danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

“Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield, in Staffordshire, on the 18th of September, N.S., 1709; and his initiation into the Christian Church was not delayed; for his baptism is recorded, in the register of St. Mary’s parish in that city, to have been performed on the day of his birth”.

So begins James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, perhaps the most significant biography written in English.  Its significance is generally thought to arise from Boswell’s skills as a writer, his attention to detail, and his honest portrayal of a man with whom he was an intimate acquaintance.  Boswell is justly credited on all those counts.  But it doesn’t hurt that James Boswell’s closest friend–and the subject of his great biography–was Samuel Johnson, the most brilliant and interesting man to ever write in our language.

Samuel Johnson was a large, awkward man.  His face and body were scarred, and he suffered frequent tics and convulsions.  He was awful to look upon, but everyone wanted to be in his company.  In her diary, Frances Burney wrote about a dinner party she attended on “the most consequential day” of her life – when she was introduced to Johnson:

Soon after we were seated, this great man entered.  I have so true a veneration for him, that the very sight of him inspires me with delight and reverence, notwithstanding the cruel infirmities to which he is subject; for he has almost perpetual convulsive movements, either of his hands, lips, feet, or knees, and sometimes all together.

Samuel Johnson wasn’t guaranteed success by right of birth.  His family wasn’t rich or titled.  His father was a downwardly-mobile bookseller.  Had Michael Johnson been a cobbler or a wheelwright, things might have turned out very differently.  But Samuel Johnson had access to books, and that made all the difference.  He attended college for a while, but when his family could no longer afford it, he withdrew without receiving his degree.  He suffered bouts of illness in the years that followed, and several of his friends and loved ones died.  He found no profitable employment.  Then, in his late twenties, he moved to London, which in those days was the center of the world.  Johnson made it on the street there as a writer, selling whatever he could.  He made connections, published some poetry, composed a play, and wrote regularly for The Gentleman’s Magazine, where his work drew notice.  Then he wrote a dictionary.

Today, it is hard for us to imagine a world without a dictionary.  In Johnson’s day there were several books of words vaguely resembling dictionaries, but they were laughably inadequate, seldom provided definitions, and often included only a small number of entries.  There was a real and obvious need for a true dictionary that would attempt to describe the English language as it was actually used.  Johnson took up the task of making one, claiming he could do it in three years.  It took him three times that, but in 1755, his Dictionary of the English Language was published.  It is an amazing thing to behold, and an astonishing achievement for one man.  The book cost more to print than Johnson was paid to write it.

In the years to come Johnson would write a series of periodical essays called The Rambler, then The Adventurer, then The Idler.  In these essays, Johnson discusses almost every topic imaginable, in language that is brilliant and touching.  Consider The Rambler, No. 47, in which he distinguishes between “passions of the mind” like fear, desire, or ambition–which he claims have their own cures–and sorrow, for which

there is no remedy provided by nature; it is often occasioned by accidents irreparable, and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed their existence; it requires what it cannot hope, that the laws of the universe should be repealed; that the dead should return, or the past should be recalled. [...]

Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future, an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession which we have lost, which no endeavours can possibly regain.

“Sorrow”, writes Johnson, “is a kind of rust of the soul”.

Johnson wrote during a period in which new forms of literature were coming into prominence, when the number of literate people was growing exponentially, and when the meaning of literacy itself was changing.  No longer would a knowledge of the classics–of Homer and Virgil–be required, nor would an understanding of Greek and Latin.  Johnson knew all the classical writers, and he understood their languages.  But, as we see from his praise of Burney’s Evelina, he knew that the audience was changing.  His Dictionary, his Lives of the Poets, his Rasselas, his Rambler, are all works for a new age.

Samuel Johnson was born three hundred years ago today.  Making his acquaintance changed my life.

Filed under: Literature and Books, Musings, Special Occasions on September 18th, 2009