Two hundred thirty years ago the English language lost one of its greatest champions.  Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is perhaps best known today for compiling in 1755 a two-volume dictionary of the English language, often incorrectly hailed as the first English dictionary but certainly one of the most important and most amusing.  His definition of a lexicographer:  “A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.”  He was also a prolific essayist, and today he would undoubtedly have a blog, although it would be open only to subscribers, since he believed, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”

Whether we accept his definition of a blockhead, we ought to appreciate that he was a devout Christian, steeped in the majestic cadences of the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer.  Probably for today’s militant atheists, Johnson’s spiritual formation qualifies him to be dismissed as a blockhead, but the prejudices of angry atheists need not detain us.

Worth keeping in mind is the capacious charity of a man who admired virtue wherever he found it, so that this ardent Tory could surprise his more liberal friends by observing, “All denominations of Christians have really little difference in point of doctrine, though they may differ widely in external forms.”

The inner life of such a Christian can speak to the faithful even today.  As his comment about Protestants and Catholics indicates, he took a broad view of the Nicene faith uniting most Christians.  Johnson’s posthumously published Prayers and Meditations (1785) is available in print and electronic formats, and several of his prayers and meditations occur also in James Boswell’s biography of Johnson, first published in 1791 and likely to remain in print long after more recent and more scholarly biographies of Johnson have been forgotten.

Regarding prayer, Johnson said, “To reason philosophically on the nature of prayer was very unprofitable.”  Johnson had read widely and well in the Greek and Latin classics, and he had read nearly all the English poetry written up to his time.  Thus his sense for prose had the benefit of his ear for verse.  Johnson’s religious musings shed light on the intuitive relationship between poetry and prayer, even when prayer takes the form of prose.  Here we sample but three, two formal prayers and one private meditation.

Johnson had attended Oxford, but lack of money kept him from completing his degree.  He then worked briefly as a country schoolmaster, but otherwise he held no academic post.  As one would expect of a voracious reader and indefatigable writer who was also a strong believer, Johnson prayed about his ink-stained, deskbound life.

In 1765 Johnson composed a prayer for his intellectual life:  “Almighty God, the giver of wisdom, without whose help resolutions are in vain, without whose blessings study is ineffectual; enable me, if it be thy will, to attain such knowledge as may qualify me to direct the doubtful, and instruct the ignorant; to prevent wrongs, and terminate contentions; and grant that I may use that knowledge which I shall attain, to thy glory and my own salvation, for Jesus Christ’s sake.  Amen.”

Both on Good Friday and on Holy Saturday, 1772, Boswell stopped in to see Johnson at his big brick house in London and each time, “seeing his large folio Greek Testament before him, beheld him with a reverential awe, and would not intrude upon his time.”  Boswell recorded that while during Easter Johnson was “thus employed to such good purpose” and while his conversation showed “a vigorous intellect and a lively imagination,” nevertheless there was more below the surface.

Years later, Johnson’s friends found among his papers this meditation from that time:  “My mind is unsettled and my memory confused.  I have of late turned my thoughts with a very useless earnestness upon past incidents.  I have yet got no command over my thoughts; an unpleasing incident is almost certain to hinder my rest.”  Boswell expressed dismay that his late friend could “appear with such manly fortitude to the world, while he was inwardly so distressed!”

A day or so before he died, Johnson composed and recited this prayer before receiving Holy Communion:  “Almighty and most merciful Father, I am now as to human eyes it seems, about to commemorate, for the last time, the death of thy Son Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Redeemer.  Grant, O Lord, that my whole hope and confidence may be in repentance; make this commemoration available to the confirmation of my faith, the establishment of my hope, and the enlargement of my charity; and make the death of thy Son Jesus Christ effectual to my redemption.  Have mercy upon me, and pardon the multitude of my offences.  Bless my friends; have mercy upon all men.  Support me, by thy Holy Spirit, in the days of weakness, and at the hour of death; and receive me, at my death, to everlasting happiness, for the sake of Jesus Christ.  Amen.”

Some people today may find such wording old-fashioned to the point of being obsolete.  Moreover, the sense of sinfulness conveyed by Johnson’s balanced clauses may seem as quaint and archaic as the Georgian proportions of Colonial Williamsburg.  Since the old principle is to pray as one can, not as one cannot, then private prayers that leave one cold by seeming pompous and worthless ought to be avoided.

For others, though, his prayers may be just what they long have needed.  Johnson’s prayers will thus nourish someone starving for richer fare and sustain an appetite reared on sturdy steak and ale English prose from around 1600 that makes recent religious and even biblical prose seem as bland as a block of tofu and a bottle of Evian.

 

Daniel J. Heisey, O. S. B, is a Benedictine monk of Saint Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he is known as Brother Bruno.  He teaches Church History at Saint Vincent Seminary.