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The Biblical Context of Johnson's Rasselas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Thomas R. Preston
Thomas R. Preston*
Affiliation:
Loyola University of the South, New Orleans, Louisiana
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Abstract

In the Life of Johnson, Boswell suggests that Rasselas echoes the vanitas vanitatum theme of Ecclesiastes. Boswell's suggestion is quite discerning, for Rasselas is, in fact, designed to recall both the Preacher's futile quest for perfect happiness and the meaning of that quest as interpreted by a post-Reformation school of commentators on Ecclesiastes. This school includes Bishop Simon Patrick, whose scriptural writings, in conjunction with those of William Lowth, made up the “standard” Augustan commentary on the Old Testament. Rasselas is informed with a complex of images, sentiments, and ideas drawn from Bishop Patrick's paraphrase of and annotations to the Book of Ecclesiastes, and the thematic structure of the apologue follows the thematic structure that the post-Reformation school attributed to Ecclesiastes.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 84 , Issue 2 , March 1969 , pp. 274 - 281
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969

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References

1 James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, rev. L. F. Powell (Oxford, 1934), I, 341–342. George Saintsbury also associates Rasselas with Ecclesiastes in the Peace of the Augustans (London, 1916), p. 190, and the Rev. H. C. Beeching, preaching at the bicentenary of Johnson's birth, entitled his sermon Johnson and Ecclesiastes (London, 1909).

2 Life of Johnson, iv, 301, n. 2.

3 To my knowledge, the only complete discussion of these two schools of interpretation, as well as the rabbinical, is by Christian D. Ginsburg, Coheleth (London, 1861), pp. 1–255.

4 Life of Johnson, in, 58.

5 All quotations from Rasselas, hereafter cited in the text, are from the R. W. Chapman edition (Oxford, 1927). Bishop Patrick's Paraphrase appeared in 1685. All quotations are from A Commentary on the Books of the Old Testament, 4 vols., iii (London, 1853).

6 “ ‘The Fourth Son of the Mighty Emperor’: The Ethiopian Background of Johnson's Rasselas,” PMLA, lxxviii (Dec. 1963), 516–528.

7 Life of Johnson, ii, 124.

8 Michael Jermin, Commentary upon the Whole Boohe of Ecclesiastes . . . (London, 1639), p. 2. 9 Patrick, iii, 112.

10 Ibid., p. 116.

11 Samuel Clarke, A Survey of the Bible .. . (London, 1693), pp. 289, 299.

12 Patrick, iii, 114.

13 Patrick, iii, 113.

14 Jermin, p. 6. See also William Lowth, Directions for the Profitable Reading of the Holy Scriptures (London, 1708), p. 88.

15 Patrick, iii, 113.

16 Patrick, iii, 155.

17 Patrick, iii, 113.

18 Patrick, iii, 116.

19 William Sherlock, A Discourse Concerning the Divine Providence, 7th ed. (London, 1694), pp. 280–281.

20 Life of Johnson, i, 342.

21 On Imlac's role in the apologue, see the excellent discussion by Agostino Lombardo, “The Importance of Imlac,” in Bicentenary Essays on Rasselas, Supplement to Cairo Studies in English (Cairo, 1959), pp. 31–49.

22 “The Importance of Imlac,” p. 41. See also the fine essay by Sheridan Baker, “Rasselas: Psychological Irony and Romance,” PQ, xlv (Jan. 1966), 249–261.

23 Throughout the apologue Johnson seems to symbolize life in images of water. The Nile itself, of course, forms one of the major backdrops for the tale, and it is, perhaps, relevant that according to a classical legend, noted in Father Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia, the Nile, which Johnson calls “the Father of Waters” (p. 7), had its source at the throne of Zeus. See Johnson's translation of Lobo (London, 1735), p. 208. Rasselas and Imlac both tend to describe life in terms of water. See, e.g., pp. 24, 64.

24 Life of Johnson, ii, 22.

25 Patrick, iii, 115.