Samuel Johnson 1709-1784

Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield, a country a. where his father was a struggling bookseller, parents soon recognized his genius and hoped ее him achieve great things, but his prospects first appeared gloomy). Johnson was clumsy and physically unattractive/given to odd mannerisms, and socially inept. He studied briefly at Oxford university but was forced to leave for lack of money. Yet by the time of his death, near the end the century, he was so famous a literary figure at the period between Pope and Wordsworth is ten called the Age of Johnson.) Johnson won success by means of a vigorous, wide-ranging mind and a powerful will that over-came his laziness and fear of insanity; .For many ears he earned a scanty living in London by mis­cellaneous jobs of writing, translating, editing a monthly magazine,¹ and ghost-writing parliamen­tary speeches. He first gained fame as a poet, but published little poetry; his major works were the Dictionary of the English Language, the periodical essays collected in The Rambler and The Idler, the-philosophical novel 'Rasselas, and an important edition of Shakespeare's plays; Some of his other productions included biographies, political pam­phlets, book reviews, legal arguments, sermons if or use by friends), a travel book, and a tragedy. Near the end of his life, he published The Lives of the English Poets, in which he combined his special gifts as biographer, literary critic, and essayist on human life. When he was sixty-six, Oxford finally recognized him with an honorary degree, and he is therefore often referred to as Dr. Johnson, but he never cared to use the title.

Johnson was a deeply loyal husband and friend. After his wife died in 1752, he spent much of his time with his wide circle of friends, among who were some of the greatest men of the time: the painter Joshua Reynolds, the political thinker Ed­mund Burke, the poet and playwright Oliver Goldsmith. Fiercely competitive, Johnson loved argument, as can be seen in the conversations brilliantly reported in James Boswell's Life of Johnson, and he was capable of cutting sarcasm. But his temper was humorous rather than malicious, and as his friend Hester Thrale remarked, "No man loved laughing better." Johnson's values were deeply conservative. He was committed to the established church and po­litical order, and disliked much of the new litera­ture of his time, such as the poems of Gray and the novels of Fielding and Sterne. But he always op­posed the unreflecting acceptance of authority, and never hesitated to criticize those of all persuasions when he thought them mistaken. His main aim was to teach readers to think for themselves.

Johnson's prose style is elaborate and balanced, with a tendency to big words and lengthy construc­tions:., Goldsmith told him, "If you were to make lit­tle fishes talk, they would talk like whales." But anyone who reads Johnson with care will find that his writing reflects a subtle and deep intelligence. He was the most learned man of his time —the economist Adam Smith said that he "knew more books than any man alive but he always insisted that knowledge was useless unless it helped its possessors to live in the real world.

Walter Jackson Bate has written of him: "In his ability to arouse —and sustain—an immediate and permanent trust, no other moralist in history excels or even begins to rival him."