What Johnson Did Not Say

Here's a treasure: a website dedicated to identifying what Samuel Johnson did not say--insights, witticisms, sententiae, apothegms, attributed to the great man but not his at all.

I came by it honestly.  In a different place, I was recalling that "a favorite boss of mine (sic) liked to say--'Samuel Johnson says the way to judge a man is by how he treats a person who can't do him any good.'"

I had the wit to add: "I'm not sure Johnson said it, though he might well have thought it."  Bully for me on that because the not-say web page (which I discovered only later) is quite emphatic that, notwithstanding a diligent inquiry, it cannot be found in the works of the great man.  Ann Landers, maybe.  Apparently Johnson did say "a decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization," which is perhaps close enough in spirit but the main line remains untraced.
Just in general, it is interesting how quite a few items of non-Johnsonia, while clearly not his, do seem to fall somewhere within range of their target.  Other great attributees--Yogi Berra, Mark Twain, Will Rogers--seem to me less lucky: they have to bear the brunt of any random quote a person might want to lay on them.  By the way, is there a "what Yogi Berra did not say" page?

Attribution: what kicked this all off was Keith Humphreys' fascinating post here.

Samuel Johnson, 300

Happy 300, big guy:

Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield in Staffordshsire, on the 18th of September, N.S. 1709, and his initiation into the Christian church was not delayed; for his baptism is recorded in the register of St. Mary's parish in that city, to have been performed the day of his birth:... His father was Michael Johnson, a native of Derbyshire, of obscure extraction, who settled in Lichfield as a bookseller and stationer. His mother was Sarah Ford, descended of an ancient race of substantial yeomanry in Warwickshire. They were well advanced in years when they married ... I asked his old school-fellow, Mr. Hector, surgeon, of Birmingham, if [Johnson's mother] was not vain of her son. He said "she had too much good sense to be vain, but she knew her son's value."

--James Boswell, Life of Johnson, L.L.D. 15 (Modern Library ed. [ffollowing Malone's sixth edition])

Samuel Johnson on Blogging

From The Idler, No. 17, 251 years ago today:

Of those that spin out life in trifles, and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life.

He continues:

Among those whom I never could persuade to rank themselves as Idlers, and who speak with indignation of my morning sleeps and nocturnal rambles; one passes the day in catching spiders that he may count their eyes with a microscope; another erects his head, and exhibits the dust of a marigold separated from the flower with dexterity worthy of Leeuwenhoeck himself. Some turn the wheel of electricity, some suspend rings to a loadstone, and find that what they did yesterday then can do again today. Some register the changes of the wind, and die fully convinced that the wind is changeable.

Finding "what they did yesterday they can do again today" is the Popperian fallacy, not so?

The Wealth of Kings

Well, hey--for years I've been looking for a source for the (?) story about the king whose wealth lay in decency, civility and good order of his people. I thought it might be in Herodotus, but better Greek minds than mine say they don't recognize it. I had more or less come to assume that I made it up myself. But then the other night I was fingering through an old Signet Paperback selection of Samuel Johnson and came upon this:

When in the diet of the German empire, as Camerarius relates, the princes were once displaying their felicity, and each boasting of the advantages of his own dominions, one who possessed a country not remarkable for the grandeur of its cities, or the fertility of its soil, rose to speak, and the rest listened between pity and contempt, till he declared, in honour of his territories, that he could travel through them without a guard, and if he was weary, sleep in safety upon the lap of the first man whom he should meet; a commendation which would have been ill exchanged for the boast of palaces, pastures or streams.

--Samuel Johnson, Rambler No. 79 [Suspicion]

Yep, search over. But now, what is the deal with "Camerarius"? I suppose a fully annotated Rambler might tell me, but I don't have one at hand. Google offers several possible candidates, but I suspect that this is the guy.

Update: Thanks to Chrismealy, infra, for making the perfectly obvious (but missed by me)suggestion of Google books. Sure enough, here's the Yale edition, with this footnote:

We have not found the story in Camerarius. But Johnson refers to the fifteenth-century Graf Eberhard im Bart--also the subject of the well-known German poem by Justinus Kerner. The Diet in question was probably that of Worms (1495), a year before Eberhard's death.

Sounds like game, set and match, Chrismealy. But what is this "we have not found" stuff? Were they looking in the wrong Camerarius?

What the Colonel Said

I'm quoting the Colonel again:

A couple of friends of Israel or perhaps actual Israelis have written to ask why I dislike their favorite country so much. They don't get it. Old Timers here can tell them that I HATE NATIONALISM. All nationalism, everywhere. Mark Twain despised organized religion and monarchy. He once wrote that mankind would only be free when "the last priest is hanged in the guts of the last king." Romantic nationalism was a new phenomenon in his day and so he did not have the opportunity to add nationalism to his list of anathemas. Patriotism is another matter. I hope that I am a patriot. Read the preface to Elie Khaddouri's "Nationalism" to understand the difference. Nationalism is mere tribal loyalty and hatred of what are seen as competitor tribes. Often the tribal self-image is a pastiche of fable and propaganda. Zionism and pan-Arab nationalism are two sides of the same debased coinage of human folly.

In Gaza we have the folly of Zionist nationalism matched against the equal folly of a form of politicized Islam that embraces Palestinian nationalism.

Adults would find a workable compromise in order to make an end of the craziness of white phosphorus shellings of schools filled with refugee civilians followed by scenes of defiance that will inevitably lead to the murder of more children. Clearly, there is a scarcity of adults in the Holy Land.

Afterthought: In a conversation a while back I quoted (what I thought was) Samuel Johnson saying that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." My interlocutor interrupted: no, no it is public patriotism.

Um--I'm pretty sure I'm right: Johnson did not include the qualifier. But he might well have, and perhaps he would, if challenged. For more on Johnson on patriotism, go here.

Johnson's Dictionary

Allow me to join the choir of warm-hearted enthusiasts who are singing the praises of The Year of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary (thanks, Patrick; thanks, Frank). By way of a sample, here is

A’DAGE. n.s. [adagium, Lat.] A maxim handed down from antiquity; a proverb.
Shallow, unimproved intellects, that are confident pretenders
to certainty; as if, contrary to the adage, science had no friend
but ignorance. Glanville’s Scepsis Scientifica, c.2.
Fine fruits of learning! old ambitious fool,
Dar’st apply that adage of the school;
As if ’tis nothing worth that lies conceal’d;
And science is not science ’til reveal’d? Dryd. Pers. Sat. i.

An accessible introduction is Robert DeMaria Jr., Johnson's Dictionary and the Language of Learning (UNC Press 1986).

All the Way USA!

People who ought to know better are trying to explain why we should ramp up our commitment to the last refuge of the scoundrel (link), undertaking to show how flag-waving is a wholesome display of loyalty and commitment (not to mention, of course, a dandy excuse for beating up on your neighbors). I agree, but I don't think we've gone nearly far enough. As soon as I get out of my pyjamas, I think I will dress up like this guy , or maybe this guy, or at least this guy. Hey, I hear there is a congressional seat opening up next door, let's go!

More Advice

Since I've declared myself an expert on advice (link), I might as well aggravate the offense with this (link) (h/t Kottke). Samples:

1. The badness of a movie is directly proportional to the number of helicopters in it.

[Perhaps corollary to the rule that if a movie has more than two big stars, they couldn't afford to pay for a script.]

9. The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.

[True enough; but isn't that also the purpose of a good many organized protests?]

12. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter/janitor, is not a nice person.

[That's a longtime favorite of mine, which I freely credit to Samuel Johnson, though I can't find a citation & am very likely making things up.]

Take This to Heart As Well As to Mind

Just last week, I wrote a bit on advice. Following up, my son (sic) sent me this bit from The Best of Craigslist—“Advice to Young Men from an Old Man.” I won’t reprint the whole thing, which you can find here (link)—but this is a sample:

1. Don’t pick on the weak. It’s immoral. Don’t antagonize the strong without cause, its stupid. …

4. Get in a fistfight, even if you are going to lose. …

9. You’ll spend your entire life listening to people tell you how much you owe them.You don’t owe the vast majority of people shit. …

23. Realize that love is a numbers game. Guys fall in love easily. You’re going to see some girl and feel like you’ll die if you don’t get her. If she rejects you, move on to the next one. It’s her loss.

Even as excerpted, I cannot endorse this list unreservedly. For example, when I was young I did get in a few fistfights. I always lost and I cannot imagine what good it did me. But on the whole, the list seems balanced, compassionate and generous.

But it did set me to thinking about the general matter of advice. It’s a puzzle. There is, first of all, the matter of the target. We know that the son of Lord Chesterfield, that most famous of all advisers, for all his loving tutelage, ended life as a nonentity and largely a failure. Does anyone ever take advice except that which he wants to hear? Or even understand it? Does anyone ever ask for advice, except when he knows that he will get the advice he wants?

There is also the problem of the adviser. We’ve all heard of radio announcers with Tourettes’ Syndrome, who can’t speak in sentences unless we are on the air. We know that Machiavelli, the grand master of political advise, was an unemployed second-tier civil servant seeking (unsuccessfully) after a new job. Is there any connection at all between the character of advice-givers and the advice they give—and is so, is it perhaps negative, as in “don’t do as I do, do as I say”--? Could it be that the guy from Craigs’ List makes a habit of picking on the weak and antagonizing the strong, and running away from fistfights at every chance?

For more on this line, perhaps the best source of all is Samuel Johnson in an essay for The Rambler, for January 15, 1751 (link). Consider, inter alia:

Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious. But for the same reason everyone is eager to instruct his neighbours. To be wise or to be virtuous is to buy dignity and importance at a high price; but when nothing is necessary to elevation but detection of the follies or faults of others, no man is so insensible to the voice of fame as to linger on the ground. . . . Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without very accurate inquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes at our expense, and assumes authority over us without our permission; for many would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.

Or at last, from the guy on Craigslist:

Remember, 97% of all advice is worthless. Take what you can use, and trash the rest.

In Which I Get One Up on Socrates

I remember noticing when I had outlived Keats (26) Shelley (29), Charlie Parker (34), Mozart (35), Byron (36), Pascal (39), Shakespeare (52)—even Thomas Chatterton (17).

Now I have outlived Socrates (70): I turn 71 today The computer programmers would remind me that I am now in my seventy-second year, having started at t=0. The mathematicians would say that t→n. I’m closing on Goethe (83), Sophocles (90) and Irving Berlin (101).

Socrates, readying himself to to drink the hemlock at 70, said it didn’t matter all that much because he was going to die soon anyway. I don’t share his cheerful insouciance, but I must say that so far I have had almost unspeakable good luck. I have dodged almost every important bullet on the health front (so far). I’ve got a nice wife who treats me with indulgence. I’m proud of my kids and delighted by my grandchildren. I’ve got interesting work to do, when I do it—indeed, I had better shut up now, lest I tempt fate.

I’m not at all disposed to give a final accounting just yet, but if pressed, I suppose I could draw up a trial balance. In the church of my childhood, we used to say: we have done the things we ought not to have done, and we have left undone the things we ought to have done. Guilty on all counts, your honor, at least in a general way. We Presbyterians didn’t fancy being too specific about our sins, and I’d just as well not make an allocution. I don’t think I have committed any major crimes in life, unless you count being one of those rich Americans (or unless you count being male).

I surely have committed any number of acts of unkindness or inconsideration, and when the blood sugar is down at three o’clock in the morning, I can actually make myself pretty blue over some Dumb Thing I did to somebody 30 years ago. I usually remind myself that it’s past caring now: the victim has probably long since closed the books on the matter, writing me off as a clown or a jerk. If I met them again and tried to apologize today, they’d probably try to run away (“Waiter! Check, please!”—or perhaps worse, “Security!”).

I suspect my main concern is that St. Peter, scrutinizing his clipboard, will say “I just don’t see anything very interesting in your resumé” Well, St. Peter can take his time—maybe it will look better later. Meanwhile I will abide by the insight of the guy in the Larry Block novel—the one who said that “any day above ground is a good day.” And, from the Oxford Book of Ages, a few comparisons for item #71:

A man who has settled his opinions does not love to have the tranquillity of his convictions disturbed; and at seventy-one it is time to be in earnest.

--Samuel Johnson,
A Journey to the Western Islands (1773)

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not, but I am getting old and soon I shall remember only the latter.

--Mark Twain (of course), letter to A.B. Paine

[I wonder what the neighbors thought of this next one:]

You think it horrible that Lust and Rage
Should dance attendance upon my old age.
They were not such a plague when I was young.
What else have I to spur me into song?

--W.B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley,December 1936

[And surely the best possible epigraph for 71:]

In July, when I bury my nose in a hazel bush, I feel fifteen years old again. It’s good! It smells of love!

--Corot, still feeling the compulsion
to go into the country and paint, 1867

--All the above from the Oxford Book of Ages
Chosen by Anthony and Sally Sampson (1985)

Samuel Johnson on the Madness of Kit Smart

All this talk about Edith Sitwell set me to remembering:

Concerning this unfortunate poet, Christopher Smart, who was confined in a madhouse, he had, at another time, the following conversation with Dr. Burney.—Burney: How does poor Smart do, Sir; is he likely to recover?” Johnson: “It seems as is his mind had ceased to struggle with the disease; for he grows fat upon it. Burney: “Perhaps, Sir, that may be from want of exercise.” Johnson: “No Sir; he has partly as much exercise as he used to have, for he digs in the garden. Indeed, before his confinement, he used for exercise to walk to the ale-house; but he was carried back again. I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him; and I’d as life lief pray with Kit Smart as anyone else. Another charge was, that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it.”--

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LLD