Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (September 7, 1709 Old Style/September 18 New Style 1–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, whose bons mots are still frequently quoted in print today.
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. At some point, however, Johnson gained a reputation for being a notoriously slow writer, and poet Charles Churchill wrote of him that He for subscribers baits his hook - and takes your cash, but where's the book.[1]
In 1762, Johnson was awarded a government pension of three hundred pounds a year, largely through the efforts of Thomas Sheridan and the Earl of Bute. Johnson met James Boswell, his future biographer, in 1763. Around the same time, 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 proceeded to attack the claims that James Macpherson's Ossian poems were translations of ancient Scottish literature, on the false basis that the Scottish Gaelic language "never was a written language." This reveals Johnson's undoubted anti-Gaelic and anti-Scottish prejudice, but also perhaps some of the paranoia left-over after being fooled by a Scotsman called William Lauder into proclaiming John Milton a fraud, before consequently being made to look ridiculous by yet another Scot, John Douglas. However, Johnson also aided Scottish Gaelic by calling for a Bible translation, which came to pass not long after. Previously, Scottish Gaels had been made to use Bedell's Irish Gaelic translation.
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 the 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.
Johnson died in 1784 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Large and powerfully built, Johnson had poor eyesight and was hard of hearing. His face was deeply scarred from childhood scrofula. Johnson suffered from a number of tics and larger jerky involuntary movements; symptoms described by his contemporaries suggest that Johnson may have suffered from Tourette syndrome and possibly obsessive-compulsive disorder. He tended towards melancholia. 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. He admitted to sympathies for the Jacobite cause but by the reign of George III he came to accept the Hanoverian Succession. 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; it is perhaps this privation of elaborate systematic and constructive intellectual proclivities that motivated his singular strength and recourse to the composition of satirical and critical works, though his profound and often deeply melancholy sense of humour or wit must also share responsiblity.
Johnson's fame is due in part to the success of Boswell's Life of Johnson. Boswell, however, met Johnson when Johnson had already achieved a degree of fame and stability; Boswell's biography puts disproportionate emphasis on the last years of Johnson's life. Consequently, Johnson has been seen more as a gruff, lovable clubman than as the struggling and poverty-stricken writer that he was for the greater part of his life.
His time in Birmingham (after leaving Oxford and before he moved to London) is remembered by a frieze in the city's Old Square, an area much changed from when he lived there. Birmingham Central Library has a Johnson Collection. It has around 2,000 volumes of works by him, and books and periodicals about him. It includes many of his first editions.
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.
2 Dr. Johnson (played by Robbie Coltrane) featured in the third series of Blackadder (in the episode titled 'Ink and Incapability'), presenting his dictionary to Prince George for his patronage, whereupon it is believed to be burnt by Baldrick; Blackadder then attempts to rewrite the whole thing in one night.
See also
- Life of Johnson by James Boswell, the most notable biography of Samuel Johnson.
- Dr Johnson's House
ReferencesISBN 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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