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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... manner of songs, and began to make one about an amorous meeting with a pretty girl, the burthen of which was as follows: She gave me this, I gave her that; And tell me, had she not tit for tat? I gave three huzzas, and we went briskly ...
... manners is disagreeable. I shall mark what I remember of his conversation.8 However, when it came to writing this up ... manner of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost, 'Look ...
... manner was the product of habit and will, as he explained to Reynolds: Sir Joshua Reynolds once asked him by what means he had attained his extraordinary accuracy and flow of language. He told him, that he had early laid it down as a ...
... manner in which I am obliged to exhibit Johnson's conversation at this period. In the early part of my acquaintance with him, I was so wrapt in admiration of his extraordinary colloquial talents, and so little accustomed to his peculiar ...
... manner, which opinion the Publick has confirmed, was the best encouragement for me to persevere in my purpose of producing the whole of my stores. In one respect, this Work will, in some passages, be different from the former. In my ...