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. |
From inside the book
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... seemed himself not to be. In the early 1750s, before he knew Boswell, he had also formed an improbable friendship with Bennet Langton's college acquaintance Topham Beauclerk: Johnson, soon after this acquaintance [with Bennet Langton] ...
... seemed to draw his mind one way and his Religion byassed him to the contrary, and this may have occasioned that continual perplexity, and doubts, and fears, in which the greater portion of his life was passed ... William Bowles ...
... seemed not only to dread losing a word, but to be anxious not to miss a breathing; as if hoping from it, latently, or mystically, some information.'139 Burney's amused puzzlement was however not the only response Boswell's conduct ...
... seemed to learn by intuition; for though indolence and procrastination were inherent in his constitution, whenever he made an exertion he did more than any one else. In short, he is a memorable instance of what has been often observed ...
... seemed very full of the merits of his son, and told the company he was a good scholar, and a poet, and wrote latin verses. His figure and manner appeared strange to them; but he behaved modestly, and sat silent, till upon something ...