The passage is contained in Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare, which he
wrote to introduce his edition of the works of William Shakespeare in
1765.
Facsimile of the Preface.
Mr. JOHNSON'S
PREFACE
To his EDITION of
Shakespear's Plays.
http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/displayprose.cfm?prosenum=9
"1 THAT praises are without reason lavished on
2 the dead, and that the honours due only to
3 excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint
4 likely to be always continued by those, who, being
5 able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence
6 from the heresies of paradox ; or those, who,
7 being forced by disappointment upon consolatory
8 expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what
9 the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that
10 the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at
11 last bestowed by time.
?2
12 Antiquity, like every other quality that attracts
13 the notice of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries
14 that reverence it, not from reason, but from pre-
15 judice. Some seem to admire indiscriminately what-
16 ever has been long preserved, without considering
17 that time has sometimes co-operated with chance ;
18 all perhaps are more willing to honour past than
19 present excellence ; and the mind contemplates ge-
20 nius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys
21 the sun through artificial opacity. The great con-
22 tention of criticism is to find the faults of the mo-
23 derns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an au-
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24 thour is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst
25 performance, and when he is dead we rate them by
26 his best."
[...]
"58 The reverence due to writings that have long sub-
59 sisted arises therefore not from any credulous confi-
60 dence in the superior wisdom of past ages, or gloomy
61 persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is
62 the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable
63 positions, that what has been longest known has been
64 most considered, and what is most considered is best
65 understood.
?5
66 The Poet, of whose works I have undertaken the
67 revision, may now begin to assume the dignity of an
68 ancient, and claim the privilege of established fame
69 and prescriptive veneration. He has long outlived
70 his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of
71 literary merit. Whatever advantages he might once
72 derive from personal allusions, local customs, or tem-
73 porary opinions, have for many years been lost; and
74 every topick of merriment or motive of sorrow, which
75 the modes of artificial life afforded him, now only ob-
76 scure the scenes which they once illuminated. The ef-
77 fects of favour and competition are at an end ; the
78 tradition of his friendships and his enmities has pe-
79 rished ; his works support no opinion with argu-
80 ments, nor supply any faction with invectives ; they
81 can neither indulge vanity nor gratify malignity, but
82 are read without any other reason than the desire of
83 pleasure, and are therefore praised only as pleasure
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84 is obtained; yet, thus unassisted by interest of pas-
85 sion, they have past through variations of taste and
86 changes of manners, and, as they devolved from
87 one generation to another, have received new honours
88 at every transmission."
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Preface to Shakespeare, by Samuel Johnson
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext04/prfct10.txt
(Excerpted in the Comments and Clarifications.)
The Works of William Shakespeare
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Johnson/Guide/shakes.html
"Johnson first planned to edit the plays of Shakespeare in 1745
<http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Chron/1745.html>, when he
published his Observations on Macbeth as a specimen of the edition he
hoped to produce. For a number of reasons, mostly legal, the edition
was abandoned shortly thereafter. But with the Dictionary complete in
1755 <http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Chron/1755.html>, Johnson
once again turned his attention to Shakespeare. His work was
irregular, but finally appeared in an eight-volume edition in 1765
<http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Chron/1765.html>.
Johnson's Preface to the Shakespeare edition is one of his most famous
pieces of writing, and has long dominated discussions of the entire
edition. It is indeed one of his most interesting works, but a number
of critics (most notably Arthur Sherbo) have reminded readers that
much of what appears in the Preface is thoroughly conventional, and
have insisted that Johnson's really interesting work appears in his
notes."
One might compare the sentiments of the Preface concerning the elapse
of time upon the formation of a sound evaluation of Shakespeare's
worth to the reasons that Johnson enumerated for his new edition of
the plays, among which was obscurity of Shakespeare caused by the
separation of the author from his contemporary context.
PROPOSALS For Printing, by SUBSCRIPTION, The DRAMATICK WORKS of
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
Corrected and Illustrated by SAMUEL JOHNSON
1756
http://hollowaypages.com/Shakespearejohnsonproposals.htm
"When a writer outlives his contemporaries, and remains almost the
only unforgotten name of a distant time, he is necessarily obscure.
Every age has its modes of speech, and its cast of thought; which,
though easily explained when there are many books to be compared with
each other, become sometimes unintelligible, and always difficult,
when there are no parallel passages that may conduce to their
illustration. Shakespeare is the first considerable authour of sublime
or familiar dialogue in our language. Of the books which he read, and
from which he formed his stile, some perhaps have perished, and the
rest are neglected. His imitations are therefore unnoted, his
allusions are undiscovered, and many beauties, both of pleasantry and
greatness, are lost with the objects to which they were united, as the
figures vanish when the canvas has decayed.
It is the great excellence of Shakespeare, that he drew his scenes
from nature, and from life. He copied the manners of the world then
passing before him, and has more allusions than other poets to the
traditions and superstition of the vulgar; which must therefore be
traced before he can be understood.
He wrote at a time when our poetical language was yet unformed, when
the meaning of our phrases was yet in fluctuation, when words were
adopted at pleasure from the neighbouring languages, and while the
Saxon was still visibly mingled in our diction. The reader is
therefore embarrassed at once with dead and with foreign languages,
with obsoleteness and innovation. In that age, as in all others,
fashion produced phraseology, which succeeding fashion swept away
before its meaning was generally known, or sufficiently authorised:
and in that age, above all others, experiments were made upon our
language, which distorted its combinations, and disturbed its
uniformity.
If Shakespeare has difficulties above other writers, it is to be
imputed to the nature of his work, which required the use of the
common colloquial language, and consequently admitted many phrases
allusive, elliptical, and proverbial, such as we speak and hear every
hour without observing them; and of which, being now familiar, we do
not suspect that they can ever grow uncouth, or that, being now
obvious, they can ever seem remote.
These are the principal causes of the obscurity of Shakespeare; to
which may be added that fulness of idea, which might sometimes load
his words with more sentiment than they could conveniently convey, and
that rapidity of imagination which might hurry him to a second thought
before he had fully explained the first. But my opinion is, that very
few of his lines were difficult to his audience, and that he used such
expressions as were then common, though the paucity of contemporary
writers makes them now seem peculiar.
Authours are often praised for improvement, or blamed for innovation,
with very little justice, by those who read few other books of the
same age. Addison himself has been so unsuccessful in enumerating the
words with which Milton has enriched our language, as perhaps not to
have named one of which Milton was the authour: and Bentley has yet
more unhappily praised him as the introducer of those elisions into
English poetry, which had been used from the first essays of
versification among us, and which Milton was indeed the last that
practised."
SEARCH TERMS
Personal recollection of the Preface.
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