Ionica | Page 3

prejudices; he
thought of statesmen and patriots, such as Pitt, Nelson, Castlereagh,
Melbourne, and Wellington, with an almost personal affection. The one
title to his vehement love was that a man should have served his
country, striven to enhance her greatness, extended her empire, and
safeguarded her liberty.
It was the same with his feeling for authors. He loved Virgil as a friend;
he almost worshipped Charlotte Brontë. He spoke of Tennyson as "the
light and joy of my poor life." In 1868 he saw Sir W. Scott's portrait in
London, and wrote: "Sir Walter Scott, shrewd yet wistful, boyish yet
dry, looking as if he would ask and answer questions of the fairies--him
I saw through a mist of weeping. He is my lost childhood, he is my first
great friend. I long for him, and hate the death that parts us."
In literature, the first claim on his regard was that a writer should have
looked on life with a high-hearted, generous gaze, should have cared
intensely for humanity, should have hoped, loved, suffered, not in
selfish isolation, but with eager affection. Thus he was not only a
philosophical historian, nor a mere technical critic; he was for ever
dominated by an intense personal fervour. He cared little for the
manner of saying a thing, so long as the heart spoke out frankly and
freely; he strove to discern the energy of the soul in all men; he could
forgive everything except meanness, cowardice, egotism and conceit;
there was no fault of a generous and impulsive nature that he could not
condone.
Thus he was for many boys a deeply inspiring teacher; he had the art of
awakening enthusiasm, of investing all he touched with a mysterious
charm, the charm of wide and accurate knowledge illuminated by
feeling and emotion. He rebuked ignorance in a way which
communicated the desire to know. There are many men alive who trace
the fruit and flower of their intellectual life to his generous and
free-handed sowing. But in spite of the fact that the work of a teacher
of boys was intensely congenial to him, that he loved generous

boyhood, and tender souls, and awakening minds with all his heart, he
was not wholly in the right place as an instructor of youth. With all his
sympathy for what was weak and immature, he was yet impatient of
dullness, of stupidity, of caution; much that he said was too mature, too
exalted for the cramped and limited minds of boyhood. He was
sensitive to the charm of eager, high-spirited, and affectionate natures,
but he had also the equable, just, paternal interest in boys which is an
essential quality in a wise schoolmaster. Yet he was apt to make
favourites; and though he demanded of his chosen pupils and friends a
high intellectual zeal, though he was merciless to all sloppiness and
lack of interest, yet he forfeited a wider influence by his reputation for
partiality, and by an obvious susceptibility to grace of manner and
unaffected courtesy. Boys who did not understand him, and whom he
did not care to try to understand, thought him simply fanciful and
eccentric. It is perhaps to be regretted that unforeseen difficulties
prevented his being elected Tutor of his old College, and still more that
in 1860 he was passed over in favour of Kingsley, when the Prime
Minister, Lord Palmerston, submitted his name to the Queen for the
Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge. Four men were
suggested, of whom Blakesley and Venables refused the post. Sir
Arthur Helps was set aside, and it would have been offered to Johnson,
if the Prince Consort had not suggested Kingsley. Yet Johnson would
hardly have been in his right place as a teacher of young men. He
would have been, on the one hand, brought into contact with more
vigorous and independent minds, capable of appreciating the force and
width of his teaching, and of comprehending the quality and beauty of
his enthusiasms. But, on the other hand, he was too impatient of any
difference of opinion, and, though he loved equal talk, he hated
argument. And after all, he did a great work at Eton; for nearly a
quarter of a century he sent out boys who cared eagerly and generously
for the things of the mind.
A second attempt was made, in 1869, to get him appointed to the
history professorship, but Seeley was considered to have a better claim.
Writing to a friend on the subject, Johnson said: "I am not learned. I
don't care about history in the common meaning of the word."

It is astonishing to see in his Diaries the immense trouble he took to
awaken interest among his pupils. He was for ever trying experiments;
he would read a dozen books