Samuel Johnson

For other people named Samuel Johnson, see Samuel Johnson (disambiguation).

Samuel Johnson LLD MA
Samuel Johnson circa 1772, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds
Occupation	essayist, lexicographer biographer, poet

Samuel Johnson (often referred to as Dr Johnson) (18 September 1709 [ O.S. 7 September] – 13 December 1784) was an essayist, poet, biographer, lexicographer and a critic of English Literature. Johnson is best known for his writing but is also remembered for his personality, wit, prose and aphorisms.

Johnson was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and spent many of his early years in the surrounding community. When he came of age, he left for Pembroke College, Oxford, which he attended for a year. After leaving, Johnson struggled to find employment in the field of education and eventually travelled to London where he began a career as a writer. Whle there he wrote essays for The Gentleman's Magazine, and completed his A Dictionary of the English Language.

Although Johnson is known for A Dictionary of the English Language and his series of Lives of Poets, he is best known from James Boswell's biography of him, the Life of Johnson. Boswell encouraged interest in Johnson's life, and biographies on Johnson have become their own specialized field within Johnson scholarship. Many of his friends, including Boswell, Hester Thrale/Piozzi and Fanny Burney kept detailed accounts of the events of his life, and were used as a basis for the many critical later claims about Johnson's life, works, and mental state.

Biography

There are many biographies and biographers of Samuel Johnson, but James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson is best known to the general reader. Among 20th-century Johnson scholars like Edmund Wilson and Donald Greene, Boswell's Life "'can hardly be termed a biography at all', being merely 'a collection of those entries in Boswell's diaries dealing with the occasions during the last twenty-two years of Johnson's life on which they met ... strung together with only a perfunctory effort to fill the gaps". Furthermore, Greene claimed that the work "began with a well-organized press campaign, by Boswell and his friends, of puffing and of denigration of his rivals; and was given a boost by one of Macaulay's most memorable pieces of journalistic claptrap".

The cause for concern is that Boswell's original Life "corrects" many of Johnson's quotations and censors many of the more vulgar comments while largely ignoring Johnson's early years. Modern biographers have since corrected Boswell's errors. However, that is not to say that Boswell's work is wrong or of no use; instead, those like Walter Jackson Bate appreciate the "detail" and the "treasury of conversation" that is contained in Boswell's Life. All biographers of Johnson, according to Bate, have to go through the same "igloo" of material that Boswell had to deal with: limited information from Johnson's first forty years and an extreme amount for those after. Simply put, "Johnson's life continues to hold attention" and "every scrap of evidence relating to Johnson's life has continued to be examined and many more details have been added" because "it is so close to general human experience in a wide variety of ways."

Early life and education

Johnson's birthplace in Market Square, Lichfield

Samuel Johnson was born at 4:00 pm on Wednesday, 18 September 1709, to a bookseller, Michael Johnson, and his wife, Sarah Ford, in Lichfield, Staffordshire. Michael was the first bookseller of "reputation" in the community, and when he was 40 he began his own parchment factory that produced book bindings. Michael originally planned to marry Mary Neild at the age of 29, but she broke off the engagement. Instead, he waited 20 years and later married Sarah Ford, daughter of Cornelius Ford and a middle-class milling and farming family, in 1706, when he was 49 and she was 37. Although both families had money, Johnson always claimed that he grew up in poverty; it is uncertain what happened between Michael and Sarah's marriage, and the birth of Samuel just three years later that would provoke such a change in fortune.

Johnson was born in the family home above Michael's bookshop, near Market Square in Lichfield, across from St. Mary's Church. Johnson's mother, Sarah, was 40 when she gave birth, a matter for sufficient concern that George Hector, a "man-midwife" and a surgeon of "great reputation", was brought in to help with the birth. The baby was named Samuel, after Sarah's brother Samuel Ford. He did not cry and, with doubts concerning the newborn Johnson's health, Johnson's own aunt claimed "that she would not have picked such a poor creature up in the street". Out of fear for the baby dying, the Vicar of St Mary's was brought to perform a baptism. Two godfathers were then selected: Dr. Samuel Swynfen, a physician and graduate of Pembroke College, and Richard Wakefield, a lawyer, coroner, and town clerk who served in Lichfield.

Johnson's health improved from there and he was given to Joan Marklew for nursing While in her care, Johnson contracted what is believed to be scrofula. Scrofula was known at the time as the "King's Evil", and it was recommended by Sir John Floyer, a former physician to Charles II, that the young Johnson would be taken to be "touched". Johnson was taken to St James's Palace on 30  March 1712 and was "touched" by Queen Anne. He was then given a ribbon in memory of the event, and he claimed that he wore the ribbon for the rest of his life. However, being "touched" did not heal the illness, and an operation was performed on the young Johnson that forever left scars across his face and body. After Johnson was brought home, Sarah gave birth to a boy named Nathaniel, which strained the family. Michael was no longer able to keep up with various debts that he collected over the years and his family was unable to enjoy the lifestyle that they previously had.

Johnson showed early signs of intelligence and his parents, to which Johnson's later disagreed with the propriety of such actions, showed off his "newly acquired accomplishments". He was first educated by his mother around the age of three, and she had him memorize and recite passages from the Book of Common Prayer. When Johnson turned four, he was sent to a nearby "school" on Dam Street; 'Dame' Anne Oliver, the proprietor, gave lessons to young children in the living-room of a cottage. Johnson especially enjoyed his time with Dame Oliver and later would remembered her fondly. When Johnson reached the age of six, he was sent to a retired shoemaker to be taught. This lasted only a year, and, after demonstrating his intelligence, he was sent to the Lichfield Grammar School, a place where he was to excel in Latin under Humphrey Hawkins, his teacher in the Lower School. He was soon promoted to the upper school at the age of nine. While at the upper school, he was under the tutelage of Edward Holbrooke. Johnson's memory at the school was quite different than his experience with Dame Oliver because the school was directed by Reverend John Hunter, a man known for both his scholarship and, like Holbrooke, his brutality. However, life at the school was not a complete loss, and Johnson befriended Edmund Hector, nephew of his "man-midwife" George Hector, and John Taylor, two fellows that he would stay in contact with later in his life.

At the age of 16, he was given the opportunity to stay with his cousins, the Fords, at Pedmore, Worcestershire. It was there that he became friends with Cornelius Ford, the son of his mother's brother and named after Johnson's grandfather. Ford had a successful career in academia and in society, and he knew many people like Alexander Pope. It is thought that Ford's knowledge in the classics was employed during this time for the betterment of his cousin. However, Ford was a notorious alcoholic, and his excesses help lead Ford to his death, six years after Johnson's visit, in mid-August 1731. Later, Johnson was to remember Ford in his Lives of the Poets, and in the work he said that Ford, "whose abilities, instead of furnishing convivial merriments to the voluptous and dissolute, might have enabled him to excel among the virtuous and the wise." After six months with his cousin, Johnson returned to Lichfield, but he was denied a continuation at the Grammar School by Hunter.

Unable to return, Johnson was given entrance into the Stourbridge Grammar School. The school was near Pedmore and this allowed Johnson to spend more time with the Fords. While at the school, he wrote many poems and produced many verse translations. However, his time there was only to last another six months, and he returned once again to Lichfield. For company, Johnson spent time with Edmund Hector and John Taylor, his two schoolfriends, and he soon fell in love with Hector's younger sister, Ann. This first love was not to last, and he later claimed to Boswell, "She was the first woman with whom I was in love. It dropped out of my head imperceptibly, but she and I shall always have a kindness for each other."

During this time, it was unsure as to what would happen to Johnson because Michael Johnson was doing well, being a senior bailiff in Lichfield, but he was still in debt. In order to make money, Johnson began stitching books for his father, although he was ill suited to the job based on poor eyesight left over from his childhood illness. It is possible that Johnson spent most of his time in his father's bookshop reading various works and building his literary knowledge. During this time, Johnson met Gilbert Walmesley, the Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court, as Walmesley was a frequent visitor to to the bookshop. Walmesley took a liking to Johnson, and the two discussed various intellectual topics for the two years that Johnson worked at the shop. Their relationship was not to last; a relative of Sarah Johnson, Elizabeth Harriotts, died in February 1728 and bequeathed her 40 pounds, which was then used to send Johnson back to school.

College

Entrance of Pembroke College, Oxford

On 31 October 1728, a few weeks after he turned 19, Johnson entered Pembroke College, Oxford, as a fellow-commoner. The inheritance from Mrs Harriotts did not cover all of the expenses at Pembroke, but Andrew Corbet, a friend and member of Pembroke, but offered to pay the remainder of the debt. Corbet soon left Pembroke after Johnson arrived and this source of aid disappeared. To meet the expenses, Michael Johnson allowed his son to take a hundred of his clients from his bookshop. Johnson was interviewed on the evening of his arrival, and one of the interviewers, 26 year old William Adams, who later became Master of Pembroke, claimed that Johnson was "the best qualified for the University that he had ever known come there." Part of the reason for this claim was Johnson quoting from Macrobius during the interview, which Adam admitted that they were surprised that "a School-boy should know Macrobius".

While at the school, he befriended many people yet neglected a number of required lectures, and ignored calls for poems. However, he did complete one poem in which he dedicated comparably significant time (that of two rereads), and this poem, the first of his tutorial exercises, provoked surprise and applause. He was later asked by his tutor, William Jorden, to produce a Latin translation of Alexander Pope's Messiah as a Christmas exercise. He completed half of the translation in one afternoon and the rest the following morning. Although the poem brought Johnson praise, it did not bring him the material benefit that he was hoping to receive. The poem was brought to Pope's attention, and, according to Sir John Hawkins, in response Pope claimed that he could not tell if it was the original or not. However, John Taylor, his friend, dismissed this "praise" from this remark because Johnson's father had previous published the translation before Johnson sent a copy to Pope, and that Pope could have been remarking about it being a duplication of the published edition. Regardless, Pope remarked that the work was very finely done," but this did not keep Johnson from being violently angry at his father's actions and preempting his sending Pope a copy of the poem. The poem later appeared in Miscellany of Poems (1731), edited by John Husbands, a Pembroke tutor, and was the first surviving publication of any of Johnson's writings.

Johnson spent the rest of his time studying, even over Christmas vacation. During this time, he drafted a "plan of study" called "Adversaria", but it was left unfinished. He used his time to pick up French while working on his knowledge of Greek. Although he later praised his tutor, Jorden, Johnson came to odds with him over what Johnson thought was Jorden's "meanness" of abilities. He discouraged his friend Taylor, who came to Pembroke in March, from having Jorden as his tutor, and Taylor was soon encouraged to go to Christ Church to be taught by Edmund Bateman. Johnson appreciated Bateman's skill at lecturer, and he would travel often to meet Taylor to discuss the lectures. However, Johnson lacked the funds to even replace his own shoes, and he started to make the journal barefoot. In response, those of Christ Church began to mock Johnson, and he soon kept to his own room for the rest of his time at Pembrooke and Taylor began to visit him instead.

After thirteen months, however, poverty forced him to leave Oxford without taking a degree and he returned to Lichfield. During Johnson's last weeks, 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 feeds, and he was forced to return.

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 and toured the school with his previous tutor, Adams who was then the school's Master, and Boswell. He used this moment to account his time at the college, his early career, and express his later fondness for Jorden.

Early career

Dr Johnson's House, 17 Gough Square, London

There is little record of Johnson's life between 1730 and 1731. He most likely lived with his parents and experienced mental anguish. It is believed that something happened during this period to caused Johnson to remain quiet about these years. By 1731, his father was deep in debt and lost much of his standing in Lichfield. A position as an usher opened up at the Stourbridge Grammar School and Johnson moved to the community, but Johnson's lack of a degree caused him to lose the position to another on 6 September 1731. He stayed at the home of Gregory Hickman, Cornelius Ford's half brother, and wrote poetry. During this time, he was given news that Cornelius died in London, 22 August 1731, and he was devastated; later, in his personal "Annales", he claimed this moment as one of the most important of his life.

During the same time, Johnson's father became ill and developed an "inflammatory fever" by the end of the year. He died in December 1731 and was buried at St. Michael's Church on 7 December 1731. There was no will, and Johnson received only 20 pounds out of Michael's estate of 60 pounds. In an act "almost like religious penance", Johnson honored his father's memory 50 years later by returning to his father's bookstall in Uttoxeter and stood there in order to make amends for his refusal to work the stall while his father lay dying. Richard Warner kept Johnson's account of the scene:

"a postchaise to Uttoxeter, and going into the market at the time of high business, uncovered my head, and stood with it bare an hour before the stall which my father had formerly used, exposed to the sneers of the standers-by and the inclemency of the weather."

Johnson eventually was given a job as undermaster at a school in Market Bosworth, Leicestershire. He was paid 20 pounds a year and was able to support himself. The school was run by Sir Wolstan Dixie, and it was Dixie who allowed Johnson to teach without a degree. The unconventional Dixie allowed Johnson to live at his own mansion, Bosworth Hall. Although these conditions may seem nice, Johnson was treated as

"a kind of domestick chaplain, so far, at least, as to say grace at table, but was treated with what he represented as intolerable harshness; and, after suffering for a few months such complicated misery, he relinquished a situation which all his life afterwards he recollected with the strongest aversion, and even a degree of horrour."

However, the actual job as a teacher was more pleasing to Johnson even though he thought it boring. By June 1732, he returned home, and, after a fight with Dixie, he quite the job and stayed at Lichfield while searching for a new job at the local schools.

After being turned down for a job in Ashbourne, Johnson spent time with his friend, Hector. Hector lived in the home of Thomas Warren, on High Street Birmingham, and Johnson was invited to stay there as a guest in the Autumn of 1732. During this time, Warren was starting his Birmingham Journal and used Johnson's help to produce the paper. Although Johnson wrote essays for the paper, no copies of it survived. His stay with Hector and Warren were not to last, and Johnson moved into the house of a man named Jarvis on 1 June 1733. During this time, Johnson's mental state began to slip into a "state of 'absence'" and treat his friends with "abuse".

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". Johnson began work on his edition and finished a section of the work which was taken to be printed during the winter of 1733–1734. To finish the rest, Johnson dictated directly to Hector, and Hector would then take the copy to the printer and make any corrections. He was then paid five pounds for what amounted to a month's work of work. A year later in 1735, Johnson's A Voyage to Abyssinia was finally published.

Johnson returned to Lichfield in February 1734, and he began an annotated edition of Poliziano's Latin poems along with a history of Latin poetry from Petrarch to Poliziano. Johnson began 15 June 1743 and printed a Proposal for the work on 5 August 1734. However, the project did not receive enough funds and it was soon brought to an end.

Johnson was close to a man named Harry Porter, and stuck by Harry as he was dying. After Johnson stayed by his bedside during the illness, Harry died 3 September 1734 and left his wife, Elizabeth Jervis Porter (otherwise known as "Tetty"), widowed at the age of 41 and with three children. Months later, Johnson began his courtship of the widow, and Reverened 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 terms of relationships, but the well-to-do widow encouraged him and provided for him with a substantial savings that she owned. Johnson married Elizabeth on 9 July 1735 at St. Werburgh's Church in Derby. The match was not approved by the Porters, partly because Johnson was 25 and Elizabeth was 21 years his elder. This action disgusted her son Jervis so much that he stopped talking to her. However, her other son, Joseph, later accepted the marriage, and her daughter, Lucy, accepted Johnson from the start.

Edial Hall School

Johnson decided, in June 1735, that he could succeed as a 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, but avid Garrick (18 at the time) would become one of the most famous actors of his day. He began the writing of his first major work there, the historical tragedy Irene, which was later produced by Garrick in 1749.

In 1737, penniless Johnson left for London with his former pupil David Garrick on 2 March 1737. Besides being poor, the journal became worse when Johnson received knowledge that his brother, Nathaniel, died when they first began their trip to London. However, their fate was not completely lost from the beginning since Garrick was set to inherit 1,000 pounds in one years time when he would turn 21. Also, Garrick had connections in London, and the two would stay with his distance relative, Richard Norris, who lived on Exeter Street. Johnson did not stay there long, and set out to 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 they first lived at Woodstock Street and then moved to 6 Castle Street. Soon, Johnson found employment with Cave, and wrote for his 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."

Johnson was denied a position as master of a school at Appleby because candidates needed to have a Masters degree. Soon after in May of 1738, his first major work, a poem called London, was published anonymously. The work was based on Juvenal's Third Satire and replaces the "Spokesman" for "Thales" who travels to Wales in order to escape from the problems of London. Although critics such as T. S. Eliot have taken the work as evidence that Johnson was a major poet and Sir Walter Scott wrote that the poem "has often extracted tears from those whose eyes wander dry over pages profoundly sentimental", Johnson could not bring himself to regard the poem as granting him any merit as a poet.

Alexander Pope claimed that the author "will soon be déterré", although it did not immediately happen. Pope tried to secure a place for Johnson by asking Lord Gower to have a degree from Dublin awarded to him. Lord Gower then wrote to Jonathan Swift, but Swift refused to act on Johnson's behalf. Regardless of Swift acting in this manner, or how Johnson reacted to Swift's actions, it is known that Johnson did not appreciate Swift as a poet, writer, or a satirist. There is, however, one exception, and that is for Swift's Tale of a Tub, to which he doubted Swift's authorship.

Between 1737 and 1739, Johnson was close to Richard Savage. Out of guilt for being poor, Johnson stopped living with his wife and spent time with Savage. With Savage, he would roam the streets at night without enough money to stay in taverns or sleep in "night-cellars". Savage was a both a poet and a playwright, and Johnson was reported to enjoy spending time and discussion various topics with him, along with drinking and other meriment. However, poverty eventually caught up with Savage, and Pope, along with Savage's other friends, gave him an "annual pension" in return to Johnson moving to live in Wales. However, Savage ended up going to Bristol and incuring debt from repeating his previous lifestyle in Bristol. Savage was soon in debtor's prison and died in 1743. A year later, Johnson wrote the Life of Savage (1745), a "moving" work that, according to Walter Jackson Bate, "remains one of the innovative works in the history of biography."

During the Dictionary

Main article: A Dictionary of the English Language

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250th anniversary of the publication of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language commemorated on a British 50 pence coin

Although it is commonly thought that Johnson's dictionary was the dictionary, his was not the first English dictionary or a dictionary that was particularly unique. Furthermore, other dictionaries, like Nathan Bailey's Dictionarium Britannicum, were much larger. In the preceding 150 years there had been about twenty "English" dictionaries. The first, published in 1538, was a small Latin-English dictionary by Sir Thomas Elyot. Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall, published in 1604, was the first monolingual English dictionary. In the 18th century, dictionaries became expensive, and the various dictionaries, like John Kersey's A New English Dictionary (1702), became to offer shorter definitions. The dictionaries that stood out against this trend were Nathan Bailey's An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721) and Dictionarium Britannicum (1730) that attempted to describe the origins of various English words.

Although there were many dictionaries offered, there was open discontent. 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 does offer are insights into the 18th century and is "a faithful record of the language people used." Furthermore, Johnson's Dictionary is more than a reference book, it serves as a work of literature unto itself.

In 1746, a group of publishers approached Johnson about creating a dictionary. On the morning of 18 June 1746, Johnson, over breakfast at the Golden Anchor tavern in London, signed a contract with the William Strahan and associates to produce an authoritative dictionary of the English language. The contract stated that Johnson was to be paid 1500 Guineas (£1,575) in installments based on delivery of manuscript pages; all expenses relating to the project, ie ink, paper, assistants, etc to be at Johnson's cost and responsibility. It was claimed by Johnson 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 could not complete the work in three years, he managed to finish the work in nine, verifying his boast.

Throughout the decade, he constantly worked on the Dictionary, which caused the living conditions of Johnson and Tetty to suffer; they were miserable because Johnson hadto employ multiple assistants for copying or mechanical work, which filled the house with constant noise and clutter. Johnson was constantly busy with his work and kept hundreds of books around at any given time. John Hawkins described the scene as: "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." However, Johnson was also distracted by Tetty's health, as she started to show signs of a terminal illness. In order to accommodate both his wife and his work, he moved to Gough Square near his printer, William Strahan.

Besides working on the Dictionary, Johnson also wrote various essays, sermons, and poems during these nine years. One such work, The Vanity of Human Wishes was written with "extraordinary speed" and caused Boswell to claim that Johnson "might have been perpetually a poet." The poem was critically celebrated but it failed to become popular. He was paid only 15 guineas for the poem and it sold less than his London. In 1749, Garrick made good on his promise that he would produce Irene, but they altered the title to Mahomet and Irene to make it "fit for the stage". The show managed to last on stage for nine nights. Although the production's run had a rough start, Johnson received nearly 300 pounds in total for the manuscript and the performances.

Soon, Johnson decided to produce a series of essays under the title The Rambler that would run every Tuesday and Saturday for twopence each. When explaining the title, he told 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 state: "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 as they were reprinted nine times during Johnson's life. Richardson, enjoying the essays greatly, questioned the publisher as to who wrote the works, and he, with a few of Johnson's friends, were given the knowledge as to Johnson's authorship.

Johnson's wife died shortly after the final issue appeared. 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. They ran until 1752.

To prepare for the work, Johnson wrote a Plan for the Dictionary, and this Plan was patronized 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. After seven years from 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. However, Johnson did not appreciate the tone of the essay, and he felt that Chesterfield did not complete his job as the work's patron. Johnson wrote a letter expressing this view and harshly criticized Chesterfield, but Chesterfield accepted it without any ill will and, since he was so impressed by the language, he kept the letter displayed on a table for anyone to read.

The Dictionary was finally published in September 1755, and the title page included the fact that Oxford awarded him a Master of Arts degree in expectation of 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 words; it also sold for the huge price of £4/10s. It would be years before "Johnson's Dictionary", as it came to be known, would ever turn a profit. Authors' 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 used by the Webster's Dictionary and New English Dictionary.

Later career

On 16 March 1756, Johnson was arrested for an outstanding debt of five pounds, 18 shillings. Unable to contact anyone else, he wrote to Samuel Richardson to ask for money. Richardson had lent money to Johnson previously, and this time sent him six guineas. Soon after, Johnson met and befriended Joshua Reynolds, and this new relationship impressed Johnson enough that he declared Reynolds "almost the only man whom I call a friend". Johnson's only other friend, Bennet Langton, returned home during this time and set off to school in 1757.

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James Boswell at 25

To occupy himself, Johnson began working 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 with the beginning of the Seven Years' War. The Magazine did not include many reviews or deal only in politics, including at least thirty-four written by Johnson. While not working on the Magazine, Johnson wrote a series of prefaces for others, such as Guiseppe Baretti, William Payne, and Charlotte Lennox. However, these did not take up as much of his time as his Edition of Shakespeare, which he published a Proposal for it on 8 June 1756. However, Johnson slowly stopped working on his Shakespeare as the months passed, and he told Charles Burney in December 1757 that it would take him until the next March to finish.

In February 1758, he was arrested again for a debt of 40 pounds. This debt was soon paid for by Jacob Tonson, who contracted Johnson to publish Shakespeare, and Johnson was soon motivated to finish his edition in order to repay this favor. Although it would take him another seven years to finish, Johnson finished a few volumes of his Shakespeare in order to prove his commitment to the project.

In 1758, Johnson began another series, The Idler, as a way to avoid having to finish his Edition of Shakespeare. These were shorter and lighter than The Rambler, lacking many features of The Rambler, and ran weekly from 15 April 1758 to 5 April 1760. Unlike his independent publication of The Rambler, The Idler was published in a weekly news journal The Universal Chronicle, a journal that was supported by John Payne, John Newbery, Robert Stevens, and William Faden.

Johnson published his philosophical novella Rasselas on 19 April 1759, which was written in one week to pay for his mother's funeral and to ettle her debts. The work became very popular and there was a new English edition of the work almost every year. It was soon after translated into five different languages (French, Dutch, German, Russian, and Italian), and later into another nine.

A literary party at Sir Joshua Reynolds - 1781. The painting shows the friends of Reynolds – many of whom were members of "The Club" – use cursor to identify.

By 1762, however, Johnson 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 begin finishing his Shakespeare, and, after receiving the first payment on a government pension on 20 July 1762, he was able to dedicate most of hist 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 not making Johnson rich, it allowed 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.

On 16 May 1763, Johnson met a 22-year-old James Boswell, a man who would later become Johnson's first major biographer, for the first time in the book shop of Johnson's friend, Tom Davies. Around the same time, Johnson formed "The Club", a social group that included his friends Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, Topham Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, Dr. Christopher Nugent, Burke's father-in-law, John Hawkins, and Anthony Chamier. They decided to meet every Monday at 7:00 pm at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho.

Johnson met Henry Thrale, a wealthy brewer and Member of Parliament, and his wife, Hester on 9 January 1765. They quickly became friends and soon Johnson was treated as a member of the family, and soon after he was motivated to work on his Shakespeare again. The work was finally published 10 October 1765 as The Plays of William Shakespeare, in Eight Volumes ... To which are added Notes by Sam. Johnson with 1,000 copies. The edition sold quickly and a second edition was soon printed. Afterwards, Johnson stayed with the Thrales for 15 years until Henry's death in 1781, sometimes staying in rooms at Thrale's Anchor Brewery in Southwark. Hester Thrale's reminiscences of Johnson, together with her diaries and correspondence, are second only to Boswell as a source of biographical information on Johnson. Also in that year, Johnson received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin in 1765, followed by one from Oxford 10 years later.

Final works

On 6 August 1773, eleven years after Johnson met Boswell, he set out to visit Boswell in Scotland in order to begin "a journey to the western islands of Scotland"; later used as the title of Johnson's 1775 account of their travels. His work was intended to discuss the social problems and struggle that affected the Scottish people, but he also praised many of the unique facets of Scottish society, such as a school in Edinburgh for the deaf and dumb. Johnson attacked the claim that James Macpherson's Ossian poems were translations of ancient Scottish literature on the grounds that "in those times nothing had been written in the Earse language." This claim brought swift reaction from Macpherson, who threatened to counteract Johnson. Boswell's account, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, was published in 1786, as a preliminary to his Life of Johnson.) Included were various quotes and descriptions of events that happened, including anecdotes such as Johnson swinging around a broadsword while wearing Scottish garb or Johnson dancing a Highland dance.

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 appeared, cautioning 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 7 1775, he made the famous statement, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

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, who were protesting against taxation without representation. Johnson argued that by 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 decried 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". However, years before Johnson was advocating that the English and the French were just "two robbers" who were stealing land from the natives, and that neither deserved to live there.

On 3 May 1777, while Johnson was trying to save Reverend William Dodd from being executed, he wrote to Boswell to state that he was busy preparing a "little Lives" and "little Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets." Johnson was asked by Tom Davies, William Strahan and Thomas Cadell to create this final major work, the Lives of the English Poets. Johnson only asked for 200 guineas as a price. The Lives, which were critical as well as biographical studies, appeared as prefaces to selections of each poet's work and were quite larger than originally expected. The work was finished in March 1781 and the whole collection was published in six volumes. However, he was unable to enjoy his work because his friend Thrale died 4 April 1781 and was buried 11 April 1781. Afterwards, Mrs. Thrale became interested in the Italian singing teacher, Gabriel Mario Piozzi, and Johnson soon moved on. After returning back home and traveling, Johnson received word that his dear friend, Robert Levet, died on 17 January 1782. Johnson was shocked by Levet's death and soon caught a cold which turned into bronchitis and lasted for several months.

Final moments

File:Johnson003.jpg

Hester Thrale and her daughter Queeny

Although he recovered his heath by August, he experienced emotional trama when he was given word that Mrs Thrale would sell the residence that Johnson shared with them. 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. While there, he wrote a prayer for the Thrale family:

To thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I comment this family. Bless, guide, and defend them.

The walk to the church strained Johnson, but he managed the journey on his own. However, Mrs Thrale did not completely abandon Johnson, and soon asked him if he would accompany them on a journey to Brighton. He agreed, and was with them from 7 October 1782 until 20 November 1782. Afterwards, his heath began to fail him and he was left alone after Boswell visited him on 29 May 1783 before travelling to Scotland.

On 17 June 1783, Johnson 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 to die, 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 remove Johnson's gout, and his remaining friends, like Fanny Burney (the daughter of Charles Burney), came to keep him company. He was to be confined to his room from 14 December 1783 to 21 April 1784.

His heath began to improve by May 1784, and he traveled to Oxford with Boswell on 5 May 1784. By July, many of Johnson's friends were either dead or gone, Boswell having left for Scotland and Mrs Thrale having engaged with Piozzi. Without anyone to visit, Johnson expressed a desire to die in London and arrived there 16 November 1784. On 25 November 1784, he allowed Burney to visit him and expressed an interest to her that he should eave London. He soon left for Islington to visit Rev. Strahan. His final moments were filled with mental anguish and delusions, and when Dr. 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 people 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 Frank Barber. On 13 December 1784, Johnson met with two others: a young woman, Miss Morris, who Johnson blessed, and Francesco Sastres, an Italian teacher, who was given some of Johnson's final words, "I am Moriturus" ("I who am about to die"). Shortly afterwards he fell into a coma, and died at 7:00 pm.

Langton waited until eleven to tell the others, which led 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."

Character sketch

Johnson (1775) showing Johnson's intense concentration and the weakness of his eyes; he did not want to be depicted as "Blinking Sam"

Although large and powerfully built, Johnson had poor eyesight, was hard of hearing and as a result of childhood scrofula had a scarred face. At the age of two he was brought to "royal touch" ceremony with Queen Anne, although the practice was by then fading into obsolescence.

His figure was confusing to some and 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, 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 ... [with] such a power of eloquence, that Hogarth looked at him with astonishment, and actually imagined that this ideot had been at the moment inspired." However, not everyone was mislead by Johnson's appearance, and 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 was a devout, conservative Anglican, a staunch Tory and a compassionate man, supporting a number of poor friends under his own roof. He was an opponent of slavery and once proposed a toast to the "next rebellion of the negroes in the West Indies". He had a black manservant, Francis Barber (Frank), whom Johnson made his heir. He admitted to sympathies for the Jacobite cause but by the reign of George III he had come to accept the Hanoverian Succession. Although Johnson respected the poetry of John Milton's, he could not tolerate the Puritan and Republican beliefs that Milton held.

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 idealism could not be refuted. In his anger, Johnson powerfully stomped a nearby stone and proclaimed of Berkeley's theory, "I refute it thus!".

Posthumous diagnoses

Johnson displayed symptoms of various diagnoses that are described today in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 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". After leaving Pembroke, Johnson began to experience "feelings of intense anxiety" along with "feelings of utter hoplessness" and lassitude. He told Dr John Paradise, a friend, that he "could stare at the town clock without being able to tell the hour". In order to overcome these feelings, Johnson tried to constantly involve himself with various activities, but this did not seem to help. Taylor, in reflecting on Johnson's states, said that Johnson "at one time strongly entertained thoughts of Suicide." Because of these feelings, Johnson feared becoming insane.

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". However, Boswell blamed the common understanding of what was "sane" for Johnson's worries over being insane. At one point, Johnson was on his knees before Dr Delap, a clergyman, and was "beseeching God to continue to him the use of his understanding" in a "wild" manner that provoked Johnson's friend, Henry Thrale to "involuntarily [lift] up one hand to shut his mouth".

In joking on Christopher Smart's madness and writing for the Universal Visiter and his own contributions, Johnson claimed, "for poor Smart, while he was mad, not then knowing the terms on which he was engaged to write ... I hoped his wits would return to him. Mine returned to me, and I wrote in "the Universal Visitor" no longer". However, Hester Thrale/Piozzi, in her British Synonymy Book 2, did not joke about Johnson's possible madness, and claimed that Johnson was her "friend who feared an apple should intoxicate him". She made it clear who she was referring to when she wrote in Thraliana that "I don't believe the King has ever been much worse than poor Dr Johnson was, when he fancied that eating an Apple would make him drunk." To Mrs Thrale/Piozzi, what separated Johnson from others who were placed in asylum for madness (like Christopher Smart) was Johnson keeping his concerns and emotions to himself.

Johnson had a number of tics and other involuntary movements; the symptoms described by Boswell and others suggest that Johnson had Tourette syndrome. In 1994, J.M.S. Pearce analyzed the details provided by Boswell, Mrs Thrale/Piozzi, and others to understand Johnson's symptoms. Based on anecdotal evidence, he established a list of movements and tics that Johnson was said to have demonstrated. From this list, Pearce determined that it was possible Johnson was affected by Tourette syndrome as described by Georges Gilles de la Tourette. Pearce concluded that the "case of Dr Johnson accords well with current criteria for the Tourette syndrome; he also displayed many of the obsessional-compulsive traits and rituals which are associated with this syndrome". Pearce was not the only one to diagnose Johnson with Tourette syndrome; T.J. Murray also justified this diagnosis in 1979. At the time, Murray based his diagnosis of Johnson on various accounts of Johnson displaying physical tics, "involuntary vocalisations" and "compulsive behavior". In 1996, Vijai P. Sharma diagnosed Johnson's behavior as exhibiting obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Legacy

File:Blackadder III - Ink and Incapability.jpg

Johnson (right) and Prince George portrayed in the Blackadder episode "Ink and Incapability"

Johnson's fame in the wider world is due in large part to the enormous success of Boswell's Life of Johnson. Boswell, however, first met Johnson in 1763 when the older man had already achieved a degree of fame and stability, leading Boswell's biography to emphasise the latter part of Johnson's life. Consequently, Johnson has been seen more as a gruff but lovable society figure than as the struggling and poverty-stricken writer he was for much of his life.

Before arriving in London, Johnson stayed in Birmingham, where he is remembered in a frieze within the Old Square. Birmingham Central Library holds a Johnson collection, containing around two thousand volumes of his works (including many first editions) and literary periodicals and books about him.

In popular culture, Johnson (played by Robbie Coltrane) was 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 thrown on the fire by the servant Baldrick to serve as kindling. Johnson was also played by Coltrane in the film Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Islands. American author Lillian de la Torre wrote a series of detective stories featuring Johnson and Boswell as early versions of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, most of which were published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

Major works

	Essays, pamphlets, periodicals
1747	Plan for a Dictionary of the English Language
1750–1752	The Rambler
1753–1754	The Adventurer
1755	Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language
1758–1760	The Idler (1758-1760)
1765	Preface to the Plays of William Shakespeare
1770	The False Alarm
1771	Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands
1774	The Patriot
1775	Taxation No Tyranny
	Poetry
1738	London
1747	Prologue at the Opening of the Theatre in Drury Lane
1749	The Vanity of Human Wishes
	Irene, a Tragedy
	Biography
1779–1781	Lives of the Poets
	Criticism
1765	The Plays of William Shakespeare
	Dictionary
1755	A Dictionary of the English Language
	Novellas
1759	The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

See also

• Dr. Johnson's House
• Samuel Johnson Prize
• Touch Pieces
• Hodge, Dr Johnson's cat

References

• Ammerman, David. In the Common Cause: American Response to the Coercive Acts of 1774. New York: Norton. 1974.
• Baldwin, Barry. The Latin & Greek Poems of Samuel Johnson (1995).
• Bate, Walter Jackson. Samuel Johnson. London: Harcourt Brace, 1977. 646 pp.
• ----. The Achievement of Samuel Johnson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961. 248 pp.
• Boswell, James. Correspondence and Other Papers of James Boswell Relating to the Making of the Life of Johnson. Ed. Marshall Waingrow. New York, 1969.
• ----. The Life of Samuel Johnson. Ed. Christopher Hibbert. New York, Penguin Classics, 1986. 375 pp.
• ----. The Life of Samuel Johnson. Facsimile Reprint of First Issue of the First Edition, bound with The Principal Corrections and Additions to the First Edition, 2 volumes (ISBN 978-4-901481-69-4) www.aplink.co.jp/synapse/4-901481-69-X.htm
• Hawkings, John. Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. London, 1787.
• Hibbert, Christopher. The personal history of Samuel Johnson (Penguin, 1984).
• Hitchings, Henry. Defining the World (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005).
• Hopewell, Sydney. The Book of Bosworth School. Leicester: W. Thornley & Son, 1950.
• Johnson, Samuel. Johnsonian Miscellanies. Ed. G. B. Hill, Oxford, 1897.
• ----. Letters Ed. R. W. Chapman, London, 1952.
• ----. Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Ed. Chapman, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.
• ----. Major Works. Ed. Donald Greene, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 840 pp.
• ----. Samuel Johnson's Dictionary. Ed. Jack Lynch. New York: Levenger Press, 2002. 646 pp.
• ----. "Taxation No Tyranny". Samueljohnson.com. Retrieved on 28 June 2008.
• ----. Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands. Retrieved on 9 December 2006.
• Keymer, Thomas. "Johnson, Madness, and Smart." In Christopher Smart and the Enlightenment, edited by Clement Hawes, 47-66. New York, NY: St. Martin's, 1999. 308 pp.
• Lane, Margaret. Samuel Johnson & his World. New York: Harpes & Row Publishers, 1975. 256 pp.
• Murray, T.J. "Dr Samuel Johnson's movement disorder". British Medical Journal. 1979 Jun 16;1(6178):1610–4. PMID 380753 (PDF) Retrieved on 10 July 2008.
• Parrott, T. M. Samuel Johnson, Philosopher and Autocrat (1903).
• Quinney, Laura. "Chapter 2: Johnson in Mourning" in Literary Power and the Criteria of Truth (1995).
• Pearce, J. M. S. ""Doctor Samuel Johnson: 'the great convulsionary' a victim of Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome"" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine Vol. 87 (July 1994) pp. 396–399. PMID 8046726 (PDF) Retrieved on 10 July 2008.
• Reddick, Alan. The Making of Johnson's Dictionary (Cambridge, 1990).
• Redford, Bruce (ed.). The letters of Samuel Johnson: the Hyde edition (5 volumes, Oxford, 1994).
• Sharma, Vijai P. Obsessive Thinking, Compulsive Behaviors. Mind Publications, 1996. Retrieved on 30 January 2007.
• Wain, John (ed.). Johnson on Johnson (Dent 1976)
• Warner, Richard Tour through the Northern Counties. Bath, 1802.
• Watkins, W. B. C. Perilous Balance: The Tragic Genius of Swift, Johnson, and Sterne. Cambridge: Walker-deBerry, Inc., 1960. 171pp.
• Wharton, T. F. Samuel Johnson and the Theme of Hope (1984).
• Yung, Kai Kin. Samuel Johnson. Herbert Press, 1984.

External links

• Samuel Johnson at Curlie
• Samuel Johnson Page. Links collected by Rutgers scholar Jack Lynch.
• Works by Samuel Johnson at Project Gutenberg
• Life Of Johnson by James Boswell, abridged by Charles Grosvenor Osgood in 1917 "omitt[ing] most of Boswell's criticisms, comments and notes, all of Johnson's opinions in legal cases, most of the letters,..." (Project Gutenberg)
• Johnson Society of London. A society based in London with regular meetings about Johnson.
• Site outlining the Samuel Johnson Project and sculpture initiative in Johnson's home city of Lichfield.