SOURCE: "The Structure of Rasselas," in PMLA, Vol. LXVI, No. 5, September, 1951, pp. 698-717.

[In the following essay, Kolb discusses the relationship of structure to meaning in Rasselas. Kolb argues that Johnson's story is structurally distinct from the generic eighteenth-century oriental tale, and suggests that the common practice of viewing Rasselas as an oriental tale is misleading and results in an incomplete understanding of the work.]

I

In beginning a discussion of the structure of Rasselas one need not spend much time clearing the ground of previous arguments before advancing one's own. What the new commentator must face—and this is perhaps more disturbing than arguments would be—is the almost universal opinion¹ that Rasselas has only the slightest structure and that the little it does have results from Johnson's not too successful effort to write an ordinary novel or "oriental tale."² The narrative is "episodic," unimportant, dull, say some critics; the ending concludes nothing, the work merely stops. The action—and some of the characters—say others,³ lack dramatic power. At the same time that they thus observe, either directly or indirectly, the tale's failure to conform to their notions of what the structure should be, most commentators recognize a fundamental difference between Johnson's piece and those works in the light of which they attempt to judge Rasselas. Wishing to make the difference clear and to do justice to what they feel is a manifest accomplishment, they praise the wisdom set forth in the book and the skill and power displayed in individual chapters.⁴

The result of this persistent tendency to talk of the work as though it were really several distinct pieces is perhaps bestillustrated both by the most recent discussion of the book, which calls it Johnson's "greatest comic work,"⁵ and, more generally, by the equivocal position it occupies in histories of English literature: on the one hand, it has found a place in surveys of the eighteenth-century novel; on the other, it has been treated as a composition designed to enforce a moral lesson. Rasselas the novel has elicited no admiration,⁶Rasselas the moral work has been called the wisest book in English literature.⁷ Yet, with the exceptions already noted, its admirers, although more or less aware of the end presumably sought by Johnson, have not attempted really to argue the adequacy of the structure of Rasselas in relation to that end. They have been content to praise the wisdom and ignore the narrative.

Certainly, however, this relationship must be considered before one can make a complete estimate of Rasselas as a literary achievement. In addition, this kind of examination may help to clarify the connections between Rasselas and earlier. "oriental tales" and between it and Johnson's other writings and opinions.

The most cursory reading is enough to convince anyone that, as most critics have pointed out, Rasselas is no ordinary "eastern" tale. For either the work shows Johnson to have been an incredibly inept writer of the Arabian Nights type of story or else one must conclude that the tale as tale is not the principle which best explains what the book contains. And the facts in the case support the latter alternative. Unhappy in an earthly paradise, a young prince, accompanied by other discontented persons, escapes into the outside world, where he investigates modes of life supposedly conducive to happiness until, persuaded of the futility of the search, he and his party decide to return to the "happy valley." Clearly, the problem of happiness rather than the element of "story" emerges from this recital as the determinant by reference to which questions about the book's structure may be most adequately answered. On this hypothesis, Rasselas may be labelled an apologue—which, indeed, many commentators have dubbed it—and the narrative about the prince may be considered as a device⁸ for presenting certain notions concerning happiness and the moral and emotional attitudes to be drawn thence by the reader. What, briefly, Johnson seems to be urging upon us is this: human limitations make happiness in this world ephemeral, accidental, the product of hope rather than reality, and almost as nothing compared to the miseries of life; consequently, searches for permanent enjoyment, although inevitable to man as man, are bound to end in failure. The wise man, therefore, will accept submissively the essential grimness of life, seek no more lasting felicity than is given by a quiet conscience, and live with an eye on eternity, in which he may perhaps find, through the mercy of God, the complete happiness unattainable on earth.

Similar opinions about happiness aimed at establishing similar attitudes in the reader play equally important roles in several of Johnson's earlier works, notably The Vanity of Human Wishes and Rambler Nos. 204-205,⁹ and the techniques of presentation used in these pieces illuminate, by comparison and contrast, the method employed later in Rasselas. In The Vanity of Human Wishes, for example, Johnson stresses the insufficiency of human pursuits as a means to happiness and encourages the reader to pray for internal "goods" attained through religion—"a healthful mind," "a will resign'd," "obedient passions," "love," "patience," and that "faith" which looks forward to a "happier seat" after death. This summary of the moral suggests the organization of the poem: Johnson first considers various supposedly desirable "goods" representative of both public and private life (riches, political and military power, learning, etc.) and applicable to women as well as men (e.g., in the case of beauty), points up the vanity of all of them by the use of direct statements and examples drawn from history, and finally directs "Hope and Fear" to the proper objects listed above.

In the Rambler Nos. 204-205, however, the positive aspect of Johnson's counsel is missing; he concentrates on emphasizing the futility of a person's decision to be happy. "No man," we are told, should "presume to say, 'This day shall be a day of happiness"'; for not only is a man's happiness far overshadowed by his miseries but the small amount of happiness he actually obtains is the result of circumstances over which he has practically no control. As the medium for this somber instruction Johnson devises the narrative of Seged, the "lord of Ethiopia," who, resolving to be completely happy for ten days, withdraws to an island where he practices without success various schemes designed to produce happiness until the sickness of his daughter on the eighth day puts an end to his plans. The account of Seged clearly anticipates Rasselas in several important respects. For instance, the monarch's change of place in his search for felicity corresponds to Rasselas' departure from the happy valley and his entrance into the ordinary world. However, Seged's specific transfer is, in a sense, exactly the opposite of Rasselas'; for he seeks happiness by escaping from everyday life to a "happy" island. Nonetheless, in both cases the same two kinds of places are visited by the royal searchers, although Seged concentrates his efforts to find happiness in an earthly paradise; and Rasselas, miserable in such a paradise, examines the possibilities for pleasure in the outside world. Again, the monarch's various schemes to induce happiness parallel the prince's investigations into those modes of life praised for their ability to produce contentment. Finally, in the history of Seged, Johnson uses an Abyssinian background in much the same way as in Rasselas. Specifically, "Sultan Segued" and "Rassela Christos" were actual members of Ethiopian royalty ("Rassela Christos" served "Sultan Segued" as lieutenant); the group of islands in Lake Dambea, to oneof which Seged retires, is mentioned, like the royal prison in Amhara, in various historical accounts of Abyssinia,¹⁰ and, so far as Seged's palace is concerned, at least one early author states that "about the middle of [Lake Dambea] is an island, wherein stands one of the Emperor's palaces, which, though not so large as that of Gondar, is yet equally beautiful and magnificent."¹¹

Having decided to write another work embodying the same moral, generally, as that expressed in The Vanity of Human Wishes and Rambler Nos. 204-205, and aiming, explicitly, at the end I have suggested earlier, Johnson was again faced with the problem of selecting a vehicle for pointing the moral. How could he demonstrate the prevailing unhappiness of life in a lively, telling manner? How lead his reader to accept the consolation offered by the prospect of eternity? If he followed the customary—and perhaps more effective—way of presenting such a "lesson," the first question would have to be dealt with before he could proceed to a more positive conclusion. How, in any case, could he represent the paucity of happiness so as to interest and impress the reader? Obviously, one method that might have occurred to Johnson would be to show the comparative lack of happiness among persons who might be expected to be happy. Such persons would consist of (1) those who possess all material ingredients for happiness, (2) those who follow particular schemes designed to produce happiness, and (3) those who occupy certain positions in ordinary life usually thought to afford happiness. If members of all three groups were shown to be discontented, that would do much to prove his "thesis" and would help to direct the reader's attention to the hereafter. And how, he might have asked himself, could he more effectively present this discontent than by repeating the narrative device he had used in the Rambler Nos. 204-205, and writing a story about a man who, surrounded by every possible luxury, is nevertheless dissatisfied and whose search for contentment reveals only misery and unhappiness. Thus the reader's interest might be maintained and the author's "text" illustrated and amplified. From the posing of various solutions to problems of representation, Johnson, one may suppose, finally decided to write the tale of the Abyssinian prince.

Rasselas falls into two general parts. Part one, dealing with life in the happy valley, reveals the absence of happiness in an earthly paradise. Part two discloses the same condition in the outside world. Since the only remaining locale with respect to happiness would be a spot completely lacking in means to pleasure—a spot in which perhaps no one could imagine happiness possible—these two parts achieve, in effect, an exhaustive survey of the kinds of places where happiness might be found.

Life in an earthly paradise presents perhaps the most widespread notion of perfect bliss and it is with a narrative treatment ofthis conception that Johnson begins Rasselas. If the paradise is to seem a paradise to the readers addressed in the opening sentence, it must be situated and characterized, and so in Chapter i he describes the happy valley, employing for the purpose the "romantic" tradition of the imprisonment of Abyssinian royalty and endowing the spot with all the remoteness, delights, and luxuries usually attributed to paradises. The reasons for Johnson's use of an oriental. setting, in general, and of Abyssinia, in particular, may be considered under two headings, (1) structural and (2) non-structural. Among those of the first sort proposed by various critics are the statements that "scene plays an important rôle in the story, both in the reenforcement it lends to ideas, and in the background of vague, exotic beauty which it provides for the action"; and that "the novel … was set deliberately in a non-Christian part of the world, like many of the didactic tales of its time, so that Johnson could deal with man on a purely naturalistic level and feel free to discuss the issues he had in mind unimpeded by other considerations."¹² Additional functions which the eastern background serves may be mentioned briefly: it provides for the reader the aura of strange and distant lands where human happiness is commonly thought to be complete and lasting; by reminding us of the superficial likenesses and essential differences between Rasselas and ordinary oriental tales with their happy-ever-after conclusions, it tends to heighten the skeptical attitude toward earthly happiness which Johnson seeks to inculcate in the reader;¹³ and, finally, the employment of the romantic legend surrounding the imprisonment of the children of Abyssinian monarchs affords a ready means of examining in an exhaustive fashion the places in which men might be presumed happy.

Seeking what I have called "extra-structural" causes for the setting of the tale, most writers invoke Johnson's translation of Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia and the vogue of oriental tales in England during the eighteenth century. A few have linked Johnson's location of the happy valley in Abyssinia with the descriptions of terrestrial paradises made by other authors who also drew upon material about Abyssinia.¹⁴ But not enough emphasis has been placed on the latter attempt at explanation. For the practice of Milton and Coleridge—to name only the best known examples—in utilizing data about Abyssinia in their descriptions of Eden and Mount Abora,¹⁵ added to Johnson's setting for Rasselas, would seem to indicate that, at least from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, English writers usually drew upon the rich store of fact and fancy about Abyssinia contained in numerous travel-books whenever they decided to depict earthly paradises.

Still, although it qualifies as one of these earthly paradises, Johnson's happy valley is not perfect, for, ironically enough, it is a prison; its palace is built "as if suspicion herself had dictated the plan," and, once obtained, admission therein is, withrare exceptions, permanent. Unblemished joy, Johnson intimates, may not always dwell even in paradise. And he shortly introduces us to the unhappy prince of Abyssinia.

Rasselas is a young man in his twenty-sixth year, well past the age when the novelty of the world is enough to make life pleasant and exciting. His character as a serious, high-minded, discontented, rather naive person is eminently adapted to the functioning of the apologue. Were he less serious and high-minded he would probably be less likely to interest himself in the question of happiness, and were he more sophisticated and perceptive he would not perhaps be so persistent in his search for enduring happiness. Bored with the luxuries of the valley he recognizes that the proper happiness of man is different from animal contentment and he regrets his lack of this happiness. His attempt to obtain it by finding a man who can tell him the recipe for happiness makes up the principal "story" in the book. For the search to begin, however, Rasselas must believe that something he does will bring him happiness. Consequently, the sage who wants to persuade him that he has no cause for uneasiness says, "If you had seen the miseries of the world, you would know how to value your present state." And the prince promptly expresses a wish to see the world, "since the sight of [its miseries] is necessary to happiness." In addition to serving the purpose of the narrative, the sage's remark provides the first of many testimonials to the predominance of misery in the world, while the dissatisfaction he expresses over Rasselas' reaction to his statement enlarges the scope of the unhappiness in the happy valley.

The prince, possessed of a new subject for thought, i.e., his actions in the regions beyond the valley, is satisfied to let many months pass without trying to see the outside world. His pleasure in this extended procrastination offers a striking contrast to the increasing impatience he might have been expected to feel until he had actually entered the world. Content and discontent, Johnson seems to be telling us, are not subject to the rules of logic.

When Rasselas is finally roused to action, his endeavors to escape from the valley involve a trial-and-elimination of possible means of exit. He enjoys his explorations but they are unsuccessful. Next he meets the artist who proposes to fly over the mountains to freedom. Skeptical because of his failure, Rasselas still entertains some hope for the success of the flying scheme, but it too is a disappointment.¹⁶ So far, then, the prince's investigations of the possibilities of escape have kept the narrative in motion as a narrative. They have also served to embroider Johnson's notions about happiness. For the contrast between Rasselas' impatience to leave the valley and the ten months cheerfully spent in searching for an exit is pronounced. Again, the artist's willingness to accompany the prince is a significant commentary on the happiness prevailing in the valley. Moreover, the vast difference between the enthusiasm and self-assurance with which the artist undertakes the aerial experiment and his terror and vexation at its dismal conclusion exemplifies the strange disparity which, as Johnson suggests, always operates where happiness is concerned. And, again, his remarks on the need for secrecy about the art of flying furnish added if indirect evidence of the evil and misery in the world outside the valley: "If men were all virtuous," he says, "I should with great alacrity teach them all to fly. But what would be the security of the good, if the bad could at pleasure invade them from the sky?"

In Chapter vii, Rasselas, restless and forced by the rainy season to remain indoors, hears Imlac read a poem on "the various conditions of humanity," and entering into talk with him is delighted with his company. Days later he commands the poet to tell the story of his life but being called to a concert is obliged to delay the story until evening. Thus is the narrative continued and simultaneously the accidental quality of happiness delicately underscored: the rainy season is responsible for Rasselas' meeting Imlac; the summons to the concert (intended to give pleasure) actually prevents him from enjoying the poet's history immediately.

Imlac's account of his life, besides showing him to be a person possibly clever enough to help Rasselas escape from the valley and certainly experienced enough to direct him in his choice of life, contributes materially to the case Johnson is making against faith in earthly happiness. To begin with, it is the history of a more versatile Rasselas, grown old and wise—but not happy. Imlac has done much more than Rasselas will do when he enters the world. The son of a rich man, he early indulged a thirst for travel and knowledge (his joy in learning and subsequent attitude toward his teachers parallel Rasselas' similar pleasure in knowledge and contempt for the old sage who could tell him nothing new). Later, determined to be a poet, a profession demanding the highest and most varied knowledge, he intensified his studies of nature and men. Finally, after years of traveling and observing the customs of many nations, he arrived back in Abyssinia, to find all his fond expectations changed into bitter disappointments. Weary, he resolved to retire from the world and succeeded in being admitted to the happy valley. Thus, Imlac in a sense may be said to have ended his search for contentment where Rasselas begins. The inference is inescapable: no permanent happiness for young or old anywhere. But Rasselas, strong in the hope of youth, has yet to learn this disagreeable truth.

In the second place, Imlac's history represents the final and most detailed picture of the world's unhappiness painted for Rasselas while he remains in the valley. The sage and the artist had mentioned the misery and wickedness of men; now the poetparticularizes their statements by reference to his own life. Rasselas' interruptions during the account reveal his inexperience and idealism and at the same time afford Imlac an opportunity to emphasize the absence of enduring peace and contentment in the world. His father, a wealthy merchant, wanted his son to be still richer, though he himself lived in fear of being "spoiled by the governours of the province." Observing his teachers Imlac "did not find them wiser or better than common men." When he joined a trade caravan during his travels, his companions, envious of his wealth, "exposed [him] to the theft of servants, … and saw [him] plundered upon false pretences"; yet afterwards they sought his help in selling their goods. Estimating for Rasselas the contentment he found among Europeans, he remarks that they are less miserable than other people but that they are not happy. "Human life is every where a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed." At the end of his story, on hearing Rasselas' decision to escape and make a free choice of life, he warns him that he will find the world "a sea foaming with tempests, and boiling with whirlpools," and that "amidst wrongs and frauds, competitions and anxieties, [he] will wish a thousand times for these seats of quiet, and willingly quit hope to be free from fear." This declaration, added to Imlac's record of his life, suggests persuasively the fruitlessness of Rasselas' resolution to seek happiness outside the valley. The only stronger evidence would involve the prince's own experiences in the world. And such evidence is shortly forth-coming.

Again, the poet's remarks regarding felicity in the royal prison expand the number of miserable persons to include almost everyone in the valley. At first Johnson introduces us to the dissatisfied prince; later he makes clear the discontent (though it is only temporary) of the sage and the artist; then he allows Imlac to declare flatly to Rasselas: "I know not one of all your attendants who does not lament the hour when he entered this retreat … They envy the liberty which their folly has forfeited, and would gladly see all mankind imprisoned like themselves." Prince and servant, young and old, male and female (as is soon apparent)—none are happy in the happy valley. Imlac is less unhappy than the rest of the servants because he has "a mind replete with images, which [he] can vary and combine at pleasure." But he regrets the uselessness of his acquirements.

In the last place, Imlac's history (and, indeed, much of Rasselas) produces a result perfectly consonant with Johnson's purpose by virtue of the fact that, although modelled on the story-within-a-story device common in conventional oriental tales,¹⁷ it contrasts sharply with such tales. That is to say, it possesses enough points of contact to make us more or less aware of the model but reminds us constantly that it has nothing to do with exciting adventures, beautiful women, romance, and the happy conclusions inoriental tales. For example, Imlac was introduced to the Mogul: he might have fallen in love with his daughter, perhaps become his heir, and enjoyed a long life and many children. But what actually happens? Nothing—except that he can remember not a word the Mogul uttered "above the power of a common man." The difference between what might have been and what is, thus underlines the grave tenor of Imlac's history.

The poet finishes his account, Rasselas confides to him his longing to break prison, and Imlac, despite the counsel noted above, agrees to help him. In Chapter xiii he proposes the single means of exit untried by the prince and the two set to work. Nekayah, Rasselas' sister, who is also weary of "tasteless tranquility," and her favorite Pekuah join the men when they escape from the valley. By the addition of the women to the party, Johnson, as indicated earlier, achieves a group whose members represent all the inhabitants of the valley: prince and princess, male and female subordinates—the list is complete. Their willingness to leave offers weighty testimony to the dissatisfaction prevailing there. As types, too, the four provide an inclusive means for sampling and commenting on modes of life in the ordinary world—the wise Imlac to direct the search and interpret the findings, the naive prince to be gradually disillusioned as he pursues the will-o'-the-wisp of happiness, and Nekayah and the maid for investigations into the distaff domain.

If, as I have said, Johnson seeks to impress upon the reader of Rasselas the vanity of believing in permanent earthly happiness, he may logically be expected to make the same comprehensive survey with respect to normal life that he made in treating the happy valley. What he does bears out this expectation. Imlac conducts the prince to Cairo, a place in which Rasselas will be able to "see all the conditions of humanity." Here, if anywhere, one would think, a happy man might be found. And at first it seems to Rasselas that everyone is happy—except himself. His uneasiness, contrasted with the rapture he anticipated on looking at the new world from the mountain top of the prison, offers another pointed example of the failure of reality to fulfill one's hopes. It also parallels his position when, at the beginning of the book, he appears for a short time to be the only unhappy person in the royal retreat. Rasselas confesses his sadness to Imlac, who declares that his condition is the condition of mankind. "We are long," he says, "before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself." But the prince insists that "one condition is more happy than another"; and heedless of Imlac's remarks on the futility of making a choice of life, resolves to examine various conditions with a view to choosing one for himself.

He associates first with "young men of spirit and gaiety," whosepleasures, "gross and sensual," soon convince Rasselas "that he should never be happy in a course of life of which he was ashamed." He is next attracted to the doctrine of stoicism as expounded by an eloquent sage whose life he proposes to imitate until he discovers that the teacher, notwithstanding the cogency of his arguments, is in practice subject to the miseries of ordinary men.

Plainly, the prince's investigations thus far display considerably more method than critics have usually been ready to admit. He begins by examining two extreme—and opposing—avenues to happiness, one below, the second above, the level on which human beings are capable of sustained pleasure. Mere gratification of sensual appetites, Rasselas recognizes, cannot be called human happiness because it fails to satisfy peculiarly human capacities. Stoicism, on the other hand, with its insistence on the suppression of passions, aims at a state of mind (or contentment) beyond the reach of men as men; witness the sage's grief over his daughter's death. Neither from it nor from gross sensuality springs human felicity, and the prince is forced to continue his search.

Moving from the city to the country (another case of procedure by division), he and his companions inquire into three modes of rural life—those followed by the shepherds, the rich man, and the hermit—that seem to offer possibilities for permanent happiness. Like the previous conditions investigated, these form an orderly treatment designed to enforce the same general theme. Of the three groups the shepherds possess fewest potentialities for happiness: they are "envious savages," "so rude and ignorant, so little able to compare the good with the evil of the occupation, and so indistinct in their narratives and descriptions, that very little could be learned from them." The country gentleman represents the brighter side of country life: the shepherds are stupid, he is intelligent; they are comparatively poor, he is wealthy. But he is not happy, for his "prosperity puts [his] life in danger." The hermit presents still a third possibility: he is even more intelligent than the gentleman but, somewhat like the shepherds, he enjoys few material comforts. In contrast to them both, he has renounced all contact with society in an effort "to close [his] life in peace." The effort, however, he confesses, has not brought him peace; for, by withdrawing into solitude, he has cut himself off from the relaxations and diversions necessary to his happiness as a human being. Digging up "a considerable treasure"—what a neat touch that is!—he accompanies the prince's party back to Cairo.

The last special formula for happiness which Rasselas explores is the declaration made by the "philosopher" that to live according to nature is to live happily. When the young man asks "what it is to live according to nature," the philosopher's reply shows him "that this was one of the sages whom he should understand less as he heard him longer." From him one could not begin to learn the secretof happiness. The modes of life inspected earlier were at least intelligible; the trouble with them was that they did not attain happiness, chiefly because, as has been noted, they tried to leap over the hard fact of human nature in the chase. The pat advice, to cooperate with the present system and be happy, also ignores the limits of human comprehension by being wholly unintelligible. Neither it nor any of the other projects gives Rasselas (or the reader) the slightest hope of finding contentment via schemes specifically fashioned to produce it.

In the next chapter Johnson begins a different kind of survey but one directed to the same end as the first. Rasselas and Nekayah decide to look into "the private recesses of domestick peace." Considering the three possible areas for investigation, "high stations," middle, and low, they discard the last, believing that "ease" could not be found "among the poor," and concentrate their inquiries on the first, which Rasselas is to examine, and the second, assigned to Nekayah. Once again Johnson has achieved a completeness in approach which, viewed in relation to his purpose, can scarcely be called accidental.

After a vain search for a happy person in "courts" and "private houses," the prince and princess discuss the results of their searches in Chapters xxv-xxviii. The conversation consists of a discourse on the evils incident to "greatness" and private life, broken up between brother and sister whose roles shift back and forth from that of a lecturer to that of a listener who, by comments and questions, serves to vary and guide the other's speech. Thus, as a result of their inquiries and, still more, of their conversation, Rasselas and Nekayah are used to demonstrate the lesson of the book: neither in high stations and moderate, married and single life, early and late marriages, nor in virtuous conduct can one hope to discover a full measure of happiness. Moreover, the comprehensiveness of the survey is emphasized by the tiff between brother and sister during their talk. What they do points up what they have found in their searches and what they say about them.

So far Rasselas and his party have moved in the world largely as observers of other people's lives. Next, however, with the areas for pure observation pretty well explored, they become more active participants by taking a trip to the pyramids. When they arrive Pekuah is afraid to go inside and the princess allows her to stay in the tent until they return. On coming out they learn that Pekuah and her maids have been captured by Arabs. They go back to Cairo and begin unsuccessful attempts to locate the maid of honor, whose abduction has made Nekayah inconsolable. Slowly, however, she becomes reconciled to the loss.

These are the facts of the narrative. How do they promote the endsought by Johnson? The circumstances of the abduction itself supply a partial answer. In the conversation with Rasselas about domestic happiness, Nekayah had said that a virtuous life does not always mean a happy life. Pekuah's seizure is an example of that dictum calculated to impress the reader as much as possible by affecting the main characters in the narrative. As Imlac says, Nekayah had shown kindness and generosity in allowing the maid to remain outside the pyramid; yet the result is sorrow for her and misery, as she thinks, for Pekuah. At the same time the abduction affords Imlac an occasion to tell what, if not happiness, may be gained from virtuous actions: "that no unlucky consequences can oblige us to repent it" is its "present reward"; for the future, we have the hope of "recompense" to "console our miscarriage"—a hope based on the belief that He "by whose laws our actions are governed, … will suffer none to be finally punished for obedience." Furthermore, Imlac's earlier remarks concerning Pekuah's fear of ghosts in the pyramid provide a kind of justification for extending one's view of existence beyond earthly life, while his comment on the vanity represented by the pyramids reminds the reader that among the "royal magnificence" of the past men were also discontented. Again, the description of the progression of Nekayah's grief reveals her illogical but human tendency to think change of place will decrease one's misery; although she has heard the hermit's story, she vows to retire from the world and "hide [herself] in solitude," a resolution Imlac opposes with the argument that loss "of one pleasure is no very good reason for rejection of the rest" and that in time she "will wish to return into the world." And gradually, of course, she does return to normal life, wondering, however, what may "be expected from our persuit of happiness, when we find the state of life to be such, that happiness itself is the cause of misery.'

From Nekayah Johnson turns to Pekuah, who, being discovered and ransomed, tells the story of her capture to her friends. Even more than Imlac's history of his life, her tale presents a sharp contrast to many oriental adventure stories, in which a noble lady's abduction often initiates or continues a series of marvelous happenings. The beginning is the only mildly exciting part of the whole adventure; the remainder consists, by and large, of Pekuah's efforts to prevent ennui. All potentially "romantic" aspects of the affair are made flat and prosaic. The Arab chieftain, who might have been dashing and handsome, an ardent lover, is avaricious; the time Pekuah might have spent in listening to his addresses, she actually spends "observing the manners of the vagrant nations, and … viewing remains of ancient edifices." At the Arab's stronghold, where she might have met another captive—say, a young man—and plotted with him to escape, she begins the study of astronomy under the captor's guidance as a means of beguiling "the tediousness of time," and when he leaves on his expeditions, her "only pleasure was to talk with my maids about the accident by which we were carried away, and the happiness that we should all enjoy at the end of our captivity." Clearly, the captivity itself offers none of that bliss, frequently romantic in nature, which the heroines in oriental tales usually enjoy in the course of their adventures.

But more than this. Pekuah's account is not only a deflation of the ordinary eastern tale; it also enables Johnson to document his thesis concerning happiness by reference to an area hitherto unexplored—the life of a sheik and of his harem (representing, in a sense, the reverse of marriage, discussed earlier by Rasselas and Nekayah). As indicated above, Pekuah finds no happiness in this life; her principal reaction, once the pleasure of seeing new sights is gone, is tedium. The Arab chief is a greedy man, though "far from illiterate"; the pleasures he enjoys among the members of his seraglio are "not those of friendship or society." He prefers the company of Pekuah but when offered the ransom gold "he hastened to prepare for our journey hither." As for his women they possess scarcely any of the qualifications requisite for happiness: "they had no ideas but of the few things that were within their view, and had hardly names for any thing but their cloaths and their food." Decidedly, this mode of life produces no more happiness than the conditions already examined.

After the party's return to Cairo, Rasselas, who begins "to love learning," declares that he intends to "pass the rest of his days in literary solitude." Imlac replies that he first "ought to examine its hazards" and he tells the prince the history of the astronomer. Beginning with a description of his many admirable qualities, Imlac slowly unfolds the astronomer's fixation concerning his power to control the weather and distribute the seasons. Instead of being happy, as the princess assumes he must be when Imlac begins the story, he is actually a victim of "the heaviest of human afflictions." The poet declares, "Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of reason"; and prompted by Rasselas he generalizes on the frequency and causes of insanity. Impressed by Imlac's remarks, Pekuah, Nekayah, and the prince confess and renounce visionary projects, thoughts of which have pleased their solitary hours: the maid resolves to stop imagining herself in a position of great power, the princess (in contrast) to cease dreams of pastoral obscurity, and Rasselas to repress utopian visions of "a perfect government." One cannot rely on day-dreaming for happiness, Johnson seems to be warning us.

With his repudiation of the delights of day-dreaming and the conversation with the "old man" in the following chapter, Rasselas reaches a terminal point in his search for the best choice of life. Taken together his inquiries form a broad survey of possible avenues to happiness arranged to cover the principal "ages" (fromyouth to old age) and parallel interests of man. He began by investigating the life of young men engaged in sensual pleasure, moved to examinations of other special recipes for happiness, explored (with Nekayah) private life on various levels, witnessed the princess' sorrow over her maid's abduction, heard Pekuah's account of her adventures, and, lastly, hears the history of the mad astronomer. Although it is apparently removed from the woes of the world, a life of learning offers no more hope for permanent happiness than the other conditions he has surveyed. Indeed, it may number among its evils the worst of misfortunes—loss of one's sanity; for, the prince discovers, the exercise of the mind itself, the indulgence of the imagination to compensate for the deficiencies of reality, may eventually prevent one from enjoying any human happiness.

Finally, the old man's remarks in Chapter xliv serve to round out an investigation which association with youth began. To the sage "the world has lost its novelty … Nothing is now of much importance …" He tries to be tranquil and looks forward to possessing "in a better state that happiness" which he has not found in life. The young people refuse to accept this estimate of long life and console themselves in various ways, and Imlac remembers "that at the same age, he was equally" optimistic.

The astronomer joins the prince's party, recovers his reason by mingling "in the gay tumults of life," and when questioned about the best choice of life, answers only that he has "chosen wrong." Then, Rasselas' quest for happiness completed, Johnson develops the positive side of his argument, i.e., the prospect of eternal happiness, which has been mentioned but not discussed previously by Nekayah, Imlac, and, most recently, by the old man. In Chapter xlvi "the prince enters and brings a new topick," the life of the monks of St. Anthony. "Those men," Imlac declares, "are less wretched … than the Abissinian princes in their prison of pleasure. Whatever is done by the monks is incited by an adequate and reasonable motive … Their devotion prepares them for another state, and reminds them of its approach, while it fits them for it." To live well in the world is better than to live well in a monastery, he continues; the important thing, however, is not where a man lives but his constancy, as evinced by action, in remembering that this state is "transient and probatory" and that the future state will contain "pleasure without danger, and security without restraint."

The intellectual reasons which support such a conduct of life Imlac presents in his discourse on the nature of the soul. He argues the absolute separation of mind and matter, says that "immateriality seems to imply a natural power of perpetual duration as a consequence of exemption from all causes of decay," but acknowledges that the Author of the soul can destroy it. "That itwill not perish by any inherent cause of decay … may be shown by philosophy; but philosophy can tell no more. That it will not be annihilated by him that made it, we must humbly learn from higher authority." Nekayah's reaction to the discourse points up Johnson's moral and brings the book to a close: "To me," she says, "the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity." Being young she, Pekuah, and Rasselas still entertain schemes of happiness, but they know that their wishes cannot "be obtained" and so they decide "to return to Abissinia." Their decision is at once a sign of the inevitable human desire for change in life and, more significant, impressive evidence of the futility of searches for lasting happiness on earth.

II

From the beginning the status of Rasselas as an oriental tale has troubled commentators. Practically everyone has recognized that the tale is not a tale of the sort represented by (say) those in the Arabian Nights, yet an early critic somehow felt bound to judge it as though it were the same (or a similar) kind of work.¹⁸ More than a century later another, while considering it an oriental tale, esteemed it primarily for its reflection of the author's lofty character.¹⁹ And recently still another has argued that Rasselas owes its "subject and outline" to a certain group of eastern stories.²⁰

In view of this uncertainty about the book's relationship to the larger group of writings with which it has traditionally been associated, we may examine the nature of the connection with more particularity than has been employed heretofore. And first of all we are faced with the problem of connecting Rasselas to a body of heterogeneous compositions, over which the term "oriental tale" has been spread like a cover only poorly equipped to hide the variety of objects within. These objects consist of at least two clearly defined kinds of literature, with many pieces occupying intermediate positions between the two extremes.²¹ On the one hand are such collections as the Arabian Nights Entertainments, the Persian Tales, the Chinese Tales, etc.—identical works in the sense that the stories they contain are all unified, more or less successfully, by the element of plot. In works of the second type, though a thread of narrative may still remain, the "story" has been replaced by another organizing principle, the exact nature of which depends on the end—satiric, moral, etc.—to be achieved in individual pieces. Representing this group are Marana's Letters of a Turkish Spy (and other volumes of "letters"), Brown's Amusements Serious and Comical, various papers in the Spectator, Guardian, Rambler, Adventurer, etc. Rasselas also has been thought to belong to this latter group. But it is labelled a "tale" on the title page; the prince and his companions have definite characters; andthey engage in a series of actions possessing at least a superficial resemblance to the parts of a real story. That the work appears most impressive when these features are treated as means to a didactic end has become clear, I hope, from an examination of its structure. Recognizing the general nature of the operations of the features, however, we may discuss the similarities between them and particular aspects of those oriental tales in which story or plot is the controlling determinant of what they contain.

Perhaps the most striking likenesses between the narrative in Rasselas and the first group of stories are to be found in a long section of the Persian Tales, englished from the French early in the century by Ambrose Philips, whose translation reached a sixth edition in 1750.²² Philips' preface to the translation explains that "the design of these feigned histories"—related by a nurse—"is to reduce a young princess to reason, who had conceived an unaccountable aversion to men, and would not be persuaded to marry. In order to this, each story furnishes a shining instance of some faithful lover, or affectionate husband: and though every tale pursues the same drift, yet they are all diversified with so much art, and interwoven with so great a variety of events, that the very last appears as new as the first." As the nurse finishes one tale the princess finds fault with the behavior of the lover depicted in it, and this leads the nurse to begin another story (or sequence of stories). Among the yams she spins is a group dealing with the experiences of certain constant lovers made permanently unhappy by the loss of their mistresses. Bedreddin, King of Damascus (so the nurse informs us), while admitting that he himself is not fully "content"—the main cause of his discontent, we learn later, arises from a tragic love affair—asserts, in opposition to his "Sorrowful Vizier's" opinion, that somewhere in the world are persons whose joy is unmixed with "disquiet" (p. 131). Whereupon the vizier tells the exciting story of his life; his sorrow is caused by the mysterious disappearance of his beloved princess. The king then turns to his favorite. His "history," filled with wild adventures, reveals that he, too, has been unfortunate in love; he is attached to the picture of "a lady who is not in being" (p. 163). Bedreddin inquires further in the city and his court. Everywhere the result is the same: the "happy weaver," for instance, who tells his tale to the king is miserable because of love; the courtiers and officers of his household, none of whom tell stories, are also dissatisfied for various reasons—envy, ambition, domestic troubles, etc. Disregarding the vizier's counsel to "judge of every body by yourself (p. 175), the king decides to travel until he finds a happy man. In disguise and accompanied by his adviser and the favorite, he begins an unsuccessful journey. He meets many persons who are apparently contented and hears many marvelous tales, but all the narrators confess an unhappiness arising from disappointment of one sort or another in their love affairs. Concluding, finally, that everyone "has something or otherto trouble him," Bedreddin returns with his comrades to Damascus; "if we three are not entirely contented," says the ruler, "let us consider that there are others more unhappy" (p. 257).

The principal similarities between Bedreddin's "history" and Rasselas are obvious. Two members of eastern royalty undertake searches for a happy man first in the immediate vicinity, then in the outside world, and, unable to find one, return (Rasselas only decides to return) to the place from which they set out. Neither is happy, both travel incognito and are accompanied by wiser men who foresee the failure of the mission, and both hear stories during their searches. In addition, a few similar remarks about happiness are included in both pieces. On the other hand, fundamental differences between the two leave scant grounds for assuming that the works are of the same kind, and make, I think, highly doubtful the statement that Rasselas is indebted to the Persian Tales for its "subject and outline."²³ For in the latter the story is the thing: Bedreddin's inquiries afford a convenient entry into the realm of the adventure tale—replete with handsome princes, lovely ladies (and some not so lovely), hairbreadth escapes, enchanted castles, magic chests, powerful genii, and so on. Only when a tale is finished is the narrator's unhappiness really mentioned and this slight emphasis is necessitated, not by a desire to point a moral, but by the nurse's pretext of telling in this series experiences of unhappy lovers in order to persuade the princess that certain men, although deprived of their loved ones, are forever faithful and miserable. Unlike Rasselas, Bedreddin is not intent on making a wise choice of life and little is said about his personal dissatisfaction; he simply believes that some persons are completely happy and tries to find at least one. Clearly, he cannot discover such a person unless the nurse's stories are to cease being what they presumably are—adventure tales of men who say they are unhappy lovers. And no one has ever offered this as an accurate description of Rasselas.

Once Bedreddin's search for a happy man is seen to be primarily a device for telling a group of stories within the framework of a larger collection, the parallels between it and Rasselas lose much of their impressiveness as evidence of Johnson's supposed borrowings from the Tales. Numerous partial resemblances remain, however, and a listing of these may throw light on the relationship of certain aspects of Rasselas both to the Persian Tales and, more important, to the whole genre comprising the "true" (as I have called it) oriental tale.²⁴ First of all, the prince of Abyssinia shares with the king of Damascus—and many characters in earlier stories of the same kind—the distinction of being a royal personage who, born and bred in one oriental country, leaves his home, wanders in another part of the east, and finally returns (Rasselas only decides to return) home. Rasselas and Bedreddin conceal their identity during their travels; so do many of the heroes in otheroriental tales. Older, wiser men go with them; trusted advisers not infrequently accompany other royal travellers. Again, the princess and maid in Rasselas correspond to the beautiful women who crowd the pages of the Persian and most other oriental tales. Furthermore, like all such collections, Rasselas consists, in part, of so-called "stories within a story." Of these Imlac's history and Pekuah's tale of her abduction parallel (roughly) more eventful stories told by heroes and heroines in many oriental tales. Finally, the Persian Tales and others contain scattered remarks about the miseries of life, the brevity of happiness, etc., which resemble, though only in a general way, observations in Rasselas.

The characteristics listed above obviously do not place Rasselas in the classification of the real oriental tale. With the possible exception of the eastern setting, not one is peculiarly "oriental"; each has been put to use in many different writings. Still, all of them, including the oriental trappings, are found most commonly, perhaps, in works of which the Arabian Nights is the best known example; and the fact that they also appear in Rasselas suggests the only reason for calling it an oriental tale and for considering its structure in terms of what such a tale frequently or ordinarily contains. But as long as the work is criticized in these terms it will remain a relatively unsuccessful composition. On the other hand, as has been argued above, an examination which begins with a fairly precise notion of the end sought in Rasselas and then moves to a discussion of the elements incorporated in the work for the purpose of attaining that end discloses more pertinent reasons for the inclusion of the "oriental" traits than the mere statement that they are oriental or the assertion that Johnson borrowed them from earlier tales.

Notes

¹ Perhaps the most positive statement of the minority opinion is made by Sir Walter Raleigh, who, in The English Novel (London, 1894), after admitting that Rasselas may be a "sermon" rather than a "novel," declares that "the structure of the plot is masterly, the events are arranged in a skilful climax, culminating in the story of the mad astronomer …" (p. 206). 0. F. Emerson's discussion in the introduction to his edition of Rasselas (New York, 1895) indicates that he, too, credits it with a rather systematic organization (pp. xxxvii-xl).

² E.g., Thomas Seccombe, The Age of Johnson, 3rd ed. (London, 1907), p. 12; D. Nichol Smith's remarks in the CHEL [Cambridge History of English Literature], x, 201.

³ See, e.g., G. B. Hill, ed. Rasselas (Oxford, 1887), p. 31; Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library (New York, 1899), II, 17; D. Nichol Smith's comment in the CHEL, x, 201; Louis Cazamian, A History ofEnglish Literature (New York, 1939), p. 834; George Sherburn in A Literary History of England (New York & London, 1948), pp. 994-995.

⁴ See, e.g., the writers and works cited in the preceding note.

⁵ C. R. Tracy, "Democritus, Arise!: A study of Dr. Johnson's Humor," Yale Rev., XXXIX (1950), 305. The prince, according to Tracy, is "the antithesis of the man of common sense of the eighteenth century, and a stubborn rationalist who makes himself ridiculous by refusing to comply with the modus vivendi that has been worked out by the men of good sense of his age" (p. 309). Although no one, I suppose, would deny that certain incidents in the book are humorous and amusing and that Rasselas himself is mildly ridiculous at times, Tracy's argument about the form of the work as a whole remains unconvincing. Its essential weakness, as it seems to me, lies in the arbitrary limitation of the kinds of works which Rasselas might represent; for Tracy the choice is between tragedy and comedy, and not unnaturally he chooses comedy. As I hope to demonstrate in the course of this paper, the contents of Rasselas appear to best advantage if the book is viewed (as most critics have thought it should be considered) as a didactic work, of the same general sort as The Vanity of Human Wishes and Rambler Nos. 204-205.… Tracy acknowledges that Rasselas "is a kind of 'Vanity of Human Wishes"' (p. 310) but apparently fails to see anything incongruous between this admission and his insistence that Rasselas is a comic work.

⁶ See, e.g., William Lyon Phelps, Advance of the English Novel (New York, 1916), p. 71. Other historians of the novel suggest that the tale is an "Oriental apologue"—Robert M. Lovett and Helen S. Hughes, The History of the Novel in England (Boston, 1932), p. 124—or "the longest and most sustained of (Johnson's] sermons on the vanity of human wishes"—Emest A. Baker, The History of the English Novel (London, 1934), IV, 61.

⁷ George Saintsbury, The Peace of the Augustans (London, 1916), p. 190. Saintsbury says, "Except Ecclesiastes, Rasselas is probably the wisest, though with that same exception it is almost the saddest book ever written."

⁸ In the remarks on Rasselas in his Samuel Johnson (New York, 1944), Joseph Wood Krutch says that part of the story "would seem to be no more than a device for introducing a survey of some of the various conditions of life …" (p. 176). But Krutch does not extend his comment to cover the whole narrative nor does he concern himself with an analysis of the book's organization (see pp. 175 ff.).

⁹ Practically all discussions of Rasselas note the similarity in ideas between it and The Vanity of Human Wishes, and severalmention the likenesses between it and these two Rambler papers; see, e.g., Emerson's ed., pp. xvii, xxxi, and Miss Martha Conant, The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1908), pp. 123-124.

¹⁰ See Johnson's translation of F. Jerome Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia (London, 1735), pp. 102, 118.

¹¹ Charles Jacques Poncet, Journey to Abyssinia, in Pinkerton's Collection of Voyages (London, 1814), xv, 89.

¹² Lovett and Hughes, Hist. of the Novel, p. 125; Tracy (see n. 5), p. 310.

¹³ For further discussion of this point, see [text following note 17]

¹⁴ See, e.g., Emerson (n. 1, above), pp. xxvi, xxviii-xxix.

¹⁵ For evidence of their use of this material, see, e.g., Evert Mordecai Clark, "Milton's Abyssinian Paradise," Studies in English (Austin, Texas, 1950), XXIX, 129-150; Lane Cooper, "The Abyssinian Paradise in Coleridge and Milton," MP [Modern Philology], III (1906), 327-332.

¹⁶ For a more detailed discussion of the "Dissertation on Flying," see my article on "Johnson's 'Dissertation on Flying' and John Wilkins' Mathematical Magick," MP, XLVII (1949), 24-31.

¹⁷ In this connection, see [the last two paragraphs of this essay].

¹⁸ Owen Ruffhead—Monthly Review, xx (May 1759), 428-438—having admitted the great usefulness of "fiction or romance" in making the "dictates of morality agreeable to mankind," insists that "tale-telling is not the talent" of the author of Rasselas. He also objects to the "matter" of the work: "the topics" have been handled until they are "threadbare"; most of the "sentiments" are to be found "in the Persian and Turkish tales, and other books of the like sort; wherein they are delivered to better purpose, and cloathed in a more agreeable garb" (p. 428).

¹⁹Rasselas "may be regarded," Martha Conant says in The Oriental Tale in England, "as the best type of the serious English oriental tale" (p. 140), being raised to this height by Johnson's "earnestness and dignity" (p. 153).

²⁰ Geoffrey Tillotson, "Rasselas and the Persian Tales," Essays in Criticism and Research (Cambridge, 1942), pp. 111-116.

²¹ See Conant, pp. 267-283, for a list and approximate dates of the"more important oriental tales published in English" before 1759.

²² See Tillotson, p. 112, for information about the date of Philips' translation; it may have been done in 1714. Another translation, by "Dr. King, and several other Hands," was definitely published in 1714. My quotations are taken from the 1783 ed. The Novelists' Magazine, Vol. XIII (London, 1784).

²³ Tillotson, p. 114. Moreover, no evidence has been produced to show that Johnson had read the Tales before—or even after—he wrote Rasselas. Tillotson acknowledges that "he does not seem to have mentioned the 'Persian Tales' in writing or conversation, except in the 'Life of Philips,' when he wrote bibliographically of the book in a way suggesting that he had handled it." The passage Tillotson refers to reads: "[Philips] was reduced to translate the Persian Tales for Tonson, for which he was afterwards reproached, with this addition of contempt, that he worked for half-a-crown. The book is divided into many sections, for each of which, if he received half-a-crown, his reward, as writers then were paid, was very liberal; but half-a-crown had a mean sound." Certainly, this comment tells us little about the date or the nature of Johnson's acquaintance with the Tales.

²⁴ The Arabian Nights, the Persian Tales (exclusive of the group in which Bedreddin figures), the Peruvian Tales, and the Chinese Tales all include stories which contain one or more of the partial similarities listed below in the text.