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famous remark about the unnaturalness of women preachers as well as
the fact that no female authors were included in johnson's
Lives of the
Poets.
The "of course" implies that a crusty Tory like Johnson would
naturally take a dim view of women with intellectual pretensions, but
Johnson strongly defended the intellectual ambition of women and he
admired many women essayists, critics, and novelists. Two essays in the
Rambler
were written by his friend Elizabeth Carter, a classical scholar.
One wonders how much of Johnson Porter has read, since the vast
majority of his quotations are from Boswell's
Life.
If
he had read a num–
ber of johnson's essays in the
Oxford Samuel Johnson
or Eithne Hen–
son's essay on "Johnson and the condition of women" in the
Cambridge
Guide to Johnson
he would have seen that Johnson always attacked the
prevailing view that women should not be given a solid education.
Johnson is only a minor figure in Porter's study. More troubling is his
discussion of two major figures: Hume and Smith. Porter argues that
both writers opposed all aspects of the civic humanist tradition that one
associates with the Tories and radical Whigs who opposed Robert Wal–
pole. The writers in this tradition usually attacked commerce as a source
of corruption and they also stressed the importance of disinterested
men-Patriots-who can discern the public good. According to Porter,
Hume and Smith thought "the proper stage for human energies was not
the public or political arena...but private, self-regarding pursuits." But
neither Hume nor Smith thought Britain would flourish if disinterested
politicians took a backseat to self-interested men of commerce. Disinter–
ested statesmen-men of enlightened opinions and extensive views–
were necessary to foster commerce and mitigate some of its harmful
effects. Smith continually warns that self-interested merchants inevitably
want "to narrow the competition." Both Hume's essays and Smith's
The
Wealth of Nations
are addressed to politicians-trying to persuade them
that if impediments to trade are reduced Britain is likely to be more pros–
perous and more politically stable.
It
is a serious distortion of Hume and
Smith to say that they helped put
"laissez-faire
in the saddle."
Finally, though Porter ends his book by stressing that there was a
Kulturkampf
in eighteenth-century Britain, a fierce debate about many
issues, he does not adequately describe what
J.
G. A. Pocock has called
the "family quarrels" among various thinkers whom we label enlight–
ened. Porter says that "progress proved the ultimate Enlightenment
gospel," but different enlightened thinkers had different ideas about
what constituted progress. He speaks of the "early Enlightenment lib–
erty platform," but the "Patriots" who supported progress in liberty
usually attacked economic progress.
