this helmet, which is able to wave its plume. Enlightened readers did not suppose
that such events took place even in Latin latitudes, but their universe was short of
miracles. The fantasy ofThe Castle of Otranto created a vogue for camp thrillers in
which nobles drug and rape beautiful wards in the bowels of their mountain fast-
nesses, and statues bleed from the nose. The queen of Gothic,Mrs Radcliffe
(1764–1823), is restrained: when in The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) the heroine asks
Montoni why he keeps her prisoner, he replies ‘because it is my will’ – a horrid reply
in an Age of Reason. The oriental Vathek (1786) of William Beckford, written in
French, is a perverse fantasy, as is The Monk(1796), a ‘shocker’ by Matthew Lewis.
Heir to a fortune, Beckford built himself a huge Gothic tower, Fonthill ‘Abbey’,
enclosing its park with a high wall. For all its curiosity value, the literary merit of
18th-century Gothic fiction is negligible compared with the use made of Gothic in
the 19th-century novel.
nThe Age of Johnson
Dr Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson(1709–1784) dominated the world of letters for thirty years. The
Johnson of James Boswell’s sound-bites, the conversationalist who felled opponents
with a sentence, was real enough. But Boswell’s talker was primarily a great writer:
poet, moralist, critic, biographer, editor, essayist, author of a tragedy and a philo-
sophical tale, of political and travel books, and prayers. Unmatched as a judge of
language and literature, he made permanent contributions himself in the
Dictionary, the Preface to Shakespeare and the Lives of the Poe ts.These wer e part of a
ge neral expansion of knowledge, the most public symbol of which was Captain
Cook’s South Sea voyages with the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks. Savants wrote for
ge neral readers in a clear prose, none more lucidly than the philosophers Bishop
Berkeley (1685–1753) and David Hume (1711–1776). A summary retrospect on
English from 1760 to 1798 shows non-fictional prose taking the centre ground.
Poetry withdrew, the novel wilted, but the decline of drama was halted by Goldsmith
and Sheridan.Yet between 1770 and 1791 appeared the works of Johnson, Gibbon,
Smith, Burney and Boswell listed on page 212.
Johnson, a raw-boned uncouth provincial, short-sighted, pockmarked and
melancholy, became the centre of polite letters. Members of Johnson’s Literary Club
included the writers Goldsmith and Boswell, the statesmen C. J. Fox and Burke,
Sheridan the dramatist, Gibbon the historian, Reynolds the painter, Charles Burney
the musician, Joseph Banks the naturalist, Adam Smith the philosopher and econo-
mist,and William Jones the orientalist. Another member was Johnson’s former pupil
the actor David Garrick, with whom Johnson had walked to London when his little
school failed in 1737.
Johnson’s centrality is not an illusion caused by Boswell’s version of his last
twenty-one years. The solar system looks the same in earlier accounts of Johnson by
Sir John Hawkins, Mrs Thrale and Fanny Burney. Most 18th-century writers were
men, often unmarried men, but the widower Johnson had many women friends,
including the blue-stocking Elizabeth Montagu, and Charlotte Lennox, for whom he
wrote a Preface. Johnson’s wholehearted character attracted people who, like
Boswell, were put off by his appearance and manner. He was markedly humane,
THE AGE OF JOHNSON 211Samuel Johnson
(1709–1784) The son of an
elderly Lichfield bookseller,
whose stock he read, Johnson
went up to Oxford, thanks to a
family friend; but the money
ran out after four terms, and
he left. Marrying a widow
much older than himself, he
started a school, where his
convulsive mannerisms were a
gift to his pupil David Garrick.
In London he lived by his pen,
turning his hand to anything.
He wrote up from memory the
Parliamentary Debates for The
Gentleman’s Magazine(a task
for which Dickens later used
shorthand). The Grub Street
life is recorded in his Life of
Mr Richard Savage, a poet
with whom Johnson walked
the streets when they had
nowhere to sleep. After the
Dictionary(1755) he edited
Shakespeare and wrote the
Lives of the Poets, and A
Journey to the Western
Islands of Scotland (1775).
Prayers and Meditationswas
published in 1785.