Samuel Johnson LL.D. (–
13 December 1784), often referred to simply as
Dr Johnson, is one of
England's best known literary figures: a
poet,
essayist,
biographer,
lexicographer and a
critic of
English Literature. He was also a great wit and prose stylist, well known for his
aphorisms. Dr Johnson is the most quoted of English writers after
Shakespeare
Early life and education
The son of a poor bookseller Michael Johnson and his wife Sarah Ford, Johnson was born in
Lichfield,
Staffordshire. He attended
Lichfield Grammar School. On
31 October 1728, a few weeks after he turned nineteen, he entered
Pembroke College, Oxford, as a
fellow-commoner. After thirteen months, however, poverty forced him to leave Oxford without taking a degree and he returned to Lichfield. Just before the publication of his Dictionary,
Oxford University awarded Johnson the degree of Master of Arts. In 1775,
Oxford University awarded him an honorary doctorate.
He attempted to work as a
teacher and schoolmaster, initially being turned down by the headmaster of
Adams' Grammar School,
Rev Samuel Lea, but then finding work at a school in
Stourbridge. Aged twenty-five, he married
Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter, a widow twenty-one years his elder. His first work published in 1735 was a translation from the French of
Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia.
In 1736, Johnson established a
private academy at
Edial, near Lichfield. He had only three pupils, but one of them was
David Garrick, who remained his friend, while becoming the most famous actor 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. There he found employment with
Edward Cave, writing for
The Gentleman's Magazine. For the next three decades, Johnson wrote biographies, poetry, essays, pamphlets and parliamentary reports. These were presented as if they'd been recorded verbatim, but were actually second-hand reports based on interviews with witnesses. He also prepared a catalogue for the sale of the
Harleian Library. He continued to live in poverty for much of this time. The poem
London (1738) and the
Life of Savage (1745; a biography of Johnson's friend and fellow writer
Richard Savage, who had shared in Johnson's poverty and died in 1744) are important works from this period.
Establishing career
Between 1745 and 1755, Johnson wrote perhaps his best-known work,
A Dictionary of the English Language. The rise in literacy and the declining cost of printing demanded clearer standards in spelling, meaning and grammar. It was on the morning of
June 18,
1746 that Johnson, over breakfast at the Golden Anchor tavern in London, signed a contract with the booksellers/publishers William Strahn 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 assumed by Johnson himself that the project would take approximately three years. It would take, in fact, nearly ten years.
Despite common assumptions, Johnson's wasn't the first dictionary of the English language. In the preceding 150 years there had been upward of nearly 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.
Status achieved
In 1762, Johnson was awarded a government pension of three hundred pounds a year, largely through the efforts of
Thomas Sheridan and the
Earl of Bute. Johnson met
James Boswell, his future biographer, the following year. Around the same time, Johnson formed "
The Club", a social group that included his friends
Joshua Reynolds,
Edmund Burke,
David Garrick and
Oliver Goldsmith. By now, Johnson was a celebrated figure. He received an
honorary doctorate from
Trinity College, Dublin in 1765, followed by one from Oxford ten years later.
It is widely believed, through many out of context humorous quotations and asides, that Johnson despised the Scots; however, careful reading of Boswell and of Johnson shows that, while Johnson cited ignorance and laziness as a primary cause for the degraded conditions under which most Scots lived, he frequently tempered his censure with a measure of empathy. He undertook a lengthy tour of Scotland with his great friend, himself a
Lowland Scot,
James Boswell. While Johnson's record of these travels tended toward social commentary and amateur ethnography, Boswell's account is primarily a study of Johnson, whom he'd more thoroughly cover after the latter's death. The first conversation between Johnson and Boswell is frequently quoted:
» Boswell: Mr Johnson, I do indeed come from Scotland, but I can't help it.
Johnson: That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen can't help.
In 1765, Johnson met
Henry Thrale, a wealthy brewer and
Member of Parliament, and Thrale's wife,
Hester. They quickly became friends and soon Johnson became a member of the family. He stayed with the Thrales for fifteen years until Henry's death in 1781, 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.
Boswell, Johnson and the "Journey"
In 1773, eleven years after Johnson had met
Boswell, the two of them set out on
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, the title Johnson used for his account of their travels published in 1775. (Boswell's account,
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, was published in 1786, as a preliminary to his
Life of Johnson.) Their visit to the
Scottish Highlands and the
Hebrides took place while the post-
Jacobite pacification was crushing the
Scottish clan system, at a moment when the
romanticisation of
Gaelic culture was accelerating. Johnson proceeded to attack the claims 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." He was vindicated, for Macpherson couldn't produce his postulated manuscripts. However, Johnson also aided Scottish Gaelic culture by calling for a
Bible translation, which was produced soon afterward. Until then, Scottish Gaels had only Bedell's
Irish translation.
Final works
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. The last of these pamphlets,
Taxation No Tyranny, 1775, made the case against American colonists, then clamouring loudly for independence.
Johnson's final major work was the
Lives of the English Poets, a project commissioned by a consortium of London booksellers. The
Lives, which were critical as well as biographical studies, appeared as prefaces to selections of each poet's work. Johnson died in 1784 and was buried at
Westminster Abbey.
Character sketch
Large and powerfully built, Johnson had poor eyesight, was hard of hearing and had a scarred face as a result of childhood
scrofula. He also had a number of
tics and other involuntary movements; the symptoms described by Boswell suggest that Johnson had
Tourette syndrome and
obsessive-compulsive disorder.
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'd come to accept the
Hanoverian Succession. He remained a fiercely independent and original thinker, which may explain his deep affinity for
John Milton's work despite Milton's intensely radical — and, for Johnson, intolerable — political and religious outlook.
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 couldn't be refuted. In his anger, Johnson powerfully kicked a nearby stone and proclaimed of Berkeley's theory, "I refute it
thus!".
Johnson used a curious form of shorthand when writing poetry: he'd compose a line in his head, then only write down the first half. It appears that he'd remember the second half by the rhyme. Then, when he'd more time, he'd go back through the manuscript and complete each line. Scholars have often noted that the ink colour is consistent between all the beginning half-lines and between all the ending halflines, but that it frequently differs between the first half of a line and the second half. This method is reminiscent of the feats of memory that enabled a Celtic bard to remember over a hundred long tales or Homer to recite the
Iliad and the
Odyssey.
Legacy
Johnson's fame in the wider world is due in large part to the enormous success of Boswell's
Life of Johnson. Boswell, however, met Johnson after Johnson had already achieved a degree of fame and stability, leading Boswell's biography to emphasize 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's 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's thrown on the fire by the servant
Baldrick. 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
External results
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