reflects Johnson, but he makes it clear that sheer veneration and piety are simply not enough if these are not put to the use of the common good. ‘Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert’, he says, ‘may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven and delight those embodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men’ (ii:475). Thus, in Rasselas the monks of St Anthony are praised for leading a strictly regulated life, devoted exclusively to labour and meditations; whatever they do has been ‘incited by an adequate and reasonable motive’ because ‘their time is regularly distributed; one duty succeeds another so that they are not lost in the shades of listless inactivity’ (ch xlvii:164-167).

Here Johnson’s sympathetic approach to this type of monastic life reflects the tendency of his entire moral philosophy toward that other state of being, that of piety and contemplation in which the soul is released from vacuity and futile imagination. The same leitmotif is to be found in the chapter titled ‘The happiness of solitude. The Hermit’s history’. Sitting on a bench near the door, the hermit has ‘a book with pens and papers’ on one side and ‘on the other mechanical instruments of various kinds’. Johnson’s description of the hermit’s cell speaks of an abode of an active man with an unbound thirst for knowledge. It reads: ‘The cave contained several apartments, appropriated to different uses, and often afforded lodging to travelers, whom darkness or tempests happened to overtake’. But after years spent ‘in examining the plants which grow in the valley’ and in the study of minerals, collected from the rocks, the hermit resolves ‘to return into the world’. He tells the traveling party of Rasselas that after fifteen years spent in solitude, he has no desire that his example ‘should gain imitators’. And at the end of the chapter we see him leaving his retreat and accompanying the party to Cairo at which he ‘gazed with rapture’, ready to mingle in the sea of life (xvi: 80-83). The hermit’s decision is a forceful endorsement of Johnson’s positive attitude to the place of man in society. The paths of Education may be narrow and the tracts of Reason and Religion too constraining, but there is also the Lockean hinge on which pivots the liberty of the eighteenth-century spirit, in a constant endeavour after the prosecution of true felicity, to the greatest good.

The theme of the hermit and the role of man in society, a much discussed eighteenth-century question, is taken up by Wright in his paintings ‘A Hermit studying Anatomy of 1769 or Philosopher by Lamplight [5], and illustrates the artist’s own interest in the topic. Exhibited in April 1769 at the Society of Artist, it is the earliest known ‘outdoor’ painting of Wright, predating his blacksmiths shops of 1771 to 1773. It is plausible to suggest that Wright may have based the design of the Hermit’s cell on his knowledge of caves in the Derbyshire Peak District. But it is thought that the subject matter is taken from the painting ‘Democritus in Meditation’ by Salvater Rosa (1615-1673), since soon after he exhibited the picture, Wright began to refer to is as ‘Democritus’ or ‘A Hermit studying Anatomy’. The Greek philosopher Democritus who was mainly known for his wise perception of the folly of human nature, was familiar to English readers then through Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, who referred to himself as ‘Democritus Junior’ and saw the old man as very melancholic by nature and inclined to solitude in his old age. Wright might well have had in mind Burton’s literary image of Democritus as well as Rosa’s visual interpretation.

However there is a much greater interplay of ideas in Wright’s painting than it has been suggested so far by critics. In fact, Wright’s painting of the Hermit can be annotated with Johnson’s story of Obidah in Rambler 65 which serves as a moral lesson for young people. The story goes like this: One morning ‘fresh and vigorous with rest’, Obidah, the son of Abensina, taken by the beauty of nature, ‘animated by hope’ and ‘incited by desire’, pursued his journey through the plains of Indostan. As he passed along, ‘his ears were delighted with the morning song of the bird of paradise’, his senses were gratified by the beauty of nature, ‘and all care was banished from his heart’. After a day spent in wandering and pursuit of new paths, Obidah lost his bearing; but just when ‘he was on the point of lying down in resignation to his fate’, he beheld ‘through the brambles the glitter of a taper’, and as he advanced towards the light, he came to the cottage of a hermit. The young man called humbly at the door and having obtained admission and was given hospitality, he ate with ‘eagerness and gratitude’. And before he departed, Obidah received from the hermit who likened human life to ‘the journey of a day’ an advice with a moral connotation that read: ‘Go now, my son, to thy repose, commit thyself to the care of omnipotence, and when the morning calls again to toil, begin anew thy journey and thy life’ (iii: 347-9).

Fusing elements from the past and present, in Wright’s picture too, the image of the hermit examining a part of a skeleton alludes to the transience of human life. In addition, the flame of the flickering lamp to be extinguished once its wick is spent together with a dramatically lit up hour-glass wedged at the side of the rock and the dark river are all emblems of temporality whereas the scallop shells in the hats of the two youths suggest that they may well be pilgrims who have come to see ‘a holy one’. And when looking at the painting, as if we hear the words of Johnson’s hermit: ‘Remember, my son, that human life is the journey of a day’. And in his role of a preceptor, he urges the young man to go home ‘and when the morning calls again to toil’, not to waste a moment and begin afresh the journey of his life (iii: 347-8).

The theme of temporality of life is taken up again by Wright in The Old Man and Death of 1774 – [6] which is yet another good example of the affinity between painting and literature, referred to as sister arts by Johnson in Idler 34 (ii: 106). The picture remained with the artist until his death in 1793 and was included in his posthumous sale by Christie’s on 6 May 1801. Referred to as ‘The Allegory of the Old Man and Death’, the description of it further reads: ‘in a picturesque Landscape, a River Scene with Gothic Ruins - a very correct Knowledge of Anatomy is displayed in the Figure of Death; the Alarm of the old Peasant is finely expressed, and the Lights throughout the Picture are uncommonly brilliant’. Thus emotions conveyed in the painting ranging from fear and awe to bewilderment and wonder should be treated not only as a reflective and imaginary projection of moods, but more as links in a complex polemical discourse. The figures of the Old Man and Death in Wright’s painting occupy the centre stage; hence the landscape is subordinate and can be viewed as a body of symbolic forms capable of being invoked and reshaped to express meanings and values. Movements of the soul in the painting are made known by movements of the body and passions are communicated through an edifying narrative subject – that of Death – that was closely linked with the eighteenth-century question of ‘does the soul think?’.

Moreover, Wright’s canvas is a tableau that is meant, as in a play, to be read as a story as the subject matter is taken from one of Ǽsop’s Fables, or perhaps from La Fontaine’s later rendering of that fable, as both authors were available in numerous English translations in the eighteenth century. In fact, Wright may have used an edition of Select Fables of Esop and other Fabulists that was printed in Birmingham in 1761 by John Baskerville for Robert Dodsley who from his early job as a "fart-catcher" (eighteenth-century slang for a footman, who would customarily walk behind his master or mistress) became one of the most prolific and influential eighteenth-century publishers. As a young man Dodsley would have been familiar with Samuel Croxall's translation of Æsop, and some years later the idea of publishing such a work would bring together both ancient and modern fables. Worth noting is that Dodsley is firmly connected with the Midlands and although there is no written evidence that he met Wright, it is known that he visited William Shenstone’s estate The Leasowes in Hagley (1714-63) on many occasions and Shenstone’s poem The School-Mistress, first published in 1737, was later revised and enlarged to 35 stanzas for the publication in its final form in 1748 in Robert Dodsley's Collection of Poems by Several Hands (1748-58) that was popularly known as ‘Dodsley’s Collection’ and effectively created the canon of eighteenth-century poetry.

All Ǽsop’s stories in the Baskerville edition are illustrated with charming little circular images emblematic of their essence and thanks to a copy available in the Literature and Arts section of Birmingham City Library I am able to show a reproduction of the twelve tableaux including the one of the story of the Old Man and Death [7]. It is an abstraction of the two protagonists, the old man and Death whose arrow, unlike in Wright’s painting, this time is aimed at the poor man. Listed as Fable xxix in Dodsley’s edition, the translated story of Ǽsop’s Old Man and Death reads:

A Feeble Old Man quite spent with carrying a burthen of sticks, which

with much labour he had gathered in a neighbouring wood, called upon

death to release him from the fatigues he endured. Death hearing the

invocation, was immediately at his elbow, and asked him what he wanted.

Frighted and trembling at the unexpected appearance – O good sir! said he,

my burthen had like to have slipped from me, and being unable to recover it

myself, I only implored your assistance to replace in on my shoulders.

In the Preface to the edition, Dodsley speaks of the high esteem of the fables of Esop as ‘best lessons for youth, as best adapted to convey the most useful maxims, in the most agreeable manner’. He further adds that ‘many writers, both in verse and prose, have endeavoured to cloath them in an English dress’. And in an Essay on Fable Dodsley reflects on the advantages of the fabulist who has ‘a liberty not allowed to epick or dramatick writers’ because ‘he may personify, bestow life, speech and action, on whatever he thinks proper’. As a literary form, the ‘fable’ is viewed as ‘a source of novelty and variety’ and an opportunity for diversification of images to the levels that the genius of the artist is ‘capable of conceiving and of employing’. Thus, it is up to the Fabulist to raise beings into a state of action and intelligence, since in the words of Dodsley, passions and sentiments can be given to ‘every individual part of existence’.

I would suggest that Esop’s fable serves Wright an important function of rhetoric of scientific and philosophical illustration of specific issue in the painting. Based on strenuous observation, the bones of Death are precisely drawn and one can say that on the whole perhaps Wright strives for naturalism if by that term is meant simply that the painter grounds his art in the imitation of natural appearances. The choice of daylight rather than a dramatic night sky, allows him to demonstrate his knowledge of anatomy in his portrayal of the walking skeleton of Death. However, the fable would have provided Wright also with a ready site for the negotiation of the controversial contemporary issue of the material and immaterial nature of the soul. Via a dramatic contrast between the heightened human emotions and the stark daylight Wright sharpens the theme of mortality which runs as a plaintive refrain throughout the whole picture. As the eye moves from a foreground full of contrasting variety of detail, it is clear that the significance of the artist’s landscape requires a special interpretative strategy where the naturalistic depiction of features such as trees, stones, water and ruined dwellings must not conceal its purposeful subordination to the larger compositional schemata. This is further accentuated by Wright’s depiction of a seemingly serene landscape that is an expression of a mood, or even a particular symbol and although there is something deeply spiritual in the painting that may allude to the fantastic nature of the story, it is not a romantic celebration of the countryside. The ruined building rendered in linear perspective at once defines the background and leads the space; the trees, in full leaf or blighted by disease in the sun-flooded landscape that underscores the apprehension of the old man and the startling figure of Death – they all allude to the transience of human life and the concept of the material and immaterial.

Notably the question of the state of humans after death and the separation of the soul from the body often occupied the attention of eighteenth-century philosophers who engaged in disputations of Natural and Revealed Religion. But if the soul is the life of the body, this is to say that the soul cannot be abstracted from matter – does this suggest the mortality of the soul too? The Egyptians were thought the first to engage in the preservation of the body as part of their belief in immortality. Thus, Johnson’s choice of Egypt and the omnipresent setting of the pyramids for his philosophical disputation on the nature of the soul in Rasselas may not be coincidental. Enigmatic relics of history, exempt from decay, the pyramids echo the Divine presence and supreme intelligence of God, and may well stand for the ambiguity of matter – material or immaterial. The prince’s sister Nekayah for example observes that ‘the nature of the soul is still disputed amidst all our opportunities of clearer knowledge’ and further notes that ‘some yet say, that it may be material, who nevertheless, believe it to be immortal’. To this Imlac adds his own perplexed thoughts on the supposed ‘immateriality’ of the soul in that it ‘seems to imply a natural power of perpetual duration as a consequence of exemption from all causes of decay’. Rasselas urges them to stop their futile philosophical disputation with the cogency of his argument: ‘Those who lie here stretched before us, the wise and the powerful of ancient times, warn us to remember the shortness of our present state: they were, perhaps, snatched away while they were busy, like us, in the choice of life’. (xvi, ch xlviii: 173-4). Without drawing explicit conclusions, Johnson once again here brings to the fore the theme of life’s temporal nature.

But it is through Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe in his allegory The Vision of Theodore the hermit of Teneriffe found in his cell that Johnson best expresses his views on the folly and vanity of human life. On the whole, the literary merit of this fable has been denied by critics although Johnson according to Thomas Percy, ‘attributed the palm over all he ever wrote’ to the little allegorical piece. Naturally such a text may encode the intentions of the writer but we only recover what we think from the effects it produces. As decoding of any embedded assumptions therein will depend on our subjective interpretation, this inevitable limitation should encourage awareness of factors which stimulate the cognitive aspect of literary reading of the text. Since I believe in its worth, here is an abridged version of my interpretation which affirms the historical significance for our understanding of the value of the text; together with a visual illustration of The Vision [8].

Choosing the engaging literary form of an allegory, as a true Fabulist, Johnson wraps the naked facts of science and principles of morality in an engaging and entertaining pictorial imagery so that the Mind proceeds in motion from one scene to another. And through the innovative design of his superimposed allegorical panorama of the two mountains – that of Tenerife, the ‘real’ one, and the Mountain of Existence, the allegorical one, he succeeds in achieving a perfect interaction between image and idea. For instance, to denote ‘time’ in the Vision Johnson employs symbolic imagery and the stages of human life are distinctly identified via chosen topographical features of the mountain and the presence of physical objects. The initial rise of the Mountain of Existence, ‘overspread with flowers’ conjures up an image of spring, signifying the carefree time of childhood, the age of innocence, fleeting by nature, thus temporal; the uneven configuration of his middle part, rising in steepness by gradation, and intercepted by ‘crags’ and ‘precipices’ is suggestive of the ‘vicissitudes of life’ that characterize the years of youth and maturity whereas the imagery of trees loaded with fruits hanging from the branches relates to the season of summer and signifies temptations. With a longer life span that flowers, the fruits are nonetheless still perishable and still of temporal, ‘finite’ nature. Finally, the discernable top of the mountain marks the end of the ‘scale of existence’ and is depicted by ‘a few hardy evergreens’ denoting longevity and endurance, whereas the sparse vegetation implies also lack of choice in the latter years of human life. In the process, our eyes travel from the steep, fractured rocks, ruddy in the light and grey in the shadows, to the gently sloping place with delicate surface markings under a soft light. As the rocks with their upright clefts merge with the organic shapes of the towering trees and dissipate beyond the pale void of the sky, the vision of nature becomes a detached presence, solid and stable, inviting no action, only discernment of the momentary and the timeless.

Rigorously tied up to the landscape, yet detached and unaware of the world around, Theodore’s dream is a vision from within. The suspended vista of abstracted elementary solid forms renders the whole an atmosphere of reverie that betrays the drama of the self and the depth of the writer’s searching and sensitive Mind. No doubt, the pictorial abstraction of Nature in the Vision with its complex topographical configuration is deeply charged with symbolic imagery. Thus, the permanent decor of the Mountain of Existence, the figure of the hermit Theodore and that of the multitude of people of both sexes climbing up the steep miry road, together with the allegorical figures of Habit, Innocence, Education, Reason and Religion and those of human Virtues and Vices, all form an integral part of the interpretive process of the story.

For this reason, when we take up the manuscript of Theodore in our hands, we enter and submerge ourselves in the forms and ideas put forward by Johnson against the infinitudes of nature and freed from the constraints of representational art, we gain the opportunity to participate in the creation of the Vision. The dynamism of abstracted physical description of nature speaks of the enormity of his creative imagination whereas the wealth of chosen vocabulary contributes to the rich texture of meaning which affords many levels of interpretation from the more general to the deeply philosophical relating the brutal and restless nature of man or to the turbulent history of civilizations, steeped in blood and submerged in slavery and subjugation. In this way Johnson’s allegory can be viewed as a ‘general map’ of the history of humankind, as he puts it in Rambler 203:

We know that the schemes of man are quickly at an end, that we must soon

(A Lowresque collage, Stefka Ritchie)