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The Great Samuel Johnson and His Opposition to Literary Liars Thomas M Bridgewater Review Volume 28 | Issue 2 Article 6 Dec-2009 The Great Samuel Johnson and His Opposition to Literary Liars Thomas M. Curley Bridgewater State College Recommended Citation Curley, Thomas M. (2009). The Great Samuel Johnson and His Opposition to Literary Liars. Bridgewater Review, 28(2), 7-10. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol28/iss2/6 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The Great Samuel Johnson and His Opposition to Literary Liars Thomas M. Curley A close friend said of Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) that When speech is employed as the vehicle of falsehood, “no man had a more scrupulous regard for truth; from every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit which, I verily believe, he would not have deviated to his own cave, and seek prey only for himself.” Because save his life.” No writer angered Johnson more than did we see as through a glass darkly, frauds of any type only James Macpherson (1736–1796) for perpetrating the worsened the already clouded maze of human meaning most successful literary fraud in modern history. with truth-seeming unrealities and consequently weak- Macpherson’s notorious fraud, beginning in the 1760s, ened trust in ourselves and others. involved publishing his own made-up poems as transla- My interest in Johnson the tions of genuine Gaelic writings English truth-teller and in by an ancient Scots bard Macpherson the Scottish known as Ossian. This year literary liar began in gradu- marks the three-hundreth ate school at Harvard anniversary of Johnson’s birth, University and led to some generating celebrations around early articles on the phony the world and warranting here Ossian poems. When many a close look at an episode of years later I turned to prepar- literary lying central to his ing a book for publication by career-long love of truth. My Cambridge University Press, recent book from Cambridge I was surprised to find that University Press, entitled Samuel my youthful scholarship on Johnson, the Ossian Fraud, and the the Ossian fraud had pro- Celtic Revival in Great Britain and voked my own mini-contro- Ireland (2009), offers the fullest versy with revisionist aca- investigation of the hoax to demics bent on rehabilitating date and includes a rare pam- Macpherson’s dubious repu- phlet against the Ossian decep- tation and regarding him as tion written with the assistance an important “creative” au- of Johnson himself. thor for his powerful impact Johnson was possibly the great- on the literature of Europe est writer and the greatest heart and the United States. This in English literature. He was development made me redou- certainly England’s greatest ble my efforts during a decade of field moralist, greatest literary critic, research in archives at England, Scotland, and and greatest dictionary-maker, Ireland funded by CART grants climaxing in a whose Dictionary of the English Language in 1755 was the Presidential Fellowship at Bridgewater State College, in first professional compilation of our vocabulary crucial conjunction with awards from The National to establishing English as the global lingua franca of Endowment for the Humanities. I undertook a compre- modern times. An essential part of his massive achieve- hensive survey of all Ossian scholarship over the past ment was his passion for truth-telling in literature and 250 years and made a painstaking evaluation of all the life. However difficult, however disturbing, the search made-up Ossian poetry that Macpherson falsely for truth was the prime human necessity for a civilized claimed to have translated faithfully into English. I society and became the principal theme of his writings. compared his spurious English work with authentic As he insisted, “There is no crime more infamous than Gaelic verse, in consultation with Gaelic specialists. the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be The result of my inquiries reads like a detective novel in social beings no longer than they believe each other. BRIDGEWATER REVIEW DECEMBER 2009 7 my book, uncovering layer after layer of sheer fabrica- genius and character of the Gaelic poetry.’” Let it be tion. As it turned out, Johnson rightly denounced carefully noted that Home’s recollection of the very Macpherson as an impostor in public, even at the risk beginning of the Ossian fraud revolved around a request of being challenged to a deadly duel on the streets of for faithful English translation of genuine Gaelic litera- London. What follows is the little known story of their ture. It was a demand destined to elicit false assurances EY L famous feud. of its being fulfilled. Seven times in all theOssian publi- cations to come, Fragments of Ancient Poetry of 1760 and With the monumental exception of his Lives of the the epics Fingal as well as Temora Together with Several English Poets, Johnson’s most notable literary undertak- Other Poems in 1762 and M. CUR ing in old age after his edition of 1763, there are hollow AS Shakespeare was debunking professions of having M Macpherson’s hoax. Johnson’s sense of performed literal trans- the falsity of the Ossian works was lation, when in fact correct, despite professions to the con- THO most of the Ossian trary by some modern scholars. Twenty- canon was eight out of Macpherson’s thirty-nine Macpherson’s creation. ARS titles—72 percent of all the individual I That is why Johnson works comprising Ossian—have no wisely called for the apparent grounding in genuine Gaelic Gaelic originals of literature and are therefore entirely his Ossian so that experts own handiwork. The remaining 28 could decipher the TERARY L TERARY percent of the titles have but generally I truth about the made- loose ties to approximately sixteen up version published in Gaelic ballads. Contrary to his asser- English. And he rightly TO L tions, Macpherson was no editor or suspected that no N translator of ancient poetry. He was the substantial Gaelic O I author of new, largely invented literature T counterparts existed. I in violation of true history, legitimate Gaelic studies, and valid national iden- Macpherson’s fabricat- OS tity in Scotland. As Johnson had charged, ing Ossian and then PP Macpherson committed literary calling it true were bad fabrication. S O enough. Equally dis- I creditable was his The public response then and into mod- concocting in 1771 a D H ern times was enthusiastic. Why? N specious history book Readers embraced the Ossianic craze Samuel Johnson in Scotland. A on early Scotland sup- believing that it offered them genuine N porting his literary hoax. antique novelty in an English dress. But Even worse was his contriving a Gaelic Ossian and then SO they were actually indulging in the taste for sentimen- N passing it off as the authentic original of his English talism and historical heroics found in contemporary “translations.” Johnson from the first consideredOssian poems and novels, in the grand style of popular melo- fraudulent and awful poetry. As his renowned biogra- drama, with the solemnity of English Bible rhetoric and pher, James Boswell, noted, “Johnson had all along the epic seriousness of Dryden’s Vergil and Pope’s Homer. denied their authenticity; and, what was still more What was behind the ruse? A logical explanation would provoking to their admirers, maintained they had no be raw ambition firing a Highland lad, somewhat famil- merit….Dr. [Hugh] Blair [the foremost defender of iar with Gaelic, hungry for literary fame and fortune. Ossian] asked Dr. Johnson whether he thought any man Early in October of 1759, with an introduction from the of a modern age could have written such poems? Gaelic-speaking academic, Adam Ferguson, he talked Johnson replied, ‘Yes, Sir, many men, many women, REAT SAMUEL JOH REAT about old Highland poems with John Home, author of a G and many children.’” More noteworthy is a record of controversial play, Douglas. According to Home, “When Johnson’s only face-to-face encounter with Macpherson: Mr. Home desired to see them, Mr. Macpherson asked if Macpherson in 1764 “fell in company with Mr. Johnson, THE he understood Gaelic. ‘Not one word.’ ‘Then how can I who put to him several questions relating to his publica- show you them?’ ‘Very easily,’ said Mr. Home, ‘trans- tions: he answered each of Mr. Johnson’s questions late one of the poems which you think a good one, and I with a short, round assertion; but he got off from the imagine that I shall be able to form some opinion of the subject as soon as he could; & turned the discourse to something else.” Johnson did not let him off the hook. Famous for rock- True to his surly disposition, he commenced a barely solid integrity, Johnson went to Scotland in 1773 partly civil correspondence with Johnson in the expectation of in search of Ossian’s authenticity. He made public his securing a retraction under the implicit threat of harsh well-taken skepticism in his classic travel book, A retribution. The formal language of a challenge to a duel Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland in 1775: “I sup- comes through clearly, with studied coolness. In such a pose my opinion of the poems of Ossian is already dis- mood on 15 January Macpherson directed Strahan in covered. I believe they never existed in any other form writing to mediate a change to less provocative lan- than that which we have seen. [Macpherson] has guage in the Journey by “that impertinent fellow” and doubtless inserted names that circulate in popular enclosed for Johnson’s possible reading a note, in which stories, and may have translated some wandering bal- the following threat appears under a polite guise: “But I lads, if any can be found; and the names, and some of suppose you will agree with me, that such expressions the images being recollected, make an inaccurate audi- ought not be used by one gentleman to another; and tor imagine, by the help of Caledonian bigotry, that he that whenever they are used, they cannot be passed has formerly heard the whole.” This was correct, even over with impunity.
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