Consolation in the Face of Death (Penguin) Read online

  Samuel Johnson

  1709–1784

  Samuel Johnson

  Consolation in the Face of Death

  PENGUIN BOOKS — GREAT IDEAS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  ‘The State of Affairs in Lilliput’ and ‘On Gay’s Epitaph’ first published in 1738

  ‘A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage’ first published in 1739

  ‘An Essay on Epitaphs’ first published in 1740

  ‘The Vision of Theodore, the Hermit of Teneriffe’ first published in 1748

  ‘On Theory and Practice’ first published in The Rambler No. 14 in 1750

  ‘The Benefits of Human Society’ first published in The Adventurer no. 67 in 1753

  ‘The Role of the Scholar’ first published in The Adventurer no. 85 in 1753

  ‘Observations on the present State of Affairs’ first published in 1756

  ‘Of the Duty of a Journalist’ first published in 1758

  ‘The Vultures’ View of Man’ first published in The Idler no. 22 (original numbering) in 1758

  ‘Debtors’ Prisons (I)’ first published in The Idler no. 22 (revised numbering) in 1758

  ‘Consolation in the Face of Death’ first published in The Idler no. 41 in 1759

  ‘The Nature of a Critic’ first published in The Idler no. 60 in 1759

  ‘European Oppression in America’ first published in The Idler no. 81 in 1759

  This selection first published in Penguin Books 2009

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  ISBN: 978-0-14-195654-1

  Contents

  The State of Affairs in Lilliput

  On Gay’s Epitaph

  A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage

  An Essay on Epitaphs

  The Vision of Theodore, the Hermit of Teneriffe

  On Theory and Practice

  The Benefits of Human Society

  The Role of the Scholar

  Observations on the present State of Affairs (1756)

  Of the Duty of a Journalist

  The Vultures’ View of Man

  Debtors’ Prisons (1)

  Consolation in the Face of Death

  The Nature of a Critic

  European Oppression in America

  The State of Affairs in Lilliput

  The public several years ago received a great deal of entertainment and instruction from Capt. Gulliver’s elaborate and curious account of the newly discovered empire of Lilliput; a relation which (however rejected at its first appearance by some as incredible, and criticized by others as partial or ostentatious) has, with the success almost always attendant on probity and truth, triumphed over all opposition, gained belief from the most obstinate incredulity and established a reputation in the world which can fear no dimunition, nor admit of any increase.

  It is much to be regretted that the ingenious traveller was diverted from his design of completing a full and accurate description of that unknown country, by bringing down its history from the earliest ages, explaining the laws and customs of the inhabitants, and delineating the works of art and productions of nature peculiar to that soil and people. Happy had it been for mankind had so noble and instructive a subject been cultivated and adorned by the genius of LEMUEL GULLIVER, a genius equally sublime and extensive, acute and sagacious, worthy to display the policy of the most refined, and celebrate the achievements of the most warlike nation. Then might the legislators of Lilliput have been produced as rivals in fame to Numa or Lycurgus; and its heroes have shone with no less lustre than Cadmus and Theseus.

  Felix tanto argumento ingenium, felix tanto ingenio argumentum! [‘Happy is the intellect to which so great a subject is presented; happy is the subject to which so great an intellect is brought.’]

  But as the hope conceived by the public of seeing this immense undertaking successfully completed has been frustrated by indolence, business, or perhaps by the unexpected stroke of sudden death, we doubt not but our readers will be much pleased with an appendix to Capt. Gulliver’s account, which we received last month, and which the late resolution of the House of Commons, whereby we are forbidden to insert any account of the proceedings of the British Parliament, gives us an opportunity of communicating in their room.

  Some years after the publication of Capt. Gulliver’s discoveries, in the midst of the clamour raised against them by ignorance, misapprehension, and malice, a grandson of the Captain’s, fired with resentment at the indignities offered to his ancestor’s character by men who, without the least regard to his celebrated veracity, dared to charge his relation with no less than premeditated, deliberate falsehood, resolved, as the most effectual method of vindicating his memory, to undertake a voyage to Lilliput, that he might be able at his return to confirm his grandfather’s reports by ocular testimony, and forever silence those aspersions, which were, in his opinion, founded on nothing but extreme ignorance of both geography and human nature.

  This voyage, by the assistance of some charts and observations which he found amongst his grandfather’s papers, he successfully performed in the ship named the Confidence, and met, upon his discovering his name and family, with such a reception at the court of Lilliput as sufficiently showed that the memory of the Man-Mountain was far from being obliterated among them; and that time had in Lilliput the effect which it is observed to have on our side of the globe, of preserving and increasing a reputation built on great and illustrious actions, and of dissipating the whispers of malice and calumnies of faction. The accusations brought against the Captain by his enemies were cleared up, or forgot; and the grandson, at his arrival, found the preservation of Mildendo from the flames, and the conquest of the formidable navy of Blefuscu, the subject of epic poems, and annual orations, the old man’s constant topic of discourse, and the example by which their youth were animated to fidelity, presence of mind, and military prowess.

  The hospitable and generous reception he found in the country gave him opportunities of informing himself more fully of the state of that part of the world; for which he came prepared by his grandfather’s conversation, and a tolerable knowle
dge of the Lilliputian tongue, attained by the help of a grammar and a vocabulary, which, with other writings in that language, Captain Gulliver had left behind him.

  Enabled by these concurrent advantages to make a speedy progress in his enquiries, he returned at the end of three years, not with a cargo of gold or silk or diamonds, but with histories, memoirs, tracts, speeches, treaties, debates, letters and instructions, which will be a sufficient compensation to mankind for the loss they have sustained by the negligence or untimely death of Captain Gulliver; and established a correspondence between Lilliput and the English colonies in the East-Indies, by which all the valuable writings published there, and all historical and political novelties, are to be annually transmitted to him.

  This gentleman, notwithstanding that veneration for his grandfather which engaged him to take so long and tedious a voyage, upon no other motive than a desire of obliging the world to do justice to his character, has given the highest testimonies that truth is yet dearer to him than the reputation of his family, and that no mistaken piety can prevail upon him to palliate the mistakes, or conceal the errors which were the necessary effects of Capt. Gulliver’s short stay, difficult situation, formidable appearance, and perplexed affairs.

  The ready access to the great men of Lilliput, and familiarity with the Emperor himself, which the traditional regard paid to his grandfather’s merit procured him, rendered it easy for him to make greater discoveries in three days than Capt. Gulliver had been able to do during his whole stay. He was particularly surprised in his first conference with the Emperor, to hear him mention many states and empires beside those of Lilliput and Blefuscu; and, upon observing that in his grandfather’s account no other nations are taken notice of, he was told with great condescension by his Majesty that there had been lately discovered, in an old repository of archives, an edict of those times absolutely forbidding, under the pain and penalty of death, any person or persons to give the Man-Mountain the least information relating to the state of any other country; lest his ambition might prompt him to seize upon some defenceless part, either of his Lilliputian majesty’s dominions, or of some weak prince, or petty state, and to erect an absolute dominion, which might in time perhaps become formidable to the state of Lilliput itself. ‘Nor do I believe’, said his Majesty, ‘that your ancestor would have heard the name of Blefuscu, had not the necessities of state obliged the court unwillingly to discover it; and even in that emergence of affairs, they gave him so imperfect an account that he has represented Blefuscu as an island; whereas it is a very large empire on the continent, confining on other empires, kingdoms, and states, of which I’ll order my geographer to communicate to you an accurate description.’

  He had immediately recourse to the royal professor of geography, and found upon inspection that the maps of Lilliput and Blefuscu, and the neighbouring islands, kingdoms, and empires, were a perfect epitome of the map of Europe, and that these petty regions, with their dependencies, constitute a resemblance or compendium of our great world, just as the model of a building contains all the parts in the same disposition as the principal design.

  This observation engaged him closely to his geographical studies, and the farther he advanced, the more he was convinced of the justness of the notion he had conceived of a world in miniature, inhabited by this pigmy race. In it he found all the four parts of our earth represented by correspondent countries, excepting that the Lilliputian world is not spherical, but must be considered as bearing the form which the ancients attributed to our own. Neither need I acquaint the mathematical readers that, being enlightened by our sun, it does not admit of any diversity of zones or climates, but bears an exact analogy to our earth in its lands and seas, chains of mountains, tracts of deserts, and diversity of nations.

  The people of Degulia, or the Lilliputian Europe, which name is derived from DEGUL, illustrious (a word now obsolete, and known only to antiquaries and etymologists), are, above those of the other parts of the world, famous for arts, arms, and navigation, and, in consequence of this superiority, have made conquests and settled colonies in very distant regions, the inhabitants of which they look upon as barbarous, though in simplicity of manners, probity, and temperance superior to themselves; and seem to think that they have a right to treat them as passion, interest, or caprice shall direct, without much regard to the rules of justice or humanity; they have carried this imaginary sovereignty so far that they have sometimes proceeded to rapine, bloodshed, and desolation. If you endeavour to examine the foundation of this authority, they neither produce any grant from a superior jurisdiction, nor plead the consent of the people whom they govern in this tyrannical manner; but either threaten you with punishment for abridging the Emperor’s sovereignty, or pity your stupidity, or tell you in positive terms that Power is right. Some indeed pretend to a grant from a pontiff, to whom, as they happen to be inclined, they sometimes pay an absolute submission, and as often deny common respect; but this grant is not worth examination, the pontiff from whom it is derived being equally at a loss to fix his own authority upon any solid ground; so that at best the Degulians’ claim to these settlements is like the Mahometan world, which rests upon an elephant, which is supported by a stone, which is supported by nothing.

  It is observable that their conquests and acquisitions in Columbia (which is the Lilliputian name for the country that answers our America) have very little contributed to the power of those nations which have, to obtain them, broke through all the ties of human nature. They have indeed added extent to their territories, and procured new titles for their princes, but at the same time have exhausted their mother country of its inhabitants, and subjected themselves to a thousand insults, by possessing vast tracts of land, which are too spacious to be constantly garrisoned, and too remote to be occasionally and duly supplied.

  Even Iberia, a country at the southwest point of Degulia, whose inhabitants were the first discoverers of Columbia, though she boasts herself mistress of the richest and most fertile part of that quarter of the world, which she secured to herself by the most dreadful massacres and devastations, has not yet, in all the gold she has imported, received an equivalent for the numbers of her natives sent out to people those kingdoms her sword has wasted; so that the whole advantage of her mighty conquests is bulk without strength, and pride without power.

  It must be observed to the honour of the Lilliputians, who have in all ages been famous for their politics, that they have the art of civilizing their remote dominions without doing much injury to their native country; for when any of their people have forfeited the rights of society, by robberies, seditions, or any other crimes which make it not safe to suffer them to live, and yet are esteemed scarce heinous enough to be punished with death, they send them to some distant colony for a certain number of years proportionate to their crimes. Of these Mr Gulliver, during his stay, saw ten thousand conveyed from the prisons of Mildendo in close lighters to ships that lay at anchor in the river to carry them to Columbia, where they were disposed among the inhabitants, undoubtedly very much to the propagation of knowledge and virtue, and no less to the honour of their native country.

  Another inconvenience of these new claims is that they are a constant source of discord and debate among the Degulian powers, some of which are perpetually disputing their titles to countries which neither has a right to, and which sometimes are defended by the natives against both. There not long since arose a quarrel of this kind between the Lilliputians and Iberians, who contested the limits of their Columbian (or American) acquisitions. The Lilliputians, contrary to the ancient genius of that martial people, made very liberal concessions, such as rather drew upon them the imputation of cowardice than procured them the praise of moderation; but the Iberians, insatiable in their ambition, resolved to insist on nothing less than the absolute uninterrupted possession of that whole quarter of the world. In pursuance of this resolution they seized, upon various pretences, all the Lilliputian shipping that ventured or were drove near thei
r shores in the Columbian seas, confiscated their lading, and imprisoned, tortured, and starved their seamen. The Lilliputians were patient under all these insults for a long time, but being at length awakened by frequent injuries were making, at Mr Gulliver’s departure, preparations for war; the event of which is not yet come to his knowledge.

  Our author, having satisfied his curiosity with regard to the geography of this petty world, began to enquire more nearly into the constitution and laws of Lilliput. But how great was his surprise when he found it so nearly to resemble our own! The executive power being lodged wholly in the Emperor; as the legislative is in the Emperor, the House of Hurgoes, or Lords, whose honours and privileges are hereditary, and the House of Clinabs, or Commons, representatives elect of the body of the people, whose assemblies are continued by several sessions and adjournments or prorogations, for the space of seven moons, after which their authority determines, and writs are issued for new elections.

  Mr Gulliver, astonished at this wonderful conformity between the constitution of England and Lilliput, consulted Flibo Quibus, the royal historiographer, upon that subject, who gave him the following account:

  ’Tis now, according to the best chronologers, more than 392 moons since the arrival of your illustrious ancestor Quinbus Flestrin, or the Man-Mountain, upon the confines of Lilliput, where he performed those achievements still recorded in our histories, and celebrated by our poets; but alas! he was at last disgraced and banished by the effects of the most undeserved calumny and malice.

  After his departure, the people, who had been irritated against him by false reports, finding the same evil measures that were imputed to his advice still pursued, and all the calamities still subsisting which had been described as the effects of his stay amongst them, were on the sudden not only convinced of his innocence, but so exasperated against his enemies, by the remembrance of his wisdom, clemency, and valour, that they surrounded the royal palace, and demanded the heads of the Man-Mountain’s accusers. The ministers, according to custom, ran for shelter to the royal authority; but far from appeasing the people by that artifice, they involved their master in the common destruction.