Selections from Boswell's Life of Johnson (Classic Reprint)

Front Cover
FB&C Limited, 2015 M07 16 - 102 pages
Excerpt from Selections From Boswell's Life of Johnson

Samuel johnson has the almost unique distinction of being an author who is better known than his works. He is admittedly the dominant figure in later eighteenth century English literature. Professor Barrett Wendell speaks of him and Ben Jonson as two men who have pre eminently guided the course of letters, each in his own age. Taine speaks of him as a strange character the most esteemed of his time, a sort of literary dictator, and adds that his criticism becomes law; men crowd to hear him talk; he is the arbiter of style. Yet Rasselas, the Vanity of Human Wishes and even the Lives of the Poets are likely to remain unopened, while the works of his certainly lesser contemporary, Goldsmith, who looked up to John son as a patron and protector, are widely read. The rea son for this neglect may be found again in Taine, who says of his style: Classical prose attains its perfection in him as classical poetry in Pope. Art cannot be more con summate or nature more forced and of his matter: His truths are too true; we already knew his precepts by heart. Indeed, both substance and style are out of date.

It is not necessary, then, for the pupil to read much of the works of Johnson a chapter or two of Rasselas and a typical passage from the Lives of the Poets, on Addison, for instance are quite sufficient to show the philosophy, the critical judgment, and the style of Johnson as a writer.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Other editions - View all

About the author (2015)

James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck ( 29 October 1740 - 19 May 1795), was a Scottish lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh. He is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson, which the modern Johnsonian critic Harold Bloom has claimed is the greatest biography written in the English language. Boswell's surname has passed into the English language as a term (Boswell, Boswellian, Boswellism) for a constant companion and observer, especially one who records those observations in print. In A Scandal in Bohemia, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes affectionately says of Dr. Watson, who narrates the tales, "I am lost without my Boswell."

Bibliographic information