any con­cerns that we had been har­bor­ing. Coin­cid­ing with the sono­gram, I was able for the first time to feel him mov­ing inside the womb. Most recently, I placed my cheek against Jennifer’s belly and was smartly kicked in the jaw… three times. As we draw ever closer to end of the year — when Char­lie will make his grand entrance — I find myself filled simul­ta­ne­ously with joy and excite­ment, fear and trep­i­da­tion, and a gen­eral hazy state of con­fu­sion. …yet, for all the emo­tional ambiva­lence, I sim­ply can­not wait.

{ 1 comment }

The damn­ing ev’dence did con­spire,
To rout me from prefer­ment, earned,
That I might nailed upon a pyre,
In merc’less flames be swiftly burned.
For I pro­fess con­vic­tions which,
Should they be happ’ly thus detailed,
Would scan­dalise that whor­ing bitch,
Who drove the staves, my soul assailed,
I’m not the man they heaped with praise,
I’m not the mask which hides my face,
My heart is naught as my sly face por­trays,
I’m not a saint, but wicked, sick and base.
There’s much that I believe but will not speak,
But never will I wit­ness to a lie, the falsest creed,
My will is plagued by doubt and floun­ders, weak,
And in the nave upon the floor I bleed.

{ 0 comments }