Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:34, 30 September 2008

Samuel Johnson LLD MA
Samuel Johnson c. 1772, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds
Occupation	essayist, lexicographer, biographer, poet
Spouse	Elizabeth Jervis Porter

Samuel Johnson (often referred to as Dr Johnson) (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784) was an English author. Beginning as a Grub Street journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is also the subject of "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature": James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.

Johnson was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and attended Pembroke College, Oxford for a year, before his lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher he moved to London, where he began to write essays for The Gentleman's Magazine. His early works include the biography The Life of Richard Savage and the poem The Vanity of Human Wishes. Johnson was a devout and compassionate man, whose Christian morality permeated his works. Although he was a conservative Anglican, he respected those of other denominations who demonstrated a commitment to Christ's teachings.

After nine years of work, Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755; it had a far-reaching impact on Modern English and has been described as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". The Dictionary brought Johnson popularity and success; until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary, 150 years later, Johnson's was viewed as the pre-eminent British dictionary. His later works included essays, an influential annotated edition of William Shakespeare's plays, and the widely read novel Rasselas. In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he later travelled to Scotland; Johnson described their travels in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Towards the end of his life, he produced the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, which includes biographies and evaluations of 17th- and 18th-century poets.

Boswell's Life, along with other biographies, documented Johnson's behaviour and mannerisms in such detail that they have informed the posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome (TS), a condition unknown to 18th-century physicians. He presented a tall and robust figure, but his odd gestures and tics were confusing to some on their first encounter with him. After a series of illnesses, Johnson died on the evening of 13 December 1784; he was buried in Westminster Abbey. In the years following his death, Johnson began to be recognised as having had a lasting effect on literary criticism, and even as the only great critic of English literature.

Biography

Early life and education

Born on 18 September 1709 to Michael Johnson, a bookseller, and his wife, Sarah Ford, Samuel Johnson often claimed that he grew up in poverty. Since both families had money, it is uncertain what happened between Michael and Sarah's marriage and the birth of Samuel just three years later to provoke such a change in fortune. Johnson was born in the family home above his father's bookshop in Lichfield, Staffordshire and, because his mother Sarah was 40 when she gave birth, a "man-midwife" and a surgeon of "great reputation" named George Hector was brought in to assist. He did not cry and, with doubts surrounding the newborn's health, his aunt claimed "that she would not have picked such a poor creature up in the street". As it was feared the baby might die, the vicar of St Mary's was summoned to perform a baptism. Two godfathers were chosen: Samuel Swynfen, a physician and graduate of Pembroke College, and Richard Wakefield, a lawyer, coroner, and Lichfield town clerk.

Johnson's health improved and he was placed in the nursing care of Joan Marklew. During this period he contracted what is believed to have been scrofula, known at that time as the "King's Evil". Sir John Floyer, a former physician to Charles II, recommended that the young Johnson should receive the "royal touch", which he received from Queen Anne on 30 March 1712 at St James's Palace. However, the ritual was ineffective and an operation was performed that left him with permanent scars across his face and body. With the birth of Johnson's brother, Nathaniel, Michael was unable to keep on top of the debts he had accumulated over the years, and his family was no longer able to live in the style to which it had been accustomed..

Johnson demonstrated signs of great intelligence as a child, and his parents, to his later disgust, would show off his "newly acquired accomplishments". His initial education began at the age of three, and came from his mother who had him memorise and recite passages from the Book of Common Prayer. When Johnson turned four, he was sent to a nearby school, and, when he reached the age of six, he was sent to a retired shoemaker to continue his education. A year later, Johnson was sent to Lichfield Grammar School, where he excelled in Latin. During this time, Johnson started to exhibit the tics that would influence how people viewed him in his later years, and which formed the basis for his posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome. Although TS caused problems in his private and public life, it lent Johnson "great verbal and vocal energy". He excelled in his education and was promoted to the upper school at the age of nine. During this time, he befriended Edmund Hector, nephew of his "man-midwife" George Hector, and John Taylor, with whom he remained in contact for the rest of his life.

At the age of 16, Johnson was given the opportunity to stay with his cousins, the Fords, at Pedmore, Worcestershire. There he became a close friend of Cornelius Ford, who employed his knowledge of the classics to tutor Johnson while he was not attending school. Ford was a successful, well-connected academic, but was also a notorious alcoholic whose excesses contributed to his death six years after Johnson's visit. Having spent six months with his cousins, Johnson returned to Lichfield, but Hunter, "angered by the impertinence of this long absence", refused to allow him to continue at the grammar school. Unable to return to Lichfield Grammar School, Johnson was enrolled into the King Edward VI grammar school at Stourbridge. Because the school was located near Pedmore, Johnson was able to spend more time with the Fords, and he began to write poems and verse translations. However, he spent only six months at Stourbridge before returning once again to his parents' home in Lichfield.

During this time, Johnson's future was uncertain as his father was deeply in debt. To earn money, Johnson began to stitch books for his father, and it is possible that Johnson spent most of his time in his father's bookshop reading various works and building his literary knowledge. They remained in poverty until Sarah Johnson's cousin, Elizabeth Harriotts, died in February 1728 and left enough money to send Johnson to college. On 31 October 1728, a few weeks after he turned 19, Johnson entered Pembroke College, Oxford. The inheritance did not cover all of his expenses at Pembroke, but Andrew Corbet, a friend and student at Pembroke, offered to make up the deficit.

At Pembroke, Johnson made many friends, but neglected a number of mandatory lectures, and ignored calls for poems. He did complete one poem, the first of his tutorial exercises, on which he spent comparable time, and which provoked surprise and applause. He was later asked by his tutor to produce a Latin translation of Alexander Pope's Messiah as a Christmas exercise. Johnson completed half of the translation in one afternoon and the rest the following morning. Although the poem brought him praise, it did not bring the material benefit he had hoped for. The poem later appeared in Miscellany of Poems (1731), edited by John Husbands, a Pembroke tutor, and is the earliest surviving publication of any of Johnson's writings. Johnson spent the rest of his time studying, even over the Christmas vacation. He drafted a "plan of study" called "Adversaria", which was left unfinished, and used his time to learn French while working on his knowledge of Greek.

After thirteen months, poverty forced Johnson to leave Oxford without a degree, and he returned to Lichfield. During his last weeks at Oxford, Jorden left Pembroke, and Johnson was given William Adams as a tutor in his place. He enjoyed Adams as a tutor, but by December, Johnson was already a quarter behind in his student fees, and he was forced to return home. He left behind many books that his father lent him because he could not afford to transport them and as a symbolic gesture that he hoped to return to the school soon.

He eventually received a degree: just before the publication of his Dictionary in 1755, Oxford University awarded Johnson the degree of Master of Arts. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1765 by Trinity College Dublin and in 1775 by Oxford University. In 1776, he returned to Pembroke with Boswell and toured the school with his previous tutor Adams, who was then the school's Master. He used that visit to recount his time at the college, his early career, and to express his later fondness for Jorden.

Early career

There is little record of Johnson's life between the end of 1729 and 1731; it is likely that he lived with his parents. He experienced bouts of mental anguish and physical pain during years of illness, and afterwards the tics and gesticulations associated with TS became more noticeable and were "commented on by many observers". To further complicate Johnson's life, by 1731 his father was deeply in debt and had lost much of his standing in Lichfield. An usher's position became available at Stourbridge Grammar School, but Johnson's lack of a degree led to his application being passed over on 6 September 1731. At about the same time, Johnson's father became ill and developed an "inflammatory fever" which ended his life in December 1731. Johnson eventually found employment as undermaster at a school in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire, run by Sir Wolstan Dixie who allowed Johnson to teach without a degree. Although the arrangement may seem congenial, Johnson was treated as "a kind of domestick chaplain". Still, Johnson found pleasure in teaching even though he thought it boring. By June 1732, he had returned home, and, after an argument with Dixie, quit the school.

Johnson spent the rest of his time at Lichfield looking for a position at the other local schools, and, after being turned down for a position in Ashbourne, he spent his time with his friend Edmund Hector who lived in the home of Thomas Warren. Warren was at that time starting his Birmingham Journal, and he enlisted Johnson's help. His connection with Warren continued to grow, and Johnson proposed to translate Jeronimo Lobo's account of the Abyssinians. Johnson read Abbe Joachim Le Grand's French translations, and he thought that a shorter version might be "useful and profitable". He managed to finish a section but ran into problems. In order to finish the rest, Johnson dictated directly to Hector, who then took the copy to the printer and made any corrections, and, after a year later, his A Voyage to Abyssinia was finally published. Johnson returned to Lichfield in February 1734, where he began an annotated edition of Poliziano's Latin poems, along with a history of Latin poetry from Petrarch to Poliziano. Johnson began on 15 June 1743 and printed a Proposal, but the project did not receive enough funds and was soon brought to an end.

Johnson was close to a man named Harry Porter, and remained with him during his terminal illness. Porter died on 3 September 1734, having left his wife, Elizabeth Jervis Porter (otherwise known as "Tetty"), widowed at the age of 41, with three children. Months later, Johnson began to court the widow; Reverend William Shaw claims that "the first advances probably proceeded from her, as her attachment to Johnson was in opposition to the advice and desire of all her relations". Johnson was inexperienced in such relationships, but the well-to-do widow encouraged him and promised to provide for him with her substantial savings. Johnson married Elizabeth on 9 July 1735, at St. Werburgh's Church in Derby. The Porter family did not approve of the match, partly because Johnson was 25 and Elizabeth was 21 years his elder. His mother's marriage to Johnson so disgusted her son Jervis that he stopped talking to her. However, her daughter, Lucy, had accepted Johnson from the start, and her other son, Joseph, was later willing to finally accept the marriage.

During the previous June, Johnson, while working as a tutor for Thomas Whitby's children, applied for the position of headmaster at Solihull School. Walmesley lent his support to Johnson's application, but Johnson was passed over because the school's directors thought he was "a very haughty, ill-natured gent., and that he has such a way of distorting his face (which though he can't help) the gent think it may affect some lads". With the encouragement of Walmesley, Johnson decided that he could be a successful teacher if he ran his own school. In the autumn of 1735, Johnson opened a private academy at Edial, near Lichfield. The building, Edial Hall, was a large house with a pyramid-shaped roof and a unique design; a back room served as the schoolroom while the rest housed Johnson's family. He had only three pupils, David Garrick, George Garrick and Lawrence Offley; David Garrick—18 at the time—went on to become one of the most famous actors of his day. The venture was unsuccessful however and cost Tetty a substantial portion of her fortune, and instead of trying to keep up with the failing school, Johnson began to write his first major work, the historical tragedy Irene.

On 2 March 1737, penniless, Johnson left for London with his former pupil David Garrick. To make things worse, Johnson received word that his brother had died on the day they left. Fortunately, Garrick had connections in London, and the two would stay with his distant relative, Richard Norris. Johnson did not stay there long, and set out for Greenwich near the Golden Hart Tavern to finish Irene. During that time, he wrote to Edward Cave on 12 July 1737 and proposed a translation for Paolo Sarpi's The History of the Council of Trent (1619), which Cave did not accept until months later. In October 1737, Johnson brought his wife to London, and he soon found employment with Cave as a writer for The Gentleman's Magazine. His work for the magazine and other publishers during this time "is almost unparalleled in range and variety", and "so numerous, so varied and scattered" that "Johnson himself could not make a complete list".

In May 1738, his first major work, a poem called London, was published anonymously. The work was based on Juvenal's Satire III and describes the character Thales's leaving for Wales to escape the problems of London. In particular, the poem describes how London is a place of crime, corruption, and the neglect of the poor. Johnson could not bring himself to regard the poem as granting him any merit as a poet; however, Alexander Pope claimed that the author "will soon be déterré" (brought to light, become well known), although it did not immediately happen.

In August, Johnson was denied a position as master of the Appleby Grammar School because a Masters degree from Oxford or Cambridge was required. To ensure that he would not suffer rejection again, Pope asked John Gower, a man with influence in the Appleby community, to have a degree awarded to Johnson. Gower petitioned Oxford for an honorary degree to be awarded to Johnson, but he was told that it was "too much to be asked". Gower then asked a friend of Jonathan Swift to plead with Swift to use his influence at the University of Dublin to have a Masters degree awarded to Johnson, which could then be used to justify a masters awarded to Johnson from Oxford. However, Swift refused to act on Johnson's behalf.

Between 1737 and 1739, Johnson became close to Richard Savage. Feeling guilty for his own poverty, Johnson stopped living with his wife and spent time with Savage. Together, they would roam the streets at night without enough money to stay in taverns or sleep in "night-cellars". Eventually, Savage's friends tried to help him by convincing him to move to Wales. Savage ended up in Bristol however, and once again fell into debt. He was put into debtor's prison and died in 1743. A year later, Johnson wrote Life of Mr Richard Savage (1744), a "moving" work that, according to Johnson biographer and literary critic Walter Jackson Bate, "remains one of the innovative works in the history of biography".

A Dictionary of the English Language

In 1746, a group of publishers approached Johnson about creating a dictionary. On the morning of 18 June 1746, Johnson signed a contract for 1500 guineas with William Strahan and associates to produce an authoritative dictionary of the English language. Johnson claimed that he could finish the project in three years. In comparison, the Académie Française had forty scholars spending forty years to complete their dictionary, which prompted Johnson to claim, "This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman". Although he did not succeed in completing the work in three years, he did manage to finish it in nine, justifying his boast. According to Bate, the Dictionary "easily ranks as one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship, and probably the greatest ever performed by one individual who labored under anything like the disadvantages in a comparable length of time".

Johnson's dictionary was not the first, nor was it unique. It was, however, the most commonly used and imitated for the 150 years between its first publication and the appearance of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1928. Other dictionaries, such as Nathan Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum, were much larger, and in the 150 years preceding Johnson's dictionary about twenty other "English" dictionaries had been produced. However, there was open dissatisfaction with the dictionaries of the period. In 1741, David Hume claimed: "The Elegance and Propriety of Stile have been very much neglected among us. We have no Dictionary of our Language, and scarce a tolerable Grammar". What Johnson's dictionary offers are insights into the 18th century and "a faithful record of the language people used". Johnson's Dictionary is more than a reference book; it serves as a work of literature unto itself.

Throughout the decade, he constantly worked on the Dictionary, which caused his and Tetty's living conditions to suffer; Johnson had to employ multiple assistants for copying and mechanical work, which filled the house with incessant noise and clutter. He was always busy with his work, and kept hundreds of books around at any given time. John Hawkins described the scene: "The books he used for this purpose were what he had in his own collection, a copious but a miserably ragged one, and all such as he could borrow; which latter, if ever they came back to those that lent them, were so defaced as to be scarce worth owning". Johnson was also distracted by Tetty's health, as she started to show signs of a terminal illness. To accommodate both his wife and his work, he moved to Gough Square near his printer, William Strahan.

To prepare for the work, Johnson wrote a Plan for the Dictionary. This Plan was patronised by Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield but not to Johnson's pleasure. Chesterfield did not care about praise, but was instead interested by Johnson's abilities. Seven years after first meeting Johnson to go over the work, Chesterfield wrote two anonymous essays in The World that recommended the Dictionary. He complained that the English language was lacking structure and argued in support of the dictionary. Johnson did not appreciate the tone of the essay, and he felt that Chesterfield did not fulfill his obligations as the work's patron. Johnson wrote a letter expressing this view and harshly criticised Chesterfield saying, "Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind: but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it." However, Chesterfield accepted it without any ill will and, impressed by the language, he kept the letter displayed on a table for anyone to read.

During his work on the dictionary, Johnson made many appeals for financial help in the form of subscriptions: patrons would get a copy of the first edition as soon as it was printed in compensation for their support during its compilation. The appeals ran until 1752. The Dictionary was finally published in September 1755, with the title page acknowledging that Oxford had awarded Johnson a Master of Arts degree in anticipation of the work. The published dictionary was a huge book. With pages nearly 1½ feet (46 cm) tall and 20 inches (51 cm) wide, it contained 42,773 entries, to which only a few more were added in subsequent editions. It sold for the extravagant price of £4 10s, the equivalent of about £350 today. An important innovation of Johnson's was to illustrate the meanings of his words by literary quotation, of which there are around 114,000. The authors most frequently cited by Johnson include Shakespeare, Milton and Dryden. It was years before "Johnson's Dictionary", as it came to be known, turned a profit. Author's royalties were unknown at that time, and Johnson, once his contract to deliver the book was fulfilled, received no further monies from its sale. Years later, many of its quotations would be repeated by various editions of the Webster's Dictionary and the New English Dictionary.

Besides working on the Dictionary, Johnson also wrote various essays, sermons, and poems during these nine years. He decided to produce a series of essays under the title The Rambler that would run every Tuesday and Saturday for twopence each. Explaining the title years later, he told his friend, the painter Joshua Reynolds: "I was at a loss how to name it. I sat down at night upon my bedside, and resolved that I would not go to sleep till I had fixed its title. The Rambler seemed the best that occurred, and I took it". These essays, often on moral and religious topics, tended to be more grave than the title of the series would suggest; his first comments in The Rambler were to ask "that in this undertaking thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld from me, but that I may promote thy glory, and the salvation of myself and others". The popularity of The Rambler took off once the issues were collected as a volume; they were reprinted nine times during Johnson's life. Writer and printer Samuel Richardson, enjoying the essays greatly, questioned the publisher as to who wrote the works; only he and a few of Johnson's friends were told of Johnson's authorship. One friend, the female novelist Charlotte Lennox, includes a defense of The Rambler in her novel The Female Quixote (1752). In particular, the character Mr. Glanville says, "you may sit in Judgment upon the Productions of a Young, a Richardson, or a Johnson. Rail with premeditated Malice at the Rambler; and for the want of Faults, turn even its inimitable Beauties into Ridicule" (Book VI, Chapter XI). Later, she claims Johnson as "the greatest Genius in the present Age".

However, not all of his work was confined to The Rambler. One such work, The Vanity of Human Wishes, was written with such "extraordinary speed" that Boswell claimed Johnson "might have been perpetually a poet". The poem is an imitation of Juvenal's Satire X and claims that "the antidote to vain human wishes is non-vain spiritual wishes". In particular, Johnson emphasises "the helpless vulnerability of the individual before the social context" and the "inevitable self-deception by which human beings are led astray". The poem was critically celebrated but it failed to become popular, and sold less than London. In 1749, Garrick made good on his promise that he would produce Irene, but its title was altered to Mahomet and Irene to make it "fit for the stage". The show eventually ran for nine nights.

Tetty Johnson spent most of her time in London ill, and in 1752 she decided to return to the countryside while Johnson was busy working on his Dictionary. She died on 17 March 1752, and, at word of her death, Johnson wrote a letter to his old friend Taylor, which according to Taylor "expressed grief in the strongest manner he had ever read". He wrote a sermon in her honour, to be read at her funeral, but Taylor refused to read it. This only exacerbated Johnson's feelings of being lost, and his despair after the death of his wife, and John Hawkesworth had to take over organising the funeral. Johnson felt guilty about the poverty in which he believed he had forced Tetty to live, and blamed himself for neglecting her. He became outwardly discontent, and his diary was filled with prayers and laments over her death until his own. She was his primary motivation, and her death hindered his ability to complete his work.

Later career

On 16 March 1756, Johnson was arrested for an outstanding debt of £5 18s. Unable to contact anyone else, he wrote to the writer and publisher Samuel Richardson. Richardson, who had previously lent Johnson money, sent him six guineas to show his good will, and the two became friends. Soon after, Johnson met and befriended the painter Joshua Reynolds, who impressed Johnson sufficiently to declare Reynolds "almost the only man whom I call a friend". Reynolds' younger sister Frances observed during their time together "that men, women and children gathered around him , laughing" at his gestures and gesticulations. Johnson's only other friend who was present at the time, Bennet Langton, had just returned home and later set off to school in 1757.

To occupy himself, Johnson began to work on The Literary Magazine, or Universal Review, the first issue of which was printed on 19 March 1756. Philosophical disagreements erupted over the purpose of the publication when the Seven Years' War began and Johnson started to write political essays about his dislike of the fighting. After the war began, the Magazine included many reviews, at least 34 of which were written by Johnson. When not working on the Magazine, Johnson wrote a series of prefaces for other writers, such as Giuseppe Baretti, William Payne and Charlotte Lennox. Johnson's relationship with Lennox and her works was particularly close during these years, and she relied so heavily upon Johnson that he was "the most important single fact in Mrs Lennox's literary life". He would later attempt to produce a new edition of her works, but even with his support, they were unable to find enough interest to follow through with its publication. To help Johnson around the house while he was busy with his various projects, Richard Bathurst, a physician and a member of Johnson's Club, pressured him to take on a free slave, Francis Barber, as his servant.

These efforts, however, consumed only a small portion of his time; his work on Edition of Shakespeare took up the rest. On 8 June 1756, Johnson published his Proposals for Printing, by Subscription, the Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare, which argued that the previous editions of Shakespeare were edited incorrectly and needed to be corrected. However, Johnson's progress on the work slowed as the months passed, and he told music historian Charles Burney in December 1757 that it would take him until the following March to complete it. Before that could happen, he was arrested again, for a debt of £40, in February 1758. The debt was soon repaid by Jacob Tonson, who had contracted Johnson to publish Shakespeare, and Johnson was soon motivated to finish his edition to repay the favour. Although it took him another seven years to finish, Johnson completed a few volumes of his Shakespeare to prove his commitment to the project.

In 1758, Johnson began to write a weekly series, The Idler, which ran from 15 April 1758 to 5 April 1760, as a way to avoid finishing his Shakespeare. This series was shorter and lacked many features of The Rambler. Unlike his independent publication of The Rambler, The Idler was published in a weekly news journal The Universal Chronicle, a publication supported by John Payne, John Newbery, Robert Stevens and William Faden. The Idler did not take up all of Johnson's time, and he was able to publish his philosophical novella Rasselas on 19 April 1759. The "little story book", as Johnson described it, describes the life of Prince Rasselas and Nekayah, his sister, who are kept in a place called the Happy Valley. In the land of Abyssinia, the Happy Valley is a place free of problems, where any desire is quickly satisfied. The constant pleasure does not lead to satisfaction, though, and Rasselas escapes, with the help of a philosopher named Imlac, explores the world to witness how all aspects of society and life in the outside world are filled with suffering. They return to Abyssinia, but do not wish to return to the state of constantly fulfilled pleasures found in the Happy Valley. Rasselas was written in one week to pay for his mother's funeral, and to settle her debts; it became so popular that there was a new English edition of the work almost every year. It appeared in many works of fiction, mainly in descriptions of what the characters were reading, including Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables. Its fame was not limited to English-speaking nations, and Rasselas was immediately translated into five languages (French, Dutch, German, Russian and Italian), and later into another nine.

By 1762, however, Johnson had gained a notoriety for dilatory writing; contemporary poet Charles Churchill teased Johnson for the delay in producing his long-promised edition of Shakespeare: "He for subscribers baits his hook / and takes your cash, but where's the book?" The comments soon motivated Johnson to finish his Shakespeare, and, after receiving the first payment from a government pension on 20 July 1762, he was able to dedicate most of his time towards this goal. Earlier that July, the 24-year-old King George III granted Johnson an annual pension of £300 in appreciation for the Dictionary. While the pension did not make Johnson wealthy, it did allow him a modest yet comfortable independence for the remaining 22 years of his life. The award came largely through the efforts of Thomas Sheridan and the Earl of Bute. When Johnson questioned if the pension would force him to promote a political agenda or support various officials, he was told by Bute that the pension "is not given you for anything you are to do, but for what you have done".

On 16 May 1763, Johnson first met 22-year-old James Boswell—who would later become Johnson's first major biographer—in the book shop of Johnson's friend, Tom Davies. They quickly became friends, although Boswell would return to his home in Scotland or travel abroad for months at a time. Around the spring of 1763, Johnson formed "The Club", a social group that included his friends Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, Topham Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, Christopher Nugent, Burke's father-in-law, John Hawkins, and Anthony Chamier (although the membership would vary over the next few decades, expanding to allow individuals such as Adam Smith and Edward Gibbon to join). They decided to meet every Monday at 7:00 pm at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, and these meetings would continue until long after the deaths of the original members.

During the summer of 1754, Johnson met Arthur Murphy after Murphy came to Johnson about the accidental republishing of the Rambler No. 190, and the two became friends. On 9 January 1765, Murphy introduced Johnson to Henry Thrale, a wealthy brewer and Member of Parliament, and his wife, Hester. They bonded instantly; Johnson was treated as a member of the family, and was motivated to work on his Shakespeare again. Afterwards, Johnson stayed with the Thrales for 17 years until Henry's death in 1781, sometimes staying in rooms at Thrale's Anchor Brewery in Southwark. Hester Thrale's documentation of Johnson's life during this time, in her Thraliana and correspondence, became an important source of biographical information on Johnson after his death.

Johnson's edition of Shakespeare was finally published on 10 October 1765 as The Plays of William Shakespeare, in Eight Volumes … To which are added Notes by Sam. Johnson in a printing of one thousand copies. The first edition sold quickly and a second was soon printed. The plays themselves were of a version that Johnson felt most true to the original based on his analysis of the manuscript editions of Shakespeare's plays. Johnson's strength, and what made his edition revolutionary, was to create a set of corresponding notes that allow readers to identify the meaning behind many of Shakespeare's more complicated passages or ones that may have been transcribed incorrectly over time. Included within the notes are occasional attacks upon rival editors of Shakespeare's works and their editions. Years later, Edmond Malone, an important Shakespearean scholar and friend of Johnson's, would say that Johnson's "vigorous and comprehensive understanding threw more light on his authour than all his predecessors had done".

In February 1767 Johnson was granted a special meeting with King George III. This took place at the library of the Queen's house, and it was organised by the king's librarian, Frederick Augusta Barnard. The king himself, after hearing that Johnson would visit the library, commanded Barnard to introduce him to Johnson. After a short meeting, Johnson was quite impressed with the king and their conversation.

Final works

On 6 August 1773, eleven years after first meeting Boswell, Johnson set out to visit his friend in Scotland, to begin "a journey to the western islands of Scotland", as Johnson's 1775 account of their travels would put it. The work was intended to discuss the social problems and struggles that affected the Scottish people, but it also praised many of the unique facets of Scottish society, such as a school in Edinburgh for the deaf and mute. Also, Johnson used the work to enter into the dispute over the authenticy of James Macpherson's Ossian poems, claiming they could not have been translations of ancient Scottish literature on the grounds that "in those times nothing had been written in the Earse language". There were heated exchanges between the two, and according to one of Johnson's letters, MacPherson threatened physical violence. Boswell's account, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786), was a preliminary attempt at a biography before his Life of Johnson. Included were various quotes and descriptions of events, including anecdotes such as Johnson swinging around a broadsword while wearing Scottish garb, or dancing a Highland jig.

In the 1770s, Johnson, who had tended to be an opponent of the government early in life, published a series of pamphlets in favour of various government policies. In 1770 he produced The False Alarm, a political pamphlet attacking John Wilkes. In 1771, his Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands cautioned against war with Spain. In 1774 he printed The Patriot, a critique of what he viewed as false patriotism. On the evening of 7 April 1775, he made the famous statement, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." This line was not, as widely believed, about patriotism in general, but the false use of the term "patriotism" by John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (the patriot-minister) and his supporters; Johnson opposed "self-professed Patriots" in general, but valued what he considered "true" patriotism.

The last of these pamphlets, Taxation No Tyranny (1775), was a defence of the Coercive Acts and a response to the Declaration of Rights of the First Continental Congress of America, which protested against taxation without representation. Johnson argued that in emigrating to America, colonists had "voluntarily resigned the power of voting", but they still had "virtual representation" in Parliament. In a parody of the Declaration of Rights, Johnson suggested that the Americans had no more right to govern themselves than the Cornish people. If the Americans wanted to participate in Parliament, said Johnson, they could move to England and purchase an estate. Johnson denounced English supporters of America as "traitors to this country", and hoped that the matter would be settled without bloodshed, but that it would end with "English superiority and American obedience". Years before, Johnson had advocated that the English and the French were just "two robbers" who were stealing land from the natives, and that neither deserved to live there. After the signing of the 1783 Peace of Paris treaties, marking the colonists' defeat of the English, Johnson was "deeply disturbed" with the "state of this kingdom".

On 3 May 1777, while Johnson was trying to save Reverend William Dodd from execution, he wrote to Boswell that he was busy preparing a "little Lives" and "little Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets". Tom Davies, William Strahan and Thomas Cadell had asked Johnson to create this final major work, the Lives of the English Poets, for which he asked 200 guineas, an amount significantly less than the price he could have demanded. The Lives, which were critical as well as biographical studies, appeared as prefaces to selections of each poet's work, and they were quite larger than originally expected. The work was finished in March 1781 and the whole collection was published in six volumes. As Johnson justified in the advertisement for the work, "my purpose was only to have allotted to every Poet an Advertisement, like those which we find in the French Miscellanies, containing a few dates and a general character."

Johnson was unable to enjoy this success because Henry Thrale, the dear friend with whom he lived, died on 4 April 1781. Life changed quickly for Johnson, and Hester Thrale became interested in the Italian singing teacher Gabriel Mario Piozzi, which forced Johnson to move on from his previous lifestyle. After returning home and then travelling for a short period, Johnson received word that his friend and tenant Robert Levet, had died on 17 January 1782. Johnson was shocked by the death of Levet, who had resided at Johnson's London home since 1762. Shortly afterwards Johnson caught a cold which turned into bronchitis, lasting for several months.

Final years

Although he had recovered his health by August, he experienced emotional trauma when he was given word that Hester Thrale would sell the residence that Johnson shared with the family. What hurt Johnson the most was the possibility that he would be left without her constant company. Months later, on 6 October 1782, Johnson attended church for the final time in his life, to say goodbye to his former residence and life. The walk to the church strained him, but he managed the journey unaccompanied. While there, he wrote a prayer for the Thrale family:

To thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I commend this family. Bless, guide, and defend them, that they may pass through this world, as finally to enjoy in thy presence everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

Hester Thrale did not completely abandon Johnson, and asked him to accompany the family on a trip to Brighton. He agreed, and was with them from 7 October until 20 November 1782. On his return, his health began to fail him, and he was left alone following Boswell's visit on 29 May 1783 until he travelled to Scotland.

On 17 June 1783, Johnson had a stroke that was caused by poor circulation and he wrote to his neighbour, Edmund Allen, that he had lost the ability to speak. Two doctors were brought in to aid Johnson; he regained his ability to speak two days later. Johnson feared that he was dying, and wrote:

The black dog I hope always to resist, and in time to drive, though I am deprived of almost all those that used to help me. The neighbourhood is impoverished. I had once Richardson and Lawrence in my reach. Mrs. Allen is dead. My house has lost Levet, a man who took interest in everything, and therefore ready at conversation. Mrs. Williams is so weak that she can be a companion no longer. When I rise my breakfast is solitary, the black dog waits to share it, from breakfast to dinner he continues barking, except that Dr. Brocklesby for a little keeps him at a distance. Dinner with a sick woman you may venture to suppose not much better than solitary. After dinner, what remains but to count the clock, and hope for that sleep which I can scarce expect. Night comes at last, and some hours of restlessness and confusion bring me again to a day of solitude. What shall exclude the black dog from an habitation like this?

By this time he was sick and gout-ridden. Surgery was performed to relieve Johnson's gout, and his remaining friends, including novelist Fanny Burney (the daughter of Charles Burney), came to keep him company. He was confined to his room from 14 December 1783 to 21 April 1784.

His health had begun to improve by May 1784, and he travelled to Oxford with Boswell on 5 May 1784. By July, many of Johnson's friends were either dead or gone; Boswell had left for Scotland and Hester Thrale had become engaged to Piozzi. With nobody to visit, Johnson expressed a desire to die in London and arrived there on 16 November 1784. On 25 November 1784, he allowed Burney to visit him and expressed an interest to her that he should leave London; he soon left for Islington to George Strahan's home. His final moments were filled with mental anguish and delusions; when his physician, Thomas Warren, visited and asked him if he were feeling better, Johnson burst out with: "No, Sir; you cannot conceive with what acceleration I advance towards death."

Many visitors came to see Johnson as he lay sick in bed, but he preferred only Langton's company. Burney waited for word of Johnson's condition, along with Windham, Strahan, Hoole, Cruikshank, Des Moulins and Barber. On 13 December 1784, Johnson met with two others: a young woman, Miss Morris, whom Johnson blessed, and Francesco Sastres, an Italian teacher, who was given some of Johnson's final words: "Iam Moriturus" ("I who am about to die"). Shortly afterwards he fell into a coma, and died at 7:00 pm.

Langton waited until 11:00 pm to tell the others, which led to John Hawkins' becoming pale and overcome with "an agony of mind", along with Seward and Hoole describing Johnson's death as "the most awful sight". Boswell remarked, "My feeling was just one large expanse of Stupor ... I could not believe it. My imagination was not convinced." William Gerard Hamilton joined in and stated, "He has made a chasm, which not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a tendency to fill up. -Johnson is dead.- Let us go to the next best: There is nobody; -no man can be said to put you in mind of Johnson."

He was buried on 20 December 1784 at Westminster Abbey with an inscription that reads:

Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

Obiit XIII die Decembris,

Anno Domini

M.DCC.LXXXIV.

Ætatis suœ LXXV.

Critical theory

Johnson's works, especially his Lives of the Poets series, describe various features of excellent writing. He believed that the best poetry relied on contemporary language, and he disliked the use of decorative or purposefully archaic language. In particular, he was suspicious of the poetic language used by Milton, whose blank verse he believed would inspire many bad imitations. Also, Johnson opposed the poetic language of his contemporary Thomas Gray. His greatest complaint was that obscure allusions found in works like Milton's Lycidas were overused; he preferred poetry that could be easily read and understood. In addition to his views on language, Johnson believed that a good poem incorporated new and unique imagery.

In his smaller poetic works, Johnson relied on short lines and filled his work with a feeling of empathy, which possibly influenced Housman's poetic style. In London, his first imitation of Juvenal, Johnson uses the poetic form to express his political opinion and, as befits a young writer, approaches the topic in a playful and almost joyous manner. However, his second imitation, The Vanity of Human Wishes, is completely different; the language remains simple, but the poem is more complicated and difficult to read because Johnson is trying to describe complex Christian ethics. These Christian values are not unique to the poem, but contain views expressed in most of Johnson's works. In particular, Johnson emphasises God's infinite love and shows that happiness can be attained through virtuous action.

When it came to biography, Johnson disagreed with Plutarch's use of biography to praise and to teach morality. Instead, Johnson believed in portraying the biographical subjects accurately and including any negative aspects of their lives. Because his insistence on accuracy in biography was little short of revolutionary, Johnson had to struggle against a society that was unwilling to accept biographical details that could be viewed as tarnishing a reputation; this became the subject of Rambler 60. Furthermore, Johnson believed that biography should not be limited to the most famous and that the lives of lesser individuals, too, were significant; thus in his Lives of the Poets he chose both great and lesser poets. In all his biographies he insisted on including what others would have considered trivial details to fully describe the lives of his subjects. Johnson considered the genre of autobiography and diaries, including his own, as one having the most significance; in Idler 84 he explains how a writer of an autobiography would be the least likely to distort his own life.

Johnson's thoughts on biography and on poetry coalesced in his understanding of what would make a good critic. His works were dominated with his intent to use them for literary criticism. This was especially true of his Dictionary of which he wrote: "I lately published a Dictionary like those compiled by the academies of Italy and France, for the use of such as aspire to exactness of criticism, or elegance of style". Although a smaller edition of his Dictionary became the standard household dictionary, Johnson's original Dictionary was an academic tool that examined how words were used, especially in literary works. To achieve this purpose, Johnson included quotations from Bacon, Hooker, Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser, and many others from what he considered to be the most important literary fields: natural science, philosophy, poetry, and theology. These quotations and usages were all compared and carefully studied in the Dictionary so that a reader could understand what words in literary works meant in context.

Not being a theorist, Johnson did not attempt to create schools of theories to analyse the aesthetics of literature. Instead, he used his criticism for the practical purpose of helping others to better read and understand literature. When it came to Shakespeare's plays, Johnson emphasised the role of the reader in understanding language: "If Shakespeare has difficulties above other writers, it is to be imputed to the nature of his work, which required the use of common colloquial language, and consequently admitted many phrases allusive, elliptical, and proverbial, such as we speak and hear every hour without observing them".

His works on Shakespeare were devoted not merely to Shakespeare, but to understanding literature as a whole; in his Preface to Shakespeare, Johnson rejects the previous dogma of the classical unities and argues that drama should be faithful to life. However, Johnson did not only defend Shakespeare; he discussed Shakespeare's faults, including his lack of morality, his vulgarity, his carelessness in crafting plots, and his occasional inattentiveness when choosing words or word order. As well as direct literary criticism, Johnson emphasised the need to establish a text that accurately reflects what an author wrote. Shakespeare's plays, in particular, had multiple editions, each of which contained errors caused by the printing process. This problem was compounded by careless editors who deemed difficult words incorrect, and changed them in later editions. Johnson believed that an editor should not alter the text in such a way.

Character sketch

Johnson's tall and robust figure combined with his odd gestures were confusing to some; when William Hogarth first saw Johnson standing near a window in Samuel Richardson's house, "shaking his head and rolling himself about in a strange ridiculous manner", Hogarth thought Johnson an "ideot, [sic] whom his relations had put under the care of Mr. Richardson". Hogarth was quite surprised when "this figure stalked forwards to where he and Mr. Richardson were sitting and all at once took up the argument ... such a power of eloquence, that Hogarth looked at him with astonishment, and actually imagined that this ideot had been at the moment inspired". Not everyone was misled by Johnson's appearance; Adam Smith claimed that "Johnson knew more books than any man alive", while Edmund Burke thought that if Johnson were to join Parliament, he "certainly would have been the greatest speaker that ever was there". Johnson relied on a unique form of rhetoric, and he is well known for his "refutation" of Bishop Berkeley's immaterialism and his claim that matter did not actually exist but only seemed to exist: during a conversation with Boswell, Johnson powerfully stomped a nearby stone and proclaimed of Berkeley's theory, "I refute it thus!"

Johnson was a devout, conservative Anglican and a compassionate man who supported a number of poor friends under his own roof, even when unable to fully provide for himself. Johnson's Christian morality permeated his works, and he would write on moral topics with such authority and in such a trusting manner that, Walter Jackson Bate claims, "no other moralist in history excels or even begins to rival him". However, Johnson's moral writings do not contain, as Donald Greene points out, "a predetermined and authorized pattern of 'good behavior'", even though Johnson does emphasise certain kinds of conduct. He did not let his own faith prejudice him against others, and had respect for those of other denominations who demonstrated a commitment to Christ's teachings. Although Johnson respected John Milton's poetry, he could not tolerate Milton's Puritan and Republican beliefs, feeling that they were contrary to England and Christianity. He was an opponent of slavery on moral grounds, and once proposed a toast to the "next rebellion of the negroes in the West Indies". Beside his beliefs concerning humanity, Johnson is also known for his love of cats, especially his own two cats, Hodge and Lily. Boswell wrote, "I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat."

Although Johnson was also known as a staunch Tory, he admitted to sympathies for the Jacobite cause during his younger years but, by the reign of George III, he came to accept the Hanoverian Succession. It was Boswell who gave people the impression that Johnson was an "arch-conservative", and it was Boswell, more than anyone else, who determined how Johnson would be seen by people years later. However, Boswell was not around for two of Johnson's most political active periods: during Walpole's control over British Parliament and during the Seven Year's war. Although Boswell was present with Johnson during the 1770s and describes four major pamphlets written by Johnson, he neglects to discuss them because he is more interested in their travels to Scotland. This is compounded by the fact that Boswell held an opinion contradictory to two of these pamphlets, The False Alarm and Taxation No Tyranny, and so attacks Johnson's views in his biography.

In his Life of Samuel Johnson Boswell referred to Johnson as Dr Johnson so often that Johnson would always be known as Dr Johnson, even though Johnson hated being called such. In addition to this, Boswell's emphasis on Johnson's later years depicted Johnson as only an old man who would involve himself in taverns, although this depiction is appealing. Although Boswell, a Scotsman, was a close companion and friend to Johnson during many important times of his life, Johnson, like many of his fellow Englishmen, had a reputation for depising Scotland and its people. Even during their journey together through Scotland, Johnson "exhibited prejudice and a narrow nationalism". Hester Thrale, in summarising Johnson's nationalistic views and his anti-Scottish prejudice, said: "We all know how well he loved to abuse the Scotch, & indeed to be abused by them in return."

Health

Johnson had several health problems, including childhood tuberculous scrofula, gout, testicular cancer, and a stroke in his final year that left him unable to speak; his autopsy indicated that he had pulmonary fibrosis along with cardiac failure probably due to hypertension, a condition then unknown. Although Johnson overall was probably as healthy as others of his generation, he had two notable conditions: depression and Tourette syndrome (TS).

It is widely accepted that Johnson had TS, a condition unknown during Johnson's lifetime. Johnson displayed signs of TS as described by the writings of Boswell, who mentions a number of tics and other involuntary movements. According to Boswell "he commonly held his head to one side ... moving his body backwards and forwards, and rubbing his left knee in the same direction, with the palm of his hand ... e made various sounds" like "a half whistle" or "as if clucking like a hen", and "... all this accompanied sometimes with a thoughtful look, but more frequently with a smile. Generally when he had concluded a period, in the course of a dispute, by which time he was a good deal exhausted by violence and vociferation, he used to blow out his breath like a Whale." There are many similar accounts; in particular, Johnson was said to "perform his gesticulations" at the threshold of house or in doorways. When asked by a little girl why he made such noises and acted in that way, Johnson responded: "From bad habit."

A 1967 report was the first to diagnosis Johnson with the syndrome; the posthumous diagnosis is based on various accounts of Johnson displaying physical tics, "involuntary vocalisations" and "compulsive behaviour". TS researcher Arthur K. Shapiro declared, "Samuel Johnson ... is the most notable example of a successful adaptation to life despite the liability of Tourette syndrome". Details provided by the writings of Boswell, Hester Thrale, and others reinforce the diagnosis, with one paper concluding:

... he also displayed many of the obsessional-compulsive traits and rituals which are associated with this syndrome. ... It may be thought that without this illness Dr Johnson's remarkable literary achievements, the great dictionary, his philosophical deliberations and his conversations may never have happened; and Boswell, the author of the greatest of biographies would have been unknown.

There are many accounts of Johnson suffering from bouts of depression and what Johnson thought might be madness. As Walter Jackson Bate puts it, "one of the ironies of literary history is that its most compelling and authoritative symbol of common sense—of the strong, imaginative grasp of concrete reality—should have begun his adult life, at the age of twenty, in a state of such intense anxiety and bewildered despair that, at least from his own point of view, it seemed the onset of actual insanity". To overcome these feelings, Johnson tried to constantly involve himself with various activities, but this did not seem to help. Taylor said that Johnson "at one time strongly entertained thoughts of Suicide". Boswell claimed that Johnson "felt himself overwhelmed with an horrible melancholia, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery".

Early on, when Johnson was unable to pay off his debts, he began to work with professional writers and identified his own situation with theirs. During this time, Johnson witnessed Christopher Smart's decline into "penury and the madhouse", and feared that he might share the same fate. Hester Thrale Piozzi claimed, in a discussion on Smart's mental state, that Johnson was her "friend who feared an apple should intoxicate him". To Hester Thrale, what separated Johnson from others who were placed in asylums for madness—like Christopher Smart—was his ability to keep his concerns and emotions to himself.

Legacy

Johnson was, in the words of Steven Lynn, "more than a well-known writer and scholar"; he was a celebrity. The events during his later years were constantly reported in various journals and newspapers, and when there were no credible sources, some papers decided to make up an account. According to Bate, Johnson "changed the whole course of biography for the modern world. One by-product was the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature, Boswell's Life of Johnson." Immediately following Johnson's death in December 1784, many accounts of his life were published by his contemporaries and friends: Thomas Tyers wrote A Biographical Sketch of Dr Samuel Johnson, the first posthumous short-biography of Johnson, for the December 1784 issue of The Gentleman's Magazine; James Boswell immediately followed this with his The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, his companion piece to Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, in 1785; Hester Thrale relied on her diary, titled Thraliana, and other notes to write the Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, published on 26 March 1786, although the more important Thraliana remained unpublished for over 100 years; John Hawkins published his Life of Samuel Johnson, the first full-length biography of Johnson, which was included with a collection of Johnson's Works in March 1787; Boswell finally published his Life of Samuel Johnson in 1791; and, in 1792, Arthur Murphy replaced Hawkins's biography as the lead to a collection of Johnson's Works with his biography and critical review An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson. Another important source was Fanny Burney, who described Johnson as "the acknowledged Head of Literature in this kingdom" and kept a diary containing details missing from other biographies. Above all, Boswell's work, along with Boswell's portrayal of Johnson, is one of the most celebrated biographies in history and the biography on Johnson best known by general readers. Although critics like Donald Greene argue about its status as a true biography, the work became successful as Boswell and his friends promoted it at the expense of the many other works on Johnson's life.

In criticism, Johnson had a lasting influence, although not everyone viewed him favourably. Some, like Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, regarded Johnson as an idiot savant who produced some respectable works, and others, like the Romantic poets, were completely opposed to Johnson's views on poetry and literature, especially in regards to John Milton. However, some of their contemporaries disagreed: Stendhal's Racine et Shakespeare is based in part on Johnson's views of Shakespeare, and Johnson influenced Jane Austen's writing style and philosophy. Later, Johnson's works came into favour, and Matthew Arnold, in his Six Chief Lives from Johnson's "Lives of the Poets", considered the Lives of John Milton, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, Jonathan Swift, and Thomas Gray as "points de repère" or "points which stand as so many natural centres, and by returning to which we can always find our way again."

More than one hundred years after Johnson's death, literature figures such as George Birkbeck Norman Hill and T. S. Eliot came to regard Johnson as a serious critic. They began to study Johnson's works with an increasing focus on the critical analysis found in his edition of Shakespeare and Lives of the Poets. Yvor Winters claimed that "A great critic is the rarest of all literary geniuses; perhaps the only critic in English who deserves that epithet is Samuel Johnson". F. R. Leavis agreed and, on Johnson's criticism, said, "When we read him we know, beyond question, that we have here a powerful and distinguished mind operating at first hand upon literature. This, we can say with emphatic conviction, really is criticism". Edmund Willson claimed that "The Lives of the Poets and the prefaces and commentary on Shakespeare are among the most brilliant and the most acute documents in the whole range of English criticism". It is no wonder that his philosophical insistence that the language within literature must be examined became a prevailing mode of literary theory during the mid-20th century.

Johnson has made many appearances in fiction since his death. In 1923, John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir wrote the novel Midwinter, which depicted a fictional moment in Johnson's life when he went to fight for the Jacobites during Second Jacobite Rebellion. In 1987, Johnson (played by Robbie Coltrane) was featured in the third series of the BBC television show Blackadder (in the episode titled Ink and Incapability) presenting his A Dictionary of the English Language to Prince George for his patronage, resulting in it being thrown on a fire by the servant Baldrick, to serve as kindling. In 1993, Coltrane played Johnson again, in the BBC Two movie Boswell & Johnson's Tour of the Western Isles. In 1999, the BBC Four television channel started the Samuel Johnson Prize, an award for non-fiction.

There are many societies formed around and dedicated to the study and enjoyment of Samuel Johnson's life and works. On the bicentennial of Johnson's death in 1984, Oxford University held a week-long conference featuring fifty papers, and the Arts Council of Great Britain held an exhibit of "Johnsonian portraits and other memorabilia". The London Times and Punch produced parodies of Johnson's style for the occasion.

Major works

Notes

1. Rogers, Pat (2006), "Johnson, Samuel (1709–1784)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.), Oxford University Press, retrieved 25 August 2008 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
2. ^ Bate 1977, p. xix
3. ^ Bate 1977, p. 240
4. ^ Lynch 2003, p. 1
5. Murray 2003 and Stern 2005
6. ^ Winters 1943, p. 240
7. ^ Bate 1977, p. 5
8. Lane 1975, pp. 13–14
9. Lane 1975, pp. 15–16
10. ^ Watkins 1960, p. 25
11. Lane 1975, p. 16
12. Bate 1977, pp. 5–6
13. Lane 1975, pp. 16–17
14. Lane 1975, p. 18
15. Lane 1975, pp. 19–20
16. Lane 1975, pp. 20–21
17. Boswell 1986, p. 38
18. Bate 1977, pp. 18–19
19. Bate 1977, p. 21
20. Lane 1975, pp. 25–26
21. ^ Lane 1975, p.  26
22. Demaria 1994, pp. 5–6
23. Bate 1977, p. 23, 31
24. Lane 1975, p. 29
25. ^ Wain 1974, p. 32
26. Lane 1975, p. 30
27. ^ Lane 1975, p. 33
28. Bate 1977, p. 61
29. Lane 1975, p. 34
30. Bate 1977, p. 87
31. Lane 1975, p. 39
32. Bate 1977, p. 88
33. Bate 1977, pp. 90–91
34. Boswell 1986, pp. 91–92
35. Bate 1977, p. 92
36. Bate 1977, pp. 93–94
37. Bate 1977, p. 87
38. Bate 1977, pp. 106–107
39. Lane 1975, pp. 128–129
40. ^ Bate 1955, p. 36
41. Bate 1977, p. 99
42. ^ Bate 1977, p. 127
43. Wiltshire 1991, p. 24
44. Bate 1977, p. 129
45. Boswell 1986, pp. 130–131
46. Hopewell 1950, p. 53
47. Bate 1977, pp. 131–132
48. Bate 1977, p. 134
49. Boswell 1986, pp. 137–138
50. ^ Bate 1977, p. 138
51. Boswell 1986, pp. 140–141
52. Bate 1977, p. 144
53. Bate 1977, p. 143
54. Boswell 1969, p. 88
55. Bate 1977, p. 145
56. Bate 1977, p. 147
57. Wain 1974, p. 65
58. Bate 1977, p. 146
59. Bate 1977, pp. 153–154
60. ^ Bate 1977, p. 154
61. Bate 1977, p. 153
62. Bate 1977, p. 156
63. Bate 1977, p. 164–165
64. Boswell 1986, pp. 168–169
65. Wain 1974, p. 81; Bate 1977, p. 169
66. Boswell 1986, pp. 169–170
67. Bate 1955, p. 14
68. ^ Lynch 2003, p. 5
69. Bate 1977, p. 172
70. Bate 1955, p. 18
71. ^ Bate 1977, p. 182
72. Watkins 1960, pp. 25–26
73. Watkins 1960, p. 51
74. Bate 1977, p. 178
75. Bate 1977, p. 179
76. Bate 1977, p. 181
77. Bate 1977, p. 180
78. Hitchings 2005, p. 54
79. ^ Lynch 2003, p. 2
80. Lynch 2003, p. 4
81. ^ Lane 1975, p. 109
82. Hawkins 1787, p. 175
83. Lane 1975, p. 110
84. Lane 1975, pp. 117–118
85. Lane 1975, p. 118
86. Lane 1975, p. 121
87. ^ Bate 1977, p. 257
88. Bate 1977, pp. 256, 318
89. "Currency Converter", The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, retrieved 24 July 2008
90. Lynch 2003, pp. 8–11
91. Bate 1955, p. 25
92. Lane 1975, p. 113
93. ^ Lane 1975, p. 115
94. Lane 1975, p. 116
95. Lynn 1997, p. 241
96. Boswell 1986, p. 67
97. Bate 1955, p. 22
98. Weinbrot 1997, p. 49
99. Bate 1977, p. 281
100. Lane 1975, pp. 113–114
101. Lane 1975, p. 114
102. Bate 1955, p. 17
103. Bate 1977, pp. 272–273
104. Bate 1977, pp. 273–275
105. Bate 1977, p. 321
106. Bate 1977, p. 324
107. Murray 1979, p. 1611
108. Bate 1977, p. 325
109. ^ Bate 1977, p. 328
110. Bate 1977, p. 329
111. Clarke 2000, pp. 221–222
112. Clarke 2000, pp. 223–224
113. Bate 1977, pp. 325–326
114. Bate 1977, p. 330
115. Bate 1977, p. 332
116. Bate 1977, p. 334
117. Bate 1977, pp. 337–338
118. Bate 1977, p. 337
119. ^ Bate 1977, p. 391
120. Bate 1977, p. 356
121. Boswell 1986, pp. 354–356
122. Bate 1977, p. 360
123. Bate 1977, p. 366
124. ^ Boswell 1986, p. 135
125. Bate 1977, p. 322
126. Bate 1977, p. 393
127. Wain 1974, p. 262
128. ^ Keymer 1999, p. 186
129. Bate 1977, p. 395
130. Bate 1977, p. 397
131. Wain 1974, p. 194
132. Bate 1977, p. 396
133. Boswell 1986, p. 133
134. Boswell 1986, p. 134
135. Yung 1984, p. 14
136. Bate 1977, p. 463
137. Bate 1977, p. 471
138. Johnson 1970, pp. 104–105
139. Wain 1974, p. 331
140. Bate 1977, pp. 468–469
141. Bate 1977, pp. 443–445
142. Boswell 1996, p. 182 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFBoswell1996 (help)
143. Griffin 2005, p. 21
144. Bate 1977, p. 446
145. Ammerman 1974, p. 13
146. Demaria 1994, pp. 252–256
147. Griffin 2005, p. 15
148. Boswell 1986, p. 273
149. Bate 1977, p. 525
150. Bate 1977, p. 526
151. Bate 1977, p. 527
152. Clingham 1997, p. 161
153. Bate 1977, pp. 546–547
154. Bate 1977, pp. 557, 561
155. Bate 1977, p. 562
156. The Samuel Johnson Encyclopedia, Pat Rogers, Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, CT, London, 1996
157. Bate 1977, p. 564
158. Bate 1977, p. 566
159. ^ Bate 1977, p. 569
160. Boswell 1986, p. 284
161. Bate 1977, p. 570
162. Bate 1977, p. 575
163. Wiltshire 1991, p. 51
164. Watkins 1960, p. 71
165. Watkins 1960, pp. 71–72
166. Watkins 1960, p. 72
167. Watkins 1960, p. 73
168. ^ Watkins 1960, p. 74
169. Watkins 1960, pp. 76–77
170. ^ Watkins 1960, p. 78
171. Boswell 1986, p. 341
172. ^ Watkins 1960, p. 79
173. ^ Bate 1977, p. 599
174. Hill 1897, p. 160 (Vol. 2)
175. Boswell 1986, pp. 341–342
176. Needham 1982, pp. 95–96
177. Greene 1989, p. 27
178. Greene 1989, pp. 28–30
179. Greene 1989, p. 39
180. Greene 1989, pp. 31, 34
181. Greene 1989, p. 35
182. Greene 1989, p. 37
183. Greene 1989, p. 38
184. Greene 1989, pp. 62–64
185. Greene 1989, p. 65
186. Greene 1989, p. 67
187. Greene 1989, p. 85
188. Greene 1989, p. 134
189. Greene 1989, pp. 134–135
190. Greene 1989, p. 140
191. Greene 1989, p. 141
192. ^ Greene 1989, p. 142
193. Needham 1982, p. 134
194. Greene 1989, p. 143
195. ^ Boswell 1986, p. 122
196. ^ Bate 1955, p. 16 quoting from Boswell
197. Hill 1897, p. 423 (Vol. 2)
198. Bate 1955, pp. 15–16
199. Bate 1977, p. 316
200. Bate 1977, p. 297
201. Greene 1989, p. 87
202. Greene 1989, p. 88
203. ^ Bate 1977, p. 537
204. Boswell 1986, p. 200
205. ^ Skargon 1999
206. Boswell 1986, p. 294
207. Greene 2000, p. xxi
208. Boswell 1986, p. 365
209. Rogers 1995, p. 192
210. Piozzi 1951, p. 165
211. Lane 1975, p. 103
212. Murray 2003
213. Stern 2005
214. Pearce 1994, p. 396
215. Murray 1979, p. 1610
216. ^ Hibbert 1971, p. 203
217. Hibbert 1971, p. 202
218. McHenry 1967, pp. 152–168
219. Wiltshire 1991, p. 29
220. Murray 1979, pp. 1611–1612, Kammer 2007, p. 9 and Sacks 1992, p. 1515
221. Shapiro 1978, p. 361
222. Pearce 1994, p. 398
223. Bate 1955, p. 7
224. Bate 1977, p. 116
225. Boswell 1969, p. 468
226. Bate 1977, p. 117
227. ^ Pittock 2004, p. 159
228. Lynn 1997, p. 240
229. Lynn 1997, pp. 240–241
230. Hill 1897, p. 335 (Vol. 2)
231. Bloom 1998, p. 75
232. Hill 1897, p. 143
233. Davis 1961, p. vii
234. Hill 1897, p. 355
235. Clarke 2000, pp. 4–5
236. Boswell 1986, p. 7
237. ^ Lynn 1997, p. 245
238. Grundy 1997, pp. 199–200
239. Arnold 1972, p. 351
240. Wilson 1950, p. 244
241. Winters 1943, p. 240
242. Greene 1989, p. 139
243. Wain 1974, p. 128
244. BBC - Black Adder - Episode Guide: Ink and Incapability, BBC, retrieved 25 August 2008.
245. screenonline: Coltrane, Robbie (1950-) Credits, BFI Screenonline, retrieved 25 August 2008.
246. BBC - BBC Four - Samuel Johnson Prize 2008, BBC, retrieved 25 August 2008.
247. Greene 1989, pp. 174–175

References

• Ammerman, David (1974), In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774, New York: Norton, ISBN 0393007871.
• Arnold, Matthew (1972), Ricks, Christopher (ed.), Selected Criticism of Matthew Arnold, New York: New American Library, OCLC 6338231
• Bate, Walter Jackson (1977), Samuel Johnson, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, ISBN 0151792607.
• Bate, Walter Jackson (1955), The Achievement of Samuel Johnson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, OCLC 355413.
• Bloom, Harold (1998), "Hester Thrale Piozzi 1741–1821", in Bloom, Harold (ed.), Women Memoirists Vol. II, Philadelphia: Chelsea House, pp. 74–76, ISBN 0791046559.
• Boswell, James (1969), Waingrow, Marshall (ed.), Correspondence and Other Papers of James Boswell Relating to the Making of the Life of Johnson, New York: McGraw-Hill, OCLC 59269.
• Boswell, James (1986), Hibbert, Christopher (ed.), The Life of Samuel Johnson, New York: Penguin Classics, ISBN 0140431160.
• Clarke, Norma (2000), Dr Johnson's Women, London: Hambledon, ISBN 1852852542.
• Clingham, Greg (1997), "Life and literature in the Lives", in Clingham, Greg (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Samuel Johnson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 161–191, ISBN 0521556252
• Davis, Bertram (1961), "Introduction", in Davis, Bertram (ed.), The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., New York: Macmillan Company, pp. vii–xxx, OCLC 739445.
• Demaria, Robert (1994), The Life of Samuel Johnson, Oxford: Blackwell, ISBN 1557866643.
• Fine, LG (May–June 2006), "Samuel Johnson's illnesses", J Nephrol, 19 (Suppl 10): S110–4, PMID 16874722, retrieved 27 August 2008{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link).
• Greene, Donald (2000), "Introduction", in Greene, Donald (ed.), Political Writings, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, ISBN 0865972753.
• Greene, Donald (1989), Samuel Johnson: Updated Edition, Boston: Twayne Publishers, ISBN 0805769625.
• Griffin, Dustin (2005), Patriotism and Poetry in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521009596.
• Grundy, Isobel (1997), "Jane Austen and literary traditions", in Copeland, Edward; McMaster, Juliet (eds.), The Cambridge companion to Jane Austen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 189–210, ISBN 0521498678
• Hawkins, John (1787), Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., London: J. Buckland, OCLC 173965.
• Hibbert, Christopher (1971), The Personal History of Samuel Johnson, New York: Harper & Row, ISBN 0060118792.
• Hitchings, Henry (2005), Dr Johnson's Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World, London: John Murray, ISBN 0719566312.
• Hill, G. Birkbeck, editor (1897), Johnsonian Miscellanies, London: Oxford Clarendon Press, OCLC 61906024 {{citation}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link).
• Hopewell, Sydney (1950), The Book of Bosworth School, 1320–1920, Leicester: W. Thornley & Son, OCLC 6808364.
• Johnson, Samuel (1952), Chapman, R. W. (ed.), Letters, Oxford: Clarendon, ISBN 0198185383.
• Johnson, Samuel (1970), Chapman, R. W. (ed.), Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0192810723.
• Johnson, Samuel (2000), Greene, Donald (ed.), Major Works, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0192840428.
• Kammer, Thomas (2007), "Mozart in the Neurological Department: Who has the Tic?", in Bogousslavsky, Julien; Hennerici, M (eds.), Neurological Disorders in Famous Artists, Part 2, pp. 184–92, ISBN 978-3805582650, PMID 17495512 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help).
• Keymer, Thomas (1999), "Johnson, Madness, and Smart", in Hawes, Clement (ed.), Christopher Smart and the Enlightenment, New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0312213697.
• Lane, Margaret (1975), Samuel Johnson & his World, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, ISBN 0060124962.
• Leavis, FR (1944), "Johnson as Critic", Scrutiny, 12: 187–204.
• Lynch, Jack (2003), "Introduction to this Edition", in Lynch, Jack (ed.), Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, New York: Walker & Co, pp. 1–21, ISBN 0802714218.
• Lynn, Steven (1997), "Johnson's critical reception", in Clingham, Greg (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521556252
• McHenry, LC Jr (April 1967), "Samuel Johnson's tics and gesticulations", Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 22 (2): 152–68, PMID 5341871{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Murray, TJ (16 June 1979), "Dr Samuel Johnson's Movement Disorder" (PDF), British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 6178, pp. 1610–14, PMID 380753, retrieved 10 July 2008{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link).
• Murray, TJ (July–August 2003), "Samuel Johnson: his ills, his pills and his physician friends", Clin Med, 3 (4): 368–72, PMID 12938754 {{citation}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link).
• Needham, John (1982), The Completest Mode, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 0852243871.
• Pearce, JMS (July 1994), "Doctor Samuel Johnson: 'the Great Convulsionary' a Victim of Gilles de la Tourette's Syndrome" (PDF), Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 87: 396–399, PMID 8046726, retrieved 24 July 2008{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link).
• Piozzi, Hester (1951), Balderson, Katharine (ed.), Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale (Later Mrs. Piozzi) 1776-1809, Oxford: Clarendon, OCLC 359617.
• Pittock, Murray (2004), "Johnson, Boswell, and their circle", in Keymer, Thomas; Mee, Jon (eds.), The Cambridge companion to English literature from 1740 to 1830, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 157–172, ISBN 0521007577.
• Rogers, Pat (1995), Johnson and Boswell: The Transit of Caledonia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198182597.
• Sacks, Oliver (19–26 December 1992), "Tourette's Syndrome and Creativity: Exploiting the Ticcy Witticisms and Witty Ticcicisms" (PDF), British Medical Journal, 305 (6868): 1515–16, PMID 1286364, retrieved 24 July 2008, ... the case for Samuel Johnson having the syndrome, though circumstantial, is extremely strong and, to my mind, entirely convincing{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link).
• Shapiro, Arthur K (1978), Gilles de la Tourette syndrome, New York: Raven Press, ISBN 0890040575.
• Skargon, Yvonne (1999), The Importance of Being Oscar: Lily and Hodge and Dr. Johnson, London: Primrose Academy, OCLC 56542613.
• Stern, JS, Burza S, Robertson MM (January 2005), "Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome and its impact in the UK", Postgrad Med J, 81 (951): 12–9, doi:10.1136/pgmj.2004.023614, PMID 15640424, It is now widely accepted that Dr Samuel Johnson had Tourette's syndrome{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link).
• Wain, John (1974), Samuel Johnson, New York: Viking Press, OCLC 40318001.
• Watkins, WBC (1960), Perilous Balance: The Tragic Genius of Swift, Johnson, and Sterne, Cambridge, MA: Walker-deBerry, Inc., OCLC 40318001.
• Weinbrot, Howard D. (1997), "Johnson's Poetry", in Clingham, Greg (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521556252.
• Wilson, Edmund (1950), "Reexamining Dr. Johnson", in Wilson, Edmund (ed.), Classics and Commercials, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, OCLC 185571431.
• Wiltshire, John (1991), Samuel Johnson in the Medical World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521383269.
• Winters, Yvor (1943), The Anatomy of Nonsense, Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, OCLC 191540.
• Yung, Kai Kin (1984), Samuel Johnson, 1709–84, London: Herbert Press, ISBN 090696945X.

External links

• Template:Dmoz
• Life Of Johnson by James Boswell, abridged by Charles Grosvenor Osgood in 1917 "... omitt most of Boswell's criticisms, comments and notes, all of Johnson's opinions in legal cases, most of the letters, ..." (Project Gutenberg)
• Samuel Johnson Page, links collected by Rutgers scholar Jack Lynch.
• The Samuel Johnson Project and sculpture initiative in Lichfield.
• The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page, comprehensive collection of Samuel Johnson quotations
• Template:Worldcat id
• Works by Samuel Johnson at Project Gutenberg

v t e Samuel Johnson
Life and topics	Birthplace, home, and museum Early life Health Edial Hall School Dr Johnson's House The Club Literary criticism Political views Religious views Samuel Johnson Prize
People	Francis Barber James Boswell David Garrick John Hawkins Arthur Murphy Elizabeth Johnson (wife) Henry Thrale Hester Thrale Anna Williams Hodge
Essays and periodicals	Birmingham Journal The Gentleman's Magazine The Idler The Rambler Taxation no Tyranny
Biography and criticism	Life of Mr Richard Savage Lives of the Poets Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth The Plays of William Shakespeare Proposals for an Edition of Shakespeare Preface to Shakespeare
Miscellaneous prose	A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland A Dictionary of the English Language Letter to Chesterfield
Fiction and poetry	Messiah translation London Irene The Vanity of Human Wishes The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
Contemporary accounts	James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell's The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides John Hawkins' Life of Samuel Johnson Arthur Murphy's Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson Hester Thrale's Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson Thraliana Thomas Tyer's A Biographical Sketch of Dr Samuel Johnson
Portraits	Blinking Sam
Category

Template:Persondata {{subst:#if:|}} [[Category:{{subst:#switch:{{subst:uc:1709}}

|| UNKNOWN | MISSING = Year of birth missing {{subst:#switch:{{subst:uc:1784}}||LIVING=(living people)}}
| #default = 1709 births

}}]] {{subst:#switch:{{subst:uc:1784}}

|| LIVING  = 
| MISSING  = 
| UNKNOWN  = 
| #default = 

}}

• English Anglicans
• English biographers
• English book editors
• English booksellers
• English educators
• English essayists
• English lexicographers
• English literary critics
• English poets
• English travel writers
• Alumni of Pembroke College, Oxford
• Anglican saints
• People from Lichfield
• People from London
• Samuel Johnson
• Streathamites
• Tourette syndrome
• Burials at Westminster Abbey
• Living people
• 1784 deaths