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Samuel Johnson wrote the first great English dictionary, and James Boswell wrote Johnson. This huge, joyful book follows Johnson from his Lichfield childhood to his London fame: the poverty, the dictionary, the famous friends, and above all the talk, hundreds of conversations Boswell wrote down the same night. If you love hearing a brilliant mind think out loud, this is the greatest seat in the house.
Boswell met Johnson in 1763, when he was twenty-two and Johnson was fifty-three, already the most famous writer in England. For the next twenty-one years Boswell kept journals of their time together, noting conversations the very night they happened, and after Johnson's death in 1784 he spent years shaping them into this book, published in 1791.
The Life gives us Johnson whole: the boy from Lichfield who walked to London with twopence halfpenny in his pocket, the Grub Street years, the Dictionary of 1755, Rasselas written in a week to pay for his mother's funeral, the Club with Reynolds, Burke, Goldsmith and Garrick, the journey to the Hebrides, and the long, devout facing of death.
This edition is George Birkbeck Hill's, published at Oxford in 1887 in six volumes, long the standard scholarly text. Hill restored Boswell's third-edition text and surrounded it with notes drawn from Johnson's whole world; the notes are not carried in this reading text. What is here is everything Boswell wrote: the four volumes of the Life, the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, Johnson's own diary of his Welsh journey, and the letters and sayings gathered at the end.
James Boswell, a young Scottish lawyer, met Samuel Johnson in a London bookshop in 1763 and attached himself to the great man for life. The Life, published in 1791, is built from Boswell's journals and Johnson's letters: the talk of the Club, the coffee houses and the deathbed, all of it recorded at Boswell's elbow. This text is George Birkbeck Hill's six-volume edition, the standard scholarly text.
Boswell's Life of Johnson is often called the greatest biography in English, and it earns the title by a simple method: Boswell was there. He met Johnson in 1763, attached himself to the circle, asked questions, kept a journal, and wrote down the conversation of the most quotable man of the century while it was still warm.
The book covers Johnson's whole life, from his birth at Lichfield in 1709 to his death in 1784: the schooldays and Oxford, the penniless London years, the Dictionary, the essays and poems, the pension, the Club, and the tour of Scotland he made with Boswell in 1773, whose journal is printed here in full, together with Johnson's diary of his journey into North Wales.
Our text is George Birkbeck Hill's edition (Oxford, 1887), in six volumes, with Boswell's own prefaces and dedications, the appendices of documents and letters, Hill's addenda of autograph letters, and his concordance of Johnson's sayings. Hill's footnotes, printed as back matter in the electronic text, are not carried here; the biography itself is complete and unabridged.
Edition: Edited by George Birkbeck Hill. The unabridged Oxford edition of 1887, in six volumes (Project Gutenberg 8918, 9072, 9180, 10357, 10451, 11729). Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 8918.
The first chapter
ADVERTISEMENT
TO THE
FIRST EDITION.
I at last deliver to the world a Work which I have long promised, and of which, I am afraid, too high expectations have been raised. The delay of its publication must be imputed, in a considerable degree, to the extraordinary zeal which has been shewn by distinguished persons in all quarters to supply me with additional information concerning its illustrious subject; resembling in this the grateful tribes of ancient nations, of which every individual was eager to throw a stone upon the grave of a departed Hero, and thus to share in the pious office of erecting an honourable monument to his memory.
The labour and anxious attention with which I have collected and arranged the materials of which these volumes are composed, will hardly be conceived by those who read them with careless facility. The stretch of mind and prompt assiduity by which so many conversations were preserved, I myself, at some distance of time, contemplate with wonder; and I must be allowed to suggest, that the nature of the work, in other respects, as it consists of innumerable detached particulars, all which, even the most minute, I have spared no pains to ascertain with a scrupulous authenticity, has occasioned a degree of trouble far beyond that of any other species of composition. Were I to detail the books which I have consulted, and the inquiries which I have found it necessary to make by various channels, I should probably be thought ridiculously ostentatious. Let me only observe, as a specimen of my trouble, that I have sometimes been obliged to run half over London, in order to fix a date correctly; which, when I had accomplished, I well knew would obtain me no praise, though a failure would have been to my discredit. And after all, perhaps, hard as it may be, I shall not be surprized if omissions or mistakes be pointed out with invidious severity. I have also been extremely careful as to the exactness of my quotations; holding that there is a respect due to the publick which should oblige every Authour to attend to this, and never to presume to introduce them with,--'I think I have read;'--or,--'If I remember right;'--when the originals may be examined.
I beg leave to express my warmest thanks to those who have been pleased to favour me with communications and advice in the conduct of my Work. But I cannot sufficiently acknowledge my obligations to my friend Mr. Malone, who was so good as to allow me to read to him almost the whole of my manuscript, and make such remarks as were greatly for the advantage of the Work; though it is but fair to him to mention, that upon many occasions I differed from him, and followed my own judgement.
I regret exceedingly that I was deprived of the benefit of his revision, when not more than one half of the book had passed through the press; but after having completed his very laborious and admirable edition of Shakspeare, for which he generously would accept of no other reward but that fame which he has so deservedly obtained, he fulfilled his promise of a long-wished-for visit to his relations in Ireland; from whence his safe return finibus Atticis is desired by his friends here, with all the classical ardour of Sic te Diva potens Cypri; for there is no man in whom more elegant and worthy qualities are united; and whose society, therefore, is more valued by those who know him.
It is painful to me to think, that while I was carrying on this Work, several of those to whom it would have been most interesting have died. Such melancholy disappointments we know to be incident to humanity; but we do not feel them the less. Let me particularly lament the Reverend Thomas Warton, and the Reverend Dr. Adams. Mr. Warton, amidst his variety of genius and learning, was an excellent Biographer. His contributions to my Collection are highly estimable; and as he had a true relish of my Tour to the Hebrides, I trust I should now have been gratified with a larger share of his kind approbation. Dr. Adams, eminent as the Head of a College, as a writer, and as a most amiable man, had known Johnson from his early years, and was his friend through life. What reason I had to hope for the countenance of that venerable Gentleman to this Work, will appear from what he wrote to me upon a former occasion from Oxford, November 17, 1785:--'Dear Sir, I hazard this letter, not knowing where it will find you, to thank you for your very agreeable Tour, which I found here on my return from the country, and in which you have depicted our friend so perfectly to my fancy, in every attitude, every scene and situation, that I have thought myself in the company, and of the party almost throughout. It has given very general satisfaction; and those who have found most fault with a passage here and there, have agreed that they could not help going through, and being entertained with the whole. I wish, indeed, some few gross expressions had been softened, and a few of our hero's foibles had been a little more shaded; but it is useful to see the weaknesses incident to great minds; and you have given us Dr. Johnson's authority that in history all ought to be told.'
Such a sanction to my faculty of giving a just representation of Dr. Johnson I could not conceal. Nor will I suppress my satisfaction in the consciousness, that by recording so considerable a portion of the wisdom and wit of 'the brightest ornament of the eighteenth century.' I have largely provided for the instruction and entertainment of mankind.
London, April 20, 1791.
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1791. Author died 1795. George Birkbeck Hill edition published 1887; editor died 1903. Public domain worldwide. Share this book: WhatsApp
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