Good envy? There’s no such thing, according to innumerable writers and theologians. Samuel Johnson calls envy (in Rambler 183) an “unmixed and genuine evil.” Yet in a letter to a friend in 1757, Johnson talks about innocent envy: “I who have no sisters or brothers, look with some degree of innocent envy on those who may be said to be born to friends.” Johnson had a younger brother, Nathaniel, but he had died in 1737 at the age of twenty-five.
One could argue that Johnson’s innocent envy is not real envy, but then why does he—a scrupulous writer—use the word envy? In Rambler 9 Johnson writes, “almost all passions have their good as well as bad effects.” Did he sometimes think envy had good effects?
Innocent envy is the kind of envy that one is willing to acknowledge. Boswell’s friend Lord Hailes says to him: “I envy you the free and undisguised converse with such a man.” He is talking about Boswell’s friendship with Johnson. In Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Finn, a woman expresses innocent envy when she says to Finn, “You are going to the club, now, of course. I envy you men your clubs more than I do the House [a seat in Parliament].”
What is the consequence of innocent envy? Is it emulation—i.e., striving to attain what one envies? Johnson encouraged “honest and useful emulation of diligence” in all walks of life. Praising public monuments for keeping alive the memory of “those
