character is obscured or obliterated by travel or instruction, by philosophy or vanity; nor
is public happiness to be estimated by the assemblies of the gay, or the banquets of the
rich. The great mass of nations is neither rich nor gay: they whose aggregate constitutes
the people, are found in the streets, and the villages, in the shops and farms: and from
them collectively considered, must the measure of general prosperity be taken.Johnson’s common touch makes ‘Augustanism’ real. The Life is a wonderful
account of a deep and astonishing man, whom we come to know socially as well as
anyone can be known through a book. Boswell’s memory enabled him to recall
lengthy conversations (he took notes afterwards), and re-create scenes, some of
which he had set up. He includes prayers, which correct the bias towards the social.
Boswell’s self-dramatizing and self-revising can be followed in the frank journals in
which for thirty years he recorded his indulgences and unhappiness. His dedication
made up for his vanity, and his reputation as a writer continues to rise.
Boswell did the public relations for David Garrick’s Shakespeare ‘Jubilee’ of 1769
at Stratford: music by Thomas Arne, backdrops by Joshua Reynolds, an Ode by Mr
Garrick, recitations galore and thousands of souvenirs sold. At this ‘event’ the
national poet was first called the Bard, an odd title for a London dramatist neither
pr eliterate nor Welsh.Non-fiction
‘Non-fiction’ is a library classification too drab for the prose of Burke, Gibbon and
Sheridan. History was part of 18th-century literature – both Gray and Warton
became professors of history – and so was oratory: all were branches of rhetoric.
‘Literature’ today hardly considers non-fictional prose, although history can be well
written (as can literary criticism); formal oratory has decayed. The 19th-century
historian Macaulay once described Burke as ‘the greatest man since Milton’. Few
politicians today show signs of having read any of the three.Edward Gibbon
Ideals of style changed in the 18th century also, from Dryden’s ease and Addison’s
polish to Johnson’s range of manner. But the top end became more majestic and
or atorical. Burke and Sheridan begin the age of British parliamentary oratory. But
the prize for memory, composition and learning goes to another member of the
Club,Edward Gibbon (1737–1794). His Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
begins in the golden age of the 2nd-century Antonine emperors. Its end is not the
barbarian invasions nor the restoration and decay of Charlemagne’s western empire
but the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Gibbon read and condensed the materials in
ancient and modern languages for the twelve centuries connecting the ancient with
the modern world, taking in the invasions of the Goths, Persians, Saracens and
Turks, the rise of Christianity and Islam, and the crusades. He combined antiquar-
ian detail with an enlightened moral and philosophical interest in human nature.
An American editor of Gibbon remarks that ‘the English are at their best in the
writing of the spoken word’, quoting Gibbon’s method of composition, which was to
‘cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my
memory, but to suspend the action of the pen ’til I had given the last polish to my
work’. Gibbon is not an essayist fond of epigram: he laid marble paragraph next to
long marble paragraph, and his six volumes are not to be traversed like tarmac. The218 6 · AUGUSTAN LITERATURE: TO 1790