The Life of Samuel JohnsonPenguin UK, 2008 M10 30 - 1312 pages In Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, one of the towering figures of English literature is revealed with unparalleled immediacy and originality. While Johnson’s Dictionary remains a monument of scholarship, and his essays and criticism command continuing respect, we owe our knowledge of the man himself to this biography. Through a series of wonderfully detailed anecdotes, Johnson emerges as a sociable figure with a huge appetite for life, crossing swords with other great eighteenth-century luminaries, from Garrick and Goldsmith to Burney and Burke – even his long-suffering friend and disciple James Boswell. Yet Johnson had a vulnerable, even tragic, side and anxieties and obsessions haunted his private hours. Boswell’s sensitivity and insight into every facet of his subject’s character ultimately make this biography as moving as it is entertaining. |
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... gave me this, I gave her that; And tell me, had she not tit for tat? I gave three huzzas, and we went briskly in.1 'Cato's soliloquy' is, of course, the famous speech from the coda to Joseph Addison's immensely popular play in which, on ...
... gave in my Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, of my being able to preserve his conversation in an authentick and lively manner, which opinion the Publick has confirmed, was the best encouragement for me to persevere in my purpose of ...
... gave my flocks to graze the flowery meads, And me to tune at ease th'unequal reeds. MELIBŒUS. My admiration only I exprest, (No spark of envy harbours in my breast) That, when confusion o'er the country reigns, To you alone this happy ...
... gave the first impression of that more extensive reading in which he had indulged himself. His tutor, Mr. Jorden, fellow of Pembroke, was not, it seems, a man of such abilities as we should conceive requisite for the instructor of ...
... gave him a letter of introduction to Lintot his bookseller, and that Johnson wrote some things for him; but I ... gave the waiter a penny; so that I was quite well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing.' He ...