o a
comedy with the words--

Pressed with the load of life, the weary mind
Surveys the general toil of human kind.

In the 'Life of Savage' he makes the common remark that the lives of
many of the greatest teachers of mankind have been miserable. The
explanation to which he inclines is that they have not been more
miserable than their neighbours, but that their misery has been more
conspicuous. His melancholy view of life may have been caused simply by
his unfortunate constitution; for everybody sees in the disease of his
own liver a disorder of the universe; but it was also intensified by the
natural reaction of a powerful nature against the fluent optimism of the
time, which expressed itself in Pope's aphorism, Whatever is, is right.
The strongest men of the time revolted against that attempt to cure a
deep-seated disease by a few fine speeches. The form taken by Johnson's
revolt is characteristic. His nature was too tender and too manly to
incline to Swift's misanthropy. Men might be wretched, but he would not
therefore revile them as filthy Yahoos. He was too reverent and cared
too little for abstract thought to share the scepticism of Voltaire. In
this miserable world the one worthy object of ambition is to do one's
duty, and the one consolation deserving the name is to be found in
religion. That Johnson's religious opinions sometimes took the form of
rather grotesque superstition may be true; and it is easy enough to
ridicule some of its manifestations. He took the creed of his day
without much examination of the evidence upon which its dogmas rested;
but a writer must be thoughtless indeed who should be more inclined to
laugh at his superficial oddities, than to admire the reverent spirit
and the brave self-respect with which he struggled through a painful
life. The protest of 'Rasselas' against optimism is therefore widely
different from the protest of Voltaire. The deep and genuine feeling of
the Frenchman is concealed under smart assaults upon the dogmas of
popular theology; the Englishman desires to impress upon us the futility
of all human enjoyments, with a view to deepen the solemnity of our
habitual tone of thought. It is true, indeed, that the evil is dwelt
upon more forcibly than the remedy. The book is all the more impressive.
We are almost appalled by the gloomy strength which sees so forcibly the
misery of the world and rejects so unequivocally all the palliatives of
sentiment and philosoph