A Biographer at Work: Samuel Johnson’s Notes for the “Life of Pope” by Harriet Kirkley

Abstract

190 ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: . . . And, behold , the LORD stood above it.’ Resting at Bethel in his flight from Esau, the dreaming Jacob is appointed by God as leader of the chosen people—the children of Israel, the elect. In their close reiteration of these scriptural words, Bunyan’s opening lines implicitly identify his narrative as a dream not only of, but by, the elect. Although his narrator goes on to dream not of angels and God, but of a man in rags, this borrowing— by turns verbatim, paraphrastic, and allusive —stakes a tacit claim to the authority of a man who (in his dream) saw, and was chosen by, God.’’ This is a very fine reading. Anyone who reads a text as closely as Ms. Lynch is sure occasionally to raise an objection from a reviewer, even one who is attempting to be Honestinquiring , not Evil-questioning. I would have preferred that Bunyan’s early poetry and sermons had not been said to have ‘‘cocked a snook’’ at the authorities who imprisoned him, but perhaps the expression is not as slangy as it sounds to an American ear. On the other hand, there seems little excuse for misusing ‘‘enormity’’ twice, even though there is unintended humor in the expression , ‘‘the unwarranted enormity of Christ’s grace.’’ More important is Ms. Lynch’s excessive use of italics for emphasis within quotations, which is annoying in the first few pages and soon becomes maddening. Perhaps she is trying to create in her reader the ‘‘intense textual anxiety’’ she finds in Bunyan’s works. The result instead is to make a difficult text even more tedious. Often the italics are totally unnecessary, the point being obvious. At other times they seem to suggest that Ms. Lynch, like the godly master narrator of Mr. Badman, is ‘‘working rather too hard to forestall or cancel any doubts within the narrative, [rendering] what [she] says all the more questionable.’’ I would not wish this book longer, but I would wish to read more from Ms. Lynch in the future. Perhaps she can expand somewhat on the very slight treatment she gives deathbed accounts in the course of her reading of Mr. Badman’s lamb-like death. Perhaps she can examine the epistemological impasse that Bunyan faced (‘‘the intensity of his unprovable convictions, the evangelical compulsion to convince others’’) against the more mainstream view of varying types of epistemological certainty, depending on the discipline discussed, and the sufficiency of information provided man to work out his own salvation. Among the many areas in which Ms. Lynch has succeeded is that of encouraging thought beyond her text. Robert G. Walker St. Petersburg, Florida HARRIET KIRKLEY. A Biographer at Work: Samuel Johnson’s Notes for the ‘‘Life of Pope.’’ London and Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2002. Pp. 279. $48.50 Ms. Kirkley’s edition and study of Johnson’s notes for the Life of Pope, found in British Library Add. MS 5994, folios 159–177, is divided into two parts and an Appendix. In addition to making the two texts available to scholars (the Appendix is a transcription of the Dyce MS notes for the Pope), she explicates the major body of notes in an impressive manner. Fragmentary and allusive, the notes themselves would be very difficult for even a Johnson scholar to use without her annotations, which identify 191 and contextualize Johnson’s brief remarks . Most of these explanations have no parallel in the work of other scholars who have used the notes. They will be indispensable for those who use them hereafter. A random example: On folio 166v, Johnson wrote ‘‘22 Buckingham’s (Duke) Ep. refused 8. 122.’’ Ms. Kirkley ’s note is about 600 words long, all of them useful. It identifies Johnson’s reference to Pope’s letters (and the corresponding letter in Sherburn’s edition), notes that Johnson’s ‘‘refused’’ is clearer than the text of the letter, quotes the text, observes that Johnson may have been confused as to which duke (father or son) Pope was referring to (he wrote an epitaph for the son but not the father ), and finally...