“The Fourth Son of The Mighty Emperor”: The Ethiopian Background of Johnson's Rasselas

Abstract

Four recent articles have presented two contradictory opinions concerning Johnson's sources for the Ethiopian background of Rasselas. The contention that his inspiration for the Happy Valley came from a wide variety of readings on Ethiopia is counter-balanced by an equal insistence on the importance of his debt to Lobo's Relation d'Abissinie. The student of Johnson remains unenlightened by this series of articles, not only because the relative merits of their arguments are never discussed but also because none of them has been based on a comprehensive study of the Ethiopian materials available to Johnson. In an effort to bring the problem closer to its definitive solution, I propose to examine a largely neglected body of material on Ethiopia, identify specific sources for Ethiopian features of Rasselas and Rambler essays 204–205, and suggest that the circumstances of the composition of Rasselas were significantly different from those generally imagined.