Search

FEW OF Johnson's early biographers have been so unjustifiably neglected by twentieth-century Johnsonians as Robert Anderson. Most of the lesser writers are far better known. G. B. Hill long ago made available some of the pre-18oo memoirists in his Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897); all the minor lives that appeared before Boswell have recently been collected for the first time; and even some of the nineteenth-century annotations to Boswell are preserved in the Hill-Powell edition of the Life.' Scholarly attention to the growth of Johnsonian biography has focused principally on the three major lives or memoirs by his contemporaries (Mrs. Thrale, Hawkins, and Boswell) and to a lesser degree on a few of the more available minor biographies, like that of Arthur Murphy. But in this century, only one scholar, Allen T. Hazen, has recognized the value of Anderson's important third edition of 1815.2 It is not hard to see why no special study has ever been made of his numerous literary biographies or of his critical method, for his writings are scarce. The disparaging comment in the DNB on his Life of Johnson, that it "has no special value," like most evaluations of Anderson, is not based on a thorough consideration of his achievement as a biographer or an extensive knowledge of other early lives of Johnson.3 For his credentials as a literary historian are too impressive to be ignored. His collection of The Works of the British Poets: With Prefaces, Biographical and Critical is one of the three major eighteenthand early nineteenth-century anthologies of English poetry. This ambitious work is far more comprehensive in its treatment of earlier literature than its two better-known competitors, the compilations of Johnson and Alexander Chalmers. His Life of Johnson, moreover, afterward printed separately from the poetical collections where it originally appeared, is in its final expanded form both an important source of biographical material and the first full-length critical study of Johnson. Anderson's Works of the British Poets was published in thirteen vol

The possibility of a literary or personal relationship between Johnson and Jeremy Bentham has gone unnoticed by students of Johnson. So far as we know, they were together on just one occasion, but we have no details of an actual meeting. None of Johnson's contemporary biographers ever speculated on the likelihood of any acquaintance between them. Not until the appearance of the first life of Bentham, by his friend and literary executor John Bowring, did anybody make a suggestion of their association. The circumstances are in

(On 1 June 1970, Fredson Bowers received a D.Litt. from Brown Univ. The following excerpts from his commencement address to the graduate school explore some of the central issues now facing the MLA. The parts of the speech omitted deal with the history and present state of the movement for a Doctor of Arts degree.)

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.”

THE SUBJECT OF PATRONAGE tantalized the intelectual community in eighteenth-century England. The primary definition of patron in Johnson's Dictionary is "one who countenances, supports, or protects," and of patronage, "support, protection." Support and protection, and their corollaries, economic aid or dependency and obligation to a benefactor, suggest why the parent term, patronage, attracted so much attention. The need for pecuniary advancement and feelings of indebtedness are deeply imprinted upon the consciousness of all persons whose individual wealth is insufficient for their needs, and who must rely upon the generosity of others and their own wits for their livelihood. There is always a subtle balance between success and merit and, historically, the support of a patron has frequently been interpreted pejoratively, as an unfair external influence responsible, in whole or in part, for the success of a person whose merit is slight. Patronage, in other words, can sometimes involve favoritism, nepotism, special favors, and even moral scandal. And, since it exists today in many varieties and guises, the topic continues to fascinate, for by its very nature it tends to cause debates about merit, artistic and intellectual ability, and possible malfeasance, especially in the public sector. The unique patron-client relationship, whether in the arts, the university, government, or business, raises interesting questions about the social utility and psychology of patronage. Is the patronage system, for example, beneficial to the literary climate in a given century? Does the psychology of the patron-client association damage or advance the creative arts? Are patron and client satisfied with the patronage system? Are they getting what they want-economically and intellectually-out of the system? Although it will not be possible to answer these questions in such a short space as this