The Johnson-Chesterfield Relationship: A New Hypothesis

To understand the ironic force of Johnson's 1755 letter to the Earl of Chesterfield, we must appreciate not only their personal relationship, centered in 1746-48, and Chesterfield's indirect attempt to sponsor the Dictionary in 1754, but their literary and political relationship as well. Both men played a complex role in the politics of the 1737-44 period, Chesterfield as a leading member of the opposition, Johnson as political journalist. During these years, Johnson used Chesterfield's 1737 speech against the Playhouse Bill as basis for some arguments in his Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage (1739), and later wrote Chesterfield's part in a number of “Parliamentary Debates.” Though Johnson favored the opposition position before 1740, in his “Debates,” under the requirement of appearing impartial, he often created for opposition speakers, especially Chesterfield, ironic arguments which redound to their discredit. Johnson's ability as ironist was considerable: comparison of the speeches he wrote for Chesterfield with collateral sources for these debates reveals that he intensified Chesterfield's opposition negativeness by increasing his ironical attacks upon the ministry in power. The effect is to satirize Chesterfield, rendering him ineffectual, divisive, and ridiculous through the creation of a literary and political persona. It is unlikely that Johnson forgot this persona during his hopeful personal relationship with and later neglect by Chesterfield. When the opportunity arose in 1755 for Johnson to address Chesterfield personally again, he fortified the “civil irony” of his celebrated letter with an ironic attack which recalls, and was perhaps influenced by, the satiric criticism he had leveled against Chesterfield through similar ironic techniques a dozen years earlier in the “Parliamentary Debates.”