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anghraineIn Mansfield Park, Austen makes a reference to "Dr Johnson's celebrated judgment."
Samuel Johnson is the man she's talking about, who I think is most lastingly remembered as The Dictionary Guy. He spent seven years compiling A Dictionary of the English Language, which was commissioned due to the general shittiness of English dictionaries up to that point. To make matters worse, while the £1,575 he made from it was a ton of money for the time (1747-1755), it wasn't actually enough to cover the expenses of the materials, the assistants, and his own household. So he had to keep writing while working on this massive project.
A friend actually pointed out that the standardized French dictionary had taken forty years to create, with forty people working on it. Johnson basically shrugged and went "lol, the French, amirite?" He actually boasted that he could do it in just three years, though it took seven in the end. It's still one of the greatest works of scholarship in the history of English—it was the ultimate English dictionary until the OED.
In the meanwhile he wrote a play, Irene, helped by his bff David Garrick, former pupil and current theatre superstar. It wasn't terribly successful, but he made money off of it, which was ... well, he was very much of the Terry Pratchett line of thought on writing. More precisely, he said that "no man but a blockhead" would write for any reason but to make a living.
...
Well, he got what he wanted out of it, anyway. He also wrote this poem called "The Vanity of Human Wishes." Coming out of a Chaucer class, I figured it'd be about how people always ask for the wrong things, and don't recognize the right ones (think "Unanswered Prayers," lol—the concept goes back a long way). It's ... well, vaguely about that, but on a far more existential level.
Johnson's fixation was actually on the pursuit of happiness, and—in his view—how utterly futile it is, because in the words of the great poet George Lucas, Sith Happens. No matter who you are or what path you follow, shit's always going to go down at some point. So the vanity of wishes here is less "people don't understand what would actually make them happy," and more "people don't understand that nothing will actually make them happy."
Upbeat guy, Johnson.
So the poem comes down to "people suck, and life sucks." He starts by arguing that this is everywhere, not just their shitty patch of England, because everything that seems good comes with a price tag attached. Courage? Sucks. Eloquence? Sucks. People who get carried away by courage get themselves killed. People who get carried away by their own genius get themselves impeached. And regardless, everyone falls prey to avarice. They're all susceptible to money. Crime? Comes down to money. Legal corruption? Money. It can't buy truth, or security, or anything morally good, and instead "the dangers gather as the treasures rise." If you want to make someone more miserable than they already are, just give them money, so that then they can be paranoid about losing it and stalked by criminals.
'Kay.
He goes into the usual mourning about These Degenerate Times, rhapsodizing about ye olde paradise where people didn't care about money, or grovelling, or pointless pomp, or "where change of favourite made no change of laws" (ouch) and cases were judged fairly on evidence and not decided ahead of time, and so on. Ye olde paradise is ancient Greece, by the way, which ... okay.
Next target of misery: CORRUPTION. CORRUPTION EVERYWHERE. But eighteenth century Britain was ... yeah, I can't argue there. So he goes into a ton of detail about how people can rise to power and receive wealth and favour and authority, but one misstep or miso and it comes crumbling down. Like Cardinal Wolsey. And the Duke of Buckingham (assassinated). And the Earl of Oxford (impeached and imprisoned). And the Earl of Strafford (impeached and executed). And the Earl of Clarendon (impeached and fled). All but Wolsey are seventeenth century—he's flooding his audience with examples they'd know, all stuff from the last century.
So maybe you think that if you go into academia it'll be better?
NAH. (With him on that one, too. *stares into the abyss*)
He does praise scholars for abandoning easier lives, and encourages them to find truth and Science!!!! through virtue. Then he goes into how everything can go wrong. Maybe you'll develop bad habits through people being vaguely nice. Maybe you'll get complacent through flattery. Or resigned through too much difficulty. Or distracted by novelty, or you'll just get lazy, or distracted by hot women—you never know! Also you might fall ill of 1) a terrible disease or 2) depression.
Stop talking to me, Dr Johnson.
So yeah, don't think you're going to get free of misery by fleeing into the ivory tower, and remember to get your head out of the clouds now and then—which he puts rather beautifully with "Pause a while from letters, to be wise."
Other problems! You have to work hard, there's always going to be envy of other scholars (GODDAMMIT), you're always going to be struggling for the things you need/want because you're not paid worth shit, you've got to suck up togrant committees patrons, and also if your scholarship is too controversial you might get thrown in jail, like Galileo! Or closer to home, Lydiat, a scholar at Oxford who was ruined by being a Royalist during the Civil War and died in poverty. And people will only appreciate you after you're dead, and like it helps you to have a nice bust years after your death if you're poor and unappreciated when you're alive.
Also, even if you make it to the very top professionally, shit can still happen. Like, people will grovel to you, which itself is not great, but also means nothing. Like William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was resolutely High Church and therefore kinda almost Catholic—so he was executed. NOBODY'S SAFE!!!
Here, Johnson, have a cat gif:
SO THEN
Johnson: ok, so you might think glory in war is the answer
me: no?
But then he goes into how Alexander the Great won glory, and hey, Britain's doing pretty good rn (*shudder*), but also conquest sucks too. You do it for glory and then your descendants pay the price to maintain the unsustainable state you built, or lose it, and maybe you lose it yourself like Charles of Sweden vs Russia. He wouldn't stop at his early victories, lost everything, and then got killed ignominiously by God knows who. And so what glory does he have in the end? Well:
He left the name at which the world grew pale,/To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
That was way harsh, Johnson.
He gives some more examples (Xerxes of Persia vs Greece, Charles Albert vs Maria Theresa) and then moves onto the nextgood awful thing.
People are dumbasses and beg to live long lives. And like??? You lose joy in the things you used to love as you get old and tired and take nice things for granted, you lecture people but are either boring or just wrong. You tell the same dull old stories and jokes, which just confuses the grovelling relations and friends gathered. Of course, they're just there to try and get included in the will, and they trash talk each other and work on your temper in hopes of getting a larger share. And you're sick and arthritic and either worried about your debts or an obsessed miser. Whee!
But suppose you age more gracefully, and have a nice temperate personality, and everyone sincerely loves you. What then?
Well, then you get fun things like news that your sister is dying, and other people you love die. The world changes, and you're straggling on, superfluous in the new world. This is also put beautifully:
Now kindred Merit fills the sable bier,
Now lacerated Friendship claims a tear;
Year chases year, decay pursues decay.
And anyway, it's not like that for most people. Terrible reversals of fate can befall you up to the very end. Or these towering, brilliant figures like Jonathan Swift and John, Duke of Marlborough (military genius during the Spanish succession) descend into terrible, degrading senility.
Okay, but this has been very focused on dudes. Mothers wish for beautiful daughters, doesn't that make for a good life?
LOL no. Royal mistresses get a shit lot. Beautiful ladies' lives are filled with busy vacuous pleasures that leave no time for actual wisdom, they get attacked by rivals and seduced by douchey men, and then their reputations are ruined.
(This is honestly the weak part—not just the whiffs of misogyny, but after dedicating pages upon pages to copious detail about how every conceivable alternative involves suffering, this is a handful of lines that ignore the possibility of any other fate.)
So finally, he reaches his conclusion, and is like... should we all just give up hope, then? Never dare wish for anything, pray for anything, feel anything?
Not at all, actually!
And here he does touch on "people don't understand what they should wish for in order to reach something approximating happiness." His idea of what people should wish for?
- Mental stability
- Emotional restraint
- Acceptance
- Love (which has room for all humanity)
- Patience with changes for the worse
- Faith in a happier afterlife as death approaches
Hm.
And while the hunger for perfect happiness that ruins people's lives isn't achievable, with those qualities you can gain a measure of peace, and carve out some sort of contentment in life.
Well, that's a cheerful resolution for Johnson.
Samuel Johnson is the man she's talking about, who I think is most lastingly remembered as The Dictionary Guy. He spent seven years compiling A Dictionary of the English Language, which was commissioned due to the general shittiness of English dictionaries up to that point. To make matters worse, while the £1,575 he made from it was a ton of money for the time (1747-1755), it wasn't actually enough to cover the expenses of the materials, the assistants, and his own household. So he had to keep writing while working on this massive project.
A friend actually pointed out that the standardized French dictionary had taken forty years to create, with forty people working on it. Johnson basically shrugged and went "lol, the French, amirite?" He actually boasted that he could do it in just three years, though it took seven in the end. It's still one of the greatest works of scholarship in the history of English—it was the ultimate English dictionary until the OED.
In the meanwhile he wrote a play, Irene, helped by his bff David Garrick, former pupil and current theatre superstar. It wasn't terribly successful, but he made money off of it, which was ... well, he was very much of the Terry Pratchett line of thought on writing. More precisely, he said that "no man but a blockhead" would write for any reason but to make a living.
...
Well, he got what he wanted out of it, anyway. He also wrote this poem called "The Vanity of Human Wishes." Coming out of a Chaucer class, I figured it'd be about how people always ask for the wrong things, and don't recognize the right ones (think "Unanswered Prayers," lol—the concept goes back a long way). It's ... well, vaguely about that, but on a far more existential level.
Johnson's fixation was actually on the pursuit of happiness, and—in his view—how utterly futile it is, because in the words of the great poet George Lucas, Sith Happens. No matter who you are or what path you follow, shit's always going to go down at some point. So the vanity of wishes here is less "people don't understand what would actually make them happy," and more "people don't understand that nothing will actually make them happy."
Upbeat guy, Johnson.
So the poem comes down to "people suck, and life sucks." He starts by arguing that this is everywhere, not just their shitty patch of England, because everything that seems good comes with a price tag attached. Courage? Sucks. Eloquence? Sucks. People who get carried away by courage get themselves killed. People who get carried away by their own genius get themselves impeached. And regardless, everyone falls prey to avarice. They're all susceptible to money. Crime? Comes down to money. Legal corruption? Money. It can't buy truth, or security, or anything morally good, and instead "the dangers gather as the treasures rise." If you want to make someone more miserable than they already are, just give them money, so that then they can be paranoid about losing it and stalked by criminals.
'Kay.
He goes into the usual mourning about These Degenerate Times, rhapsodizing about ye olde paradise where people didn't care about money, or grovelling, or pointless pomp, or "where change of favourite made no change of laws" (ouch) and cases were judged fairly on evidence and not decided ahead of time, and so on. Ye olde paradise is ancient Greece, by the way, which ... okay.
Next target of misery: CORRUPTION. CORRUPTION EVERYWHERE. But eighteenth century Britain was ... yeah, I can't argue there. So he goes into a ton of detail about how people can rise to power and receive wealth and favour and authority, but one misstep or miso and it comes crumbling down. Like Cardinal Wolsey. And the Duke of Buckingham (assassinated). And the Earl of Oxford (impeached and imprisoned). And the Earl of Strafford (impeached and executed). And the Earl of Clarendon (impeached and fled). All but Wolsey are seventeenth century—he's flooding his audience with examples they'd know, all stuff from the last century.
So maybe you think that if you go into academia it'll be better?
NAH. (With him on that one, too. *stares into the abyss*)
He does praise scholars for abandoning easier lives, and encourages them to find truth and Science!!!! through virtue. Then he goes into how everything can go wrong. Maybe you'll develop bad habits through people being vaguely nice. Maybe you'll get complacent through flattery. Or resigned through too much difficulty. Or distracted by novelty, or you'll just get lazy, or distracted by hot women—you never know! Also you might fall ill of 1) a terrible disease or 2) depression.
So yeah, don't think you're going to get free of misery by fleeing into the ivory tower, and remember to get your head out of the clouds now and then—which he puts rather beautifully with "Pause a while from letters, to be wise."
Other problems! You have to work hard, there's always going to be envy of other scholars (GODDAMMIT), you're always going to be struggling for the things you need/want because you're not paid worth shit, you've got to suck up to
Also, even if you make it to the very top professionally, shit can still happen. Like, people will grovel to you, which itself is not great, but also means nothing. Like William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was resolutely High Church and therefore kinda almost Catholic—so he was executed. NOBODY'S SAFE!!!
Here, Johnson, have a cat gif:
SO THEN
Johnson: ok, so you might think glory in war is the answer
me: no?
But then he goes into how Alexander the Great won glory, and hey, Britain's doing pretty good rn (*shudder*), but also conquest sucks too. You do it for glory and then your descendants pay the price to maintain the unsustainable state you built, or lose it, and maybe you lose it yourself like Charles of Sweden vs Russia. He wouldn't stop at his early victories, lost everything, and then got killed ignominiously by God knows who. And so what glory does he have in the end? Well:
He left the name at which the world grew pale,/To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
That was way harsh, Johnson.
He gives some more examples (Xerxes of Persia vs Greece, Charles Albert vs Maria Theresa) and then moves onto the next
People are dumbasses and beg to live long lives. And like??? You lose joy in the things you used to love as you get old and tired and take nice things for granted, you lecture people but are either boring or just wrong. You tell the same dull old stories and jokes, which just confuses the grovelling relations and friends gathered. Of course, they're just there to try and get included in the will, and they trash talk each other and work on your temper in hopes of getting a larger share. And you're sick and arthritic and either worried about your debts or an obsessed miser. Whee!
But suppose you age more gracefully, and have a nice temperate personality, and everyone sincerely loves you. What then?
Well, then you get fun things like news that your sister is dying, and other people you love die. The world changes, and you're straggling on, superfluous in the new world. This is also put beautifully:
Now kindred Merit fills the sable bier,
Now lacerated Friendship claims a tear;
Year chases year, decay pursues decay.
And anyway, it's not like that for most people. Terrible reversals of fate can befall you up to the very end. Or these towering, brilliant figures like Jonathan Swift and John, Duke of Marlborough (military genius during the Spanish succession) descend into terrible, degrading senility.
Okay, but this has been very focused on dudes. Mothers wish for beautiful daughters, doesn't that make for a good life?
LOL no. Royal mistresses get a shit lot. Beautiful ladies' lives are filled with busy vacuous pleasures that leave no time for actual wisdom, they get attacked by rivals and seduced by douchey men, and then their reputations are ruined.
(This is honestly the weak part—not just the whiffs of misogyny, but after dedicating pages upon pages to copious detail about how every conceivable alternative involves suffering, this is a handful of lines that ignore the possibility of any other fate.)
So finally, he reaches his conclusion, and is like... should we all just give up hope, then? Never dare wish for anything, pray for anything, feel anything?
Not at all, actually!
And here he does touch on "people don't understand what they should wish for in order to reach something approximating happiness." His idea of what people should wish for?
- Mental stability
- Emotional restraint
- Acceptance
- Love (which has room for all humanity)
- Patience with changes for the worse
- Faith in a happier afterlife as death approaches
Hm.
And while the hunger for perfect happiness that ruins people's lives isn't achievable, with those qualities you can gain a measure of peace, and carve out some sort of contentment in life.
Well, that's a cheerful resolution for Johnson.
