Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson circa 1772, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (September 7, 1709 – December 13, 1784), often referred to simply as Dr Johnson, was one of England's greatest literary figures: a poet, essayist, biographer, lexicographer, and often esteemed the finest literary critic in English]]. Johnson was a great wit and prose stylist of genius, although he perhaps best known today for his pugnacious personality. Johnson, moreso than any other author in English up to his time, became a public figure of tremendous fame and influence; he was perhaps the first author-celebrity in the English world, and his influence on the opinions not only of his fellow writers but on every intellectual in England and the colonies was perhaps only equalled, a century later, by Coleridge. His newspaper articles, literary reviews, and lectures virtually set the standard for 18th-century art and thought.

Among students of philosophy, Dr. Johnson is perhaps best known for his "refutation" of Bishop Berkeley's Idealism. During a conversation with his biographer, Johnson became infuriated at the suggestion that Berkeley's immaterialism, however obviously false, could not be refuted. In his anger, Johnson powerfully kicked a nearby stone and proclaimed, of Berkeley's theory, that "I refute it thus!".

Life and work

The son of a poor bookseller, Johnson was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire. He attended Lichfield Grammar School. A few weeks after he turned nineteen, on October, 31st 1728, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford; he was to remain there for thirteen months. Though he was a formidable student, poverty forced him to leave Oxford without taking a degree. He attempted to work as a teacher and schoolmaster; initially turned down by Revd Samuel Lea MA (headmaster of Adams' Grammar School) he found work at a school in Stourbridge, but these ventures were not successful. At the age of twenty-five, he married Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter, a widow twenty-one years his senior.

In 1737, Johnson, penniless, left for London together with his former pupil David Garrick. Johnson found employment with Edward Cave, writing for The Gentleman's Magazine. For the next three decades, Johnson wrote biographies, poetry, essays, pamphlets, parliamentary reports and even prepared a catalogue for the sale of the Harleian Library. Johnson lived in poverty for much of this time. The poem "London" (1738) and the Life of Savage (1745), a biography of Johnson's friend and fellow writer Richard Savage, who had shared in Johnson's poverty and died in 1744, are important works of this period.

Johnson began on one of his most important works, A Dictionary of the English Language, in 1747. It was not completed until 1755. Although it was widely praised and enormously influential, Johnson did not profit from it much financially, since he had to bear the expenses of its long composition. At the same time he was working on his dictionary, Johnson was also writing a series of semi-weekly essays under the title The Rambler. These essays, often on moral and religious topics, tended to be more grave than the title of the series would suggest. The Rambler ran until 1752. Although not originally popular, they found a large audience once they were collected in volume form. Johnson's wife died shortly after the final number appeared.

Johnson began another essay series, The Idler, in 1758. It ran weekly for two years. The Idler essays were published in a weekly news journal, rather than as an independent publication like The Rambler. They were shorter and lighter than the Rambler essays. In 1759, Johnson published his satirical novel Rasselas, said to have been written in two weeks to pay for his mother's funeral.

In 1762, Johnson was awarded a government pension of three hundred pounds a year, largely through the efforts of influential friends. Johnson met James Boswell, his future biographer, in 1763. Boswell's Life of Johnson would in some ways become the most influential work to come out of Johnson's life, even though it was not written by Johnson himself; Boswell's biography, by serving as a compendium of all of Johnson's various thoughts and opinions, would eventually become the most cohesive testament to Johnson's talent and genius, and is inseparable from the academic study of Johnson today. Around the same time that he met Boswell, Johnson formed "The Club", a social group that included his friends Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, David Garrick and Oliver Goldsmith. By now, Johnson was a celebrated figure. He received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin in 1765, and one from Oxford ten years later.

In 1765, he met Henry Thrale, a wealthy brewer and member of Parliament, and his wife Hester Thrale. They quickly became friends, and soon Johnson became a member of the family. He stayed with the Thrales for fifteen years until Henry's death in 1781. Hester's reminiscences of Johnson, together with her diaries and correspondence, are second only to Boswell's as a source of biographical information on Johnson.

In 1773, ten years after he met Boswell, the two set out on A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and two years later Johnson's account of their travels was published under that title. (Boswell's The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides was published in 1786). Their visit to the Scottish Highlands and Hebrides took place when pacification after the Jacobite Risings was crushing the Clan system and Gaelic culture which was increasingly being romanticised.

Johnson spent considerable time in Edinburgh in the 1770s, where he was a close friend of Boswell and of Lord Monboddo; this triumvirate conducted extensive correspondence and mutual literary reviews.

Johnson's final major work was perhaps his most monumental achievement, the comprehensive Lives of the English Poets, a project commissioned by a consortium of London booksellers. The Lives, which were critical as well as biographical studies, appeared as prefaces to selections of each poet's work that Johnson addressed.

Johnson died in 1784 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Legacy

Johnson was a compassionate man, supporting a number of poor friends under his own roof. He was a devout, conservative Anglican as well as a staunch Tory. Nonetheless, Johnson was a fiercely independent and original thinker, as much a unique thinker-for-himself as Milton or Blake, which may explain his deep affinity for Milton despite the latter's intensely radical — and, for Johnson, intolerable — political and religious outlook. Thus, although perhaps not as radical or inventive as the two poets, Johnson struck a sort of middle-ground, whereby his satires and criticism could utilize his poetic genius while at the same time steering cleer of Blake and Milton's more overly rebellious (and thus problematic) tendencies.

Thus, although not as singularly revolutionary as some of the other great poets of his times, (such as [[William Blake|Blake), nor as gifted technically as a writer to be particularly unique, Johnson nevertheless acts as a sort of gateway, whereby almost all the literature prior to him is filtered, by way of his numerous writings, reviews, and publications, and thus passed on to the subsequent generations that would become the Romantics. Hence, if we are to understand the history of English literature, and the currents of English intellectual discourse, we must inevitably arrive at Johnson who stands right between the two major periods of English literature and is a critical link to both.

Major works

Biography, criticism, lexicography, prose

• Life of Richard Savage (1745)
• A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
• The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759)
• The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765])
• A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775)
• Lives of the English Poets (1781)

Essays, pamphlets, periodicals

• "Plan for a Dictionary of the English Language" (1747)
• The Rambler (1750-2)
• The Idler (1758-60)
• "The False Alarm" (1770)
• "The Patriot" (1774)

Poetry

• London (1738)
• "Prologue at the Opening of the Theatre in Drury Lane" (1747)
• The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749)
• Irene, a Tragedy (1749)

Notes

¹ After Britain's change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, Johnson celebrated his birthday on September 18.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Bate, Walter Jackson. The Achievement of Samuel Johnson (1978), and Samuel Johnson (1977).
• Reddick, Alan: The Making of Johnson's Dictionary (Cambridge, 1990)
• Quinney, Laura. "Chapter 2: Johnson in Mourning" in Literary Power and the Criteria of Truth (1995).
• Watkins, W. B. C. Perilous Balance: The Tragic Genius of Swift, Johnson, and Sterne (1939).
• Wharton, T. F. Samuel Johnson and the Theme of Hope (1984).

Online texts

• Life Of Johnson by James Boswell (Project Gutenberg)
• Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson by Hester Thrale
• A list of e-texts of Johnson's works from the University of Pennsylvania Online Books Page.
• Works by Samuel Johnson. Project Gutenberg

Quotations by Johnson

• Over 1,700 Johnson quotations are at The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page
• WikiQuote - Quotes by Samuel Johnson
• More quotes from Samuel Johnson on The Quotations Page

Other

• Jack Lynch's Samuel Johnson page, maintained by Jack Lynch, editor of The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual.
• A discussion of the question of how liberal or conservative Johnson actually was.
• Samuel Johnson at Find-A-Grave
• The Johnson Society of London

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