Content. Introduction. Chapter. I. Samuel Johnson and his biography

Last years

Throughout much of his adult life Johnson suffered from physical ailments as well as depression (“melancholy”). After the loss of two friends, Henry Thrale in 1781 and Robert Levett in 1782, and the conclusion of The Lives of the Poets, his health deteriorated. Above all, his chronic bronchitis and “dropsy” (edema), a swelling of his legs and feet, caused great discomfort. In 1783 he suffered a stroke. His last year was made still bleaker by his break with Mrs. Thrale over her remarriage. He compared himself at one point to those from whom confessions were extorted by the placement of heavy stones upon their chests. Yet he insisted on fighting: “I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.” A profoundly devout Anglican, Johnson was in dread at the prospect of death and judgment, for he feared damnation. Yet in the winter of 1784, following a day of prayer after which his edema spontaneously disappeared, he entered into a previously unknown state of serenity. He accepted this release from illness as a sign that he might be saved after all and referred to it as a “late conversion.” He died on December 13 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Achievement and reputation of Samuel Johnson

Johnson is well remembered for his aphorisms, which contributed to his becoming one of the most frequently quoted of English writers. Many of these are recorded in Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., including his famous assertion “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” and his admonition “Clear your mind of cant.” Others appear in his own writings, including “Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.” He possessed the gift of contracting “the great rules of life into short sentences.”Johnson’s criticism is, perhaps, the most significant part of his writings. His assessment of Dryden’s critical works holds good for his own: “the criticism of Dryden is the criticism of a poet; not a dull collection of theorems, nor a rude detection of faults, which perhaps the censorer was not able to have committed; but a gay and vigorous dissertation, where delight is mingled with instruction, and where the author proves his right of judgment by his power of performance.” Although some have spoken of Johnson as a “literary dictator,” he rejected the role for himself and in general spoke against the notion of enforcing precepts. As a critic and editor, through his Dictionary, his edition of Shakespeare, and his Lives of the Poets in particular, he helped invent what we now call “English Literature.”Religion was central to Johnson’s understanding of literature and of the moral life generally. His personal uneasiness about religion seems traceable to an orthodox fear that he might be among the damned. He saw himself as someone who did not practice what he preached and lived in dread that he would be, in the words of St. Paul, a castaway. His watch bore in Greek the biblical text, “The night cometh,” a reminder of death and work left undone.Johnson is more complex than he is often taken to be. His wide range of interests included science and manufacturing processes, and his knowledge seemed encyclopaedic. Although his late political tracts in defense of the government are antidemocratic, Johnson combined a high regard for monarchy with a low opinion of most kings. He frequently expressed minority or unpopular views, such as his principled stands against slavery, colonialism, and mistreatment of indigenous peoples. He also urged better treatment of prisoners of war, prostitutes, and the poor generally, and he once tried to save a convicted forger from the gallows.If, as has often been claimed—largely because of Boswell’s biography—we know Johnson as we know few other people in history (or few other characters in literature), we know him primarily as a man who overcame a host of difficulties to become the leading scholar and writer of his age. His imposing scope made him what might now be called a public intellectual. In the 19th century the interest in Johnson centred on his personality, the subject of Boswell’s biography. In the 20th century his writings regained their rightful prominence.