of Trent contradicts two legends about him, that he despised history and that his
intellectual interests were the narrow ones of a “Little Englander,” an archetypal John Bull.
On the contrary, as his early dealings with Petrarch and Politian indicate, he was deeply
interested in what happened in the rest of the world, and throughout his life was
concerned to encourage his fellow countrymen to expand their intellectual horizons
beyond the English Channel.
But the outstanding publishing event in the Gentleman’s Magazine after Johnson arrived
there in 1738 was the inauguration of a feature that was to continue for seven years and
was greatly to increase its circulation and establish its lasting prosperity and authority.
This was no less than the project of publishing reports of the debates in the British
Parliament. Their publication had long been forbidden, politicians then as later being
reluctant to have their doings scrutinized too closely, and in the spring of 1738 the House
of Commons passed a resolution threatening of fenders with “the utmost severity” if they
attempted to do so. This was a blow to Cave. The prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole,
had held office for sixteen years, and was now beleaguered by opponents intent on
ousting him. For four more years the attacks on him in Parliament reached a pitch of
violence seldom equaled in that always outspoken assembly, until Walpole was finally
overthrown. The general public was keenly interested in the contest, and any periodical
able to report the debates would see a great increase in its sales. Cave and his
staff–some said primarily young Johnson–thought of a way around the ban. An article
appeared in which the grandson of Lemuel Gulliver described a voyage he had recently
made to the land of Lilliput, once visited by his famous grandfather. He discovered that
the Lilliputian Parliament was debating issues very similar to those in London, and that
opposition members such as the Urgol Ptit were hurling blistering attacks against Sir
Retrob Walelop. He had brought back a shipload of reports of the debates of the Senate
of Lilliput, which the Gentleman’s Magazine thought might interest its readers during the
unfortunate absence of reports of the debates in their own Parliament.
Throughout his life, Johnson was no friend to the preservation of official secrets. “The
time is now come,” he was later to write, “in which every Englishman expects to be
informed of the national affairs, and in which he has a right to have that expectation
gratified.” For instance, one burning issue of the time was the charge that Walpole was
weakly allowing Spain to maintain its embargo against English maritime trade with its
South American possessions, a conflict which was presently to erupt in the so-called War
of Jenkins’s Ear. This gives the writer of the introduction to the Lilliputian debates the
opportunity to reflect on the history of European exploitation of the New World: the
Europeans “have made conquests and settled colonies in very distant regions, the
inhabitants of which they look upon as barbarous, though in simplicity of manners,
probity, and temperance superior to themselves; and seem to think they have a right to
treat them as passion, interest, or caprice shall direct, without much regard to the rule of
justice or humanity; they have carried this imaginary sovereignty so far that they have
sometimes proceeded to rapine, bloodshed, and desolation.”
The British record in North America is not spared: “When any of their people have
forfeited the rights of society, by robberies, seditions, or other crimes,” they are
transported to America, “undoubtedly very much to the propagation of knowledge and
virtue.” These indictments Johnson was to repeat many times in his later writings. He
concludes his account with a hair-raising description of how the Lilliputians, enraged by
the corruptions of government in the time of Lemuel senior, “set fire to the palace” of
the emperor, “and buried the whole royal family in its ruins,” together with the evil
ministers who had fled there for protection. This was fifty years before the storming of
the Bastille, and it is noteworthy that the implied threat is not only against Walpole and
his associates but against the king he served, George II.
The Lilliputian debates occupied much of the Gentleman’s space from 1738 to 1745
(Walpole was forced to resign in 1742, but an unsuccessful attempt to impeach him
continued beyond that time). All the debates that appeared between July 1741 and
March 1744, totaling around half a million words, are usually attributed to Johnson.
Earlier and later debates are said to have been composed by others, perhaps with
assistance or revision by Johnson, but there is no way of determining this. It used to be
thought that they were entirely fictional compositions, but recent study shows, by
comparing them with other extant reports, that their substance corresponds fairly well to
what the speakers are supposed actually to have said, though the prose has
undoubtedly been polished, as printed reports of parliamentary or congressional
speeches still are. The quasi-official Parliamentary History, the predecessor of the official
record, “Hansard,” reprints them, and they are still sometimes quoted by historians
unaware of Johnson’s share in them as examples of the rhetorical ability of their
supposed speakers. Johnson is once supposed to have said, “I took care not to let the
Whig dogs have the best of it,” but most of those who ranted against Walpole were also
Whigs. In fact, a careful reading of the debates will show that the honors for
effectiveness are fairly equally divided between Walpole’s supporters and his enemies,
and on one occasion, the great debate in the House of Commons on 13 February 1741,
on a motion calling for the removal of Walpole from office, Walpole is given a masterly
final speech in reply. Other topics than the conduct of the Walpole administration are the
subjects of extended debate: the state of the armed forces, foreign affairs, trade, the
control of the sale of spirits, “urban renewal” (a bill for paving the streets of
Westminster). Three or more years of reporting detailed discussion of such matters were
a splendid apprenticeship for the general commentator on human affairs that Johnson
was to become.
During these early years, Johnson published a good deal elsewhere than in the columns
of the Gentleman’s, publications with which Cave was also connected. In May 1738 a
nineteen-page booklet appeared, containing a poem of 263 lines in heroic couplets (and
one triplet) entitled London. It caused a mild stir and reached a second edition within a
week. Pope, whose long poem One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight, likewise a
denunciation of life at that time and in that place, was published the same day, gave
high praise to his unknown rival’s work. London is subtitled A Poem, in Imitation the Third
Satire of Juvenal , which was a diatribe against life in contemporary Rome. It is important
to understand that an “imitation” is not a translation or even paraphrase of an original
work, but rather what might be called a set of variations on a theme. Juvenal satirizes
aspects of life in Rome which displease him, Johnson does the same with life in London;
for instance, Juvenal condemns the baneful influence of Greek immigrants, Johnson of
French. Both cities suffer from things that still plague metropolises–street hoodlums,
jerry-built structures, corrupt politicians:
Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay,
And here the