Life of Johnson
Encyclopedia
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791) is a biography
of Dr. Samuel Johnson
written by James Boswell
. It is regarded as an important stage in the development of the modern genre
of biography
; many have claimed it as the greatest biography written in English
. While Boswell's personal acquaintance with his subject only began in 1763, when Johnson was 54 years old, Boswell covered the entirety of Johnson's life by means of additional research. The biography takes many critical liberties with Johnson's life, as Boswell makes various changes to Johnson's quotations and even censors many comments. Regardless of these actions, modern biographers have found Boswell's biography as an important source of information. The work was popular among early audiences and with modern critics, but some of the modern critics believe that the work cannot be considered a proper biography.
On 16 May 1763, Johnson met 22-year-old Boswell, the man who would later become Johnson's first major biographer, for the first time in the book shop of Johnson's friend, Tom Davies. They quickly became friends, although Boswell would return to his home in Scotland or travel abroad for months at a time. During his life, Boswell kept a series of journals that detailed the various moments that he felt were important. This journal, when published in the 20th century, filled eighteen volumes, and it was from this large collection of detailed notes that Boswell would base his works on Johnson's life. Johnson, in commenting on Boswell's excessive note taking playfully wrote to Hester Thrale
, "One would think the man had been hired to spy upon me".
On 6 August 1773, eleven years after first meeting Boswell, Johnson set out to visit his friend in Scotland, in order to begin "a journey to the western islands of Scotland", as Johnson's 1775 account of their travels would put it. Boswell's account, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
(1786), was a preliminary attempt at a biography before his Life of Johnson. With the success of that work, Boswell started working on the "vast treasure of his conversations at different times" that he recorded in his journals. His goal was to recreate Johnson's "life in Scenes". However, Boswell suffered the problem of having not met Johnson until Johnson was 53, and this created an imbalance on what portions of Johnson's life were actually discussed. Furthermore, as literary critic Donald Greene
has pointed out, Boswell's works only describe 250 days that Boswell could have actually been present with Johnson, the rest of the information having to come from either Johnson himself or from secondary sources recounting various incidents.
Before Boswell could publish his biography of Johnson, there were many other friends of Johnson's who published or were in the middle of publishing their own biographies or collections or anecdotes on Johnson: John Hawkins
, Thrale, Frances Burney, Anna Seward
, Elizabeth Montagu
, Hannah More
, and Horace Walpole
among many. The last edition Boswell worked on was the third, published in 1799.
There are many biographies and biographers of Samuel Johnson, but James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson is the one best known to the general reader. Yet opinion among 20th-century Johnson scholars such as Edmund Wilson and Donald Greene is that Boswell's Life "can hardly be termed a biography at all", being merely "a collection of those entries in Boswell's diaries dealing with the occasions during the last twenty-two years of Johnson's life on which they met ... strung together with only a perfunctory effort to fill the gaps". Furthermore, Greene claims that the work "began with a well-organized press campaign, by Boswell and his friends, of puffing and of denigration of his rivals; and was given a boost by one of Macaulay's most memorable pieces of journalistic claptrap". Instead of being called a "biography", Greene suggests that the work should be called an "Ana", a sort of table talk.
The cause for concern is that Boswell's original Life "corrects" many of Johnson's quotations, censors many of the more vulgar comments, and largely ignores Johnson's early years. In particular, Boswell creates a somewhat mythic version of Johnson, as William Dowling
puts it:
Modern biographers have since corrected Boswell's errors. This is not to say that Boswell's work is wrong or of no use: scholars such as Walter Jackson Bate appreciate the "detail" and the "treasury of conversation" that it contains. All of Johnson's biographers, according to Bate, have to go through the same "igloo" of material that Boswell had to deal with: limited information from Johnson's first forty years and an extreme amount for those after. Simply put, "Johnson's life continues to hold attention" and "every scrap of evidence relating to Johnson's life has continued to be examined and many more details have been added" because "it is so close to general human experience in a wide variety of ways".
told King George III
that the work entertained him more than any other. Robert Anderson, in his Works of the British Poets (1795), wrote: "With some venial exceptions on the score of egotism and indiscriminate admiration, his work exhibits the most copious, interesting, and finished picture of the life and opinions of an eminent man, that was ever executed; and is justly esteemed one of the most instructive and entertaining books in the English language."
John Wilson Croker
's edition of Boswell in 1831 received reviews by two major literary figures
Nor was the ‘Life’ a masterpiece purely by chance
Macaulay’s view that the book was great because of the baseness of Boswell was brushed aside by Carlyle –(“Falser hypothesis, we may venture to say, never rose in human soul”)
“As for the Book itself,” wrote Carlyle, "questionless the universal favour entertained for it is well merited. In worth as a Book we have rated it beyond any other product of the eighteenth century: all Johnson’s own Writings, laborious and in their kind genuine above most, stand on a quite inferior level to it...”
More recent critics have been mostly positive. Frederick Pottle suggests that "the crowning achievement of an artist who for more than twenty five years had been deliberately disciplining himself for such a task." W. K. Wimsatt argues, "the correct response to Boswell is to value the man through the artist, the artist in the man". Leopold Damrosch claims that the work is of a type that "do not lend themselves very easily to the usual categories by which the critic explains and justifies his admiration". Walter Jackson Bate emphasized the uniqueness of the work when he says "nothing comparable to it had existed. Nor has anything comparable been written since, because that special union of talents, opportunities, and subject matter has never been duplicated."
However, many critics disagree with the positive assessment of the work as a biography; Leopold Damrosch explains the potential problems with Boswell's Life: "[T]he usual claim that it is the world’s greatest biography seems to me seriously misleading. In the first place, it has real defects of organization and structure; in the second place (and more importantly) it leaves much to be desired as the comprehensive interpretation of a life." Brady Frank describes the mixed feelings that critics have in regards to The Life of Samuel Johnson when he says, "Though Boswell is the world’s greatest, critics have consistently patronized Boswell the man." Although Donald Greene thought that Boswell's The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
is a "splendid performance", he felt that the Life was inadequate and Johnson's later years deserved a more accurate biography.
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
written by James Boswell
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....
. It is regarded as an important stage in the development of the modern genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
of biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
; many have claimed it as the greatest biography written in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. While Boswell's personal acquaintance with his subject only began in 1763, when Johnson was 54 years old, Boswell covered the entirety of Johnson's life by means of additional research. The biography takes many critical liberties with Johnson's life, as Boswell makes various changes to Johnson's quotations and even censors many comments. Regardless of these actions, modern biographers have found Boswell's biography as an important source of information. The work was popular among early audiences and with modern critics, but some of the modern critics believe that the work cannot be considered a proper biography.
Background
Hester Thrale
Hester Lynch Thrale was a British diarist, author, and patron of the arts. Her diaries and correspondence are an important source of information about Samuel Johnson and 18th-century life.-Biography:Thrale was born at Bodvel Hall, Caernarvonshire, Wales...
, "One would think the man had been hired to spy upon me".
On 6 August 1773, eleven years after first meeting Boswell, Johnson set out to visit his friend in Scotland, in order to begin "a journey to the western islands of Scotland", as Johnson's 1775 account of their travels would put it. Boswell's account, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. is a travel journal by Scotsman James Boswell first published in 1785. In 1773, Boswell enticed his English friend Samuel Johnson to accompany him on a tour through the highlands and western islands of Scotland. Johnson was then in...
(1786), was a preliminary attempt at a biography before his Life of Johnson. With the success of that work, Boswell started working on the "vast treasure of his conversations at different times" that he recorded in his journals. His goal was to recreate Johnson's "life in Scenes". However, Boswell suffered the problem of having not met Johnson until Johnson was 53, and this created an imbalance on what portions of Johnson's life were actually discussed. Furthermore, as literary critic Donald Greene
Donald Greene
Donald Johnson Greene was a literary critic, English professor, and scholar of British literature, particularly the eighteenth-century period. Known especially for his work on Samuel Johnson, he also wrote on later authors such as Jane Austen, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Donald Davie.Greene...
has pointed out, Boswell's works only describe 250 days that Boswell could have actually been present with Johnson, the rest of the information having to come from either Johnson himself or from secondary sources recounting various incidents.
Before Boswell could publish his biography of Johnson, there were many other friends of Johnson's who published or were in the middle of publishing their own biographies or collections or anecdotes on Johnson: John Hawkins
John Hawkins (author)
Sir John Hawkins was an English author and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole. He was part of Johnson's various clubs but later left The Literary Club after a disagreement with some of Johnson's other friends. His friendship with Johnson continued and he was made one of the executors...
, Thrale, Frances Burney, Anna Seward
Anna Seward
Anna Seward was an English Romantic poet, often called the Swan of Lichfield.-Life:Seward was the elder daughter of Thomas Seward , prebendary of Lichfield and Salisbury, and author...
, Elizabeth Montagu
Elizabeth Montagu
Elizabeth Montagu was a British social reformer, patron of the arts, salonist, literary critic, and writer who helped organize and lead the bluestocking society...
, Hannah More
Hannah More
Hannah More was an English religious writer, and philanthropist. She can be said to have made three reputations in the course of her long life: as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, and as a practical...
, and Horace Walpole
Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford was an English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician. He is now largely remembered for Strawberry Hill, the home he built in Twickenham, south-west London where he revived the Gothic style some decades before his Victorian successors,...
among many. The last edition Boswell worked on was the third, published in 1799.
Biography
The cause for concern is that Boswell's original Life "corrects" many of Johnson's quotations, censors many of the more vulgar comments, and largely ignores Johnson's early years. In particular, Boswell creates a somewhat mythic version of Johnson, as William Dowling
William C. Dowling
William C. Dowling is University Distinguished Professor of English and American Literature at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, specializing in 18th-century English literature, literature of the early American Republic, and Literary Theory.-Biography:Born in Warner, New Hampshire,...
puts it:
Modern biographers have since corrected Boswell's errors. This is not to say that Boswell's work is wrong or of no use: scholars such as Walter Jackson Bate appreciate the "detail" and the "treasury of conversation" that it contains. All of Johnson's biographers, according to Bate, have to go through the same "igloo" of material that Boswell had to deal with: limited information from Johnson's first forty years and an extreme amount for those after. Simply put, "Johnson's life continues to hold attention" and "every scrap of evidence relating to Johnson's life has continued to be examined and many more details have been added" because "it is so close to general human experience in a wide variety of ways".
Critical response
Edmund BurkeEdmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
told King George III
George III of the United Kingdom
George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
that the work entertained him more than any other. Robert Anderson, in his Works of the British Poets (1795), wrote: "With some venial exceptions on the score of egotism and indiscriminate admiration, his work exhibits the most copious, interesting, and finished picture of the life and opinions of an eminent man, that was ever executed; and is justly esteemed one of the most instructive and entertaining books in the English language."
John Wilson Croker
John Wilson Croker
John Wilson Croker was an Irish statesman and author.He was born at Galway, the only son of John Croker, the surveyor-general of customs and excise in Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1800...
's edition of Boswell in 1831 received reviews by two major literary figures
- MacaulayThomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron MacaulayThomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay PC was a British poet, historian and Whig politician. He wrote extensively as an essayist and reviewer, and on British history...
. writing in the Edinburgh Review September 1831 was highly influential and established a way of thinking of Boswell and his Life of Johnson which was to prevail for many years. He was damning of Croker's editing "This edition is ill compiled, ill arranged, ill written, and ill printed", and dismissive of Boswell "Servile and impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a talebearer, an eavesdropper, a common butt in the taverns of London...;such was this man, and such he was content and proud to be". Macaulay also criticised (as did Lockhart)what he saw as a lack of discretion in the way the Life reveals Johnson's and others' personal lives, foibles, habits and private conversation; but recognised that it was this that made the Life of Johnson a great biography."Without all the qualities which made him the jest and the torment of those among whom he lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensitivity to all reproof, he could never have produced so excellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his servitude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and garrulity were virtues, an unsafe companion who never scrupled to repay the most liberal hospitality by the basest violation of confidence, a man without delicacy, without shame, without sense enough to know when he was hurting the feelings of others or when he was exposing himself to derision; and because he was all this, he has, in an important department of literature, immeasurably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, Alfieri, and his own idol Johnson "
Macaulay noted that Boswell could only give a detailed account of Johnson in his later years: "We know him [Johnson], not as he was known to men of his own generation, but as he was known to men whose father he might have been" and that long after Johnson's own works had been forgotten, he would be remembered though Boswell's Life
"that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have been brought up, the gigantic body, the huge massy face, seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes the “Why sir!” and “What then, sir?” and the “No, sir!” and the “You don’t see your way through the question, sir!”
- What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion. To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity! To be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries ! That kind of fame which is commonly the most transient is, in his case, the most durable. The reputation of those writings, which he probably expected to be immortal, is every day fading; while those peculiarities of manner and that careless table-talk the memory of which, he probably thought, would die with him, are likely to be remembered as long as the English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe "
- Thomas CarlyleThomas CarlyleThomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
reviewed Croker's edition in Fraser's Magazine in 1832. He shared Macaulay’s unfavourable verdict on Croker’s efforts "there is simply no edition of Boswell to which this last would seem preferable", but argued that to judge Boswell as Macaulay had was to overlook the most important point; that Boswell had had the great good sense to admire and attach himself to Dr Johnson; an attachment which had little to offer materially “James Boswell belonged, in his corruptible part, to the lowest classes of mankind; a foolish, inflated creature, swimming in an element of self-conceit: but in his corruptible there dwelt an incorruptible, all the more impressive and indubitable for the strange lodging it had taken”
- Thomas Carlyle
Nor was the ‘Life’ a masterpiece purely by chance
“Consider too, with what force, diligence and vivacity he has rendered back all this which in Johnson’s neighbourhood, his “open sense” had so eagerly and freely taken in. That loose-flowing, careless-looking Work of his is as a picture by one of Nature’s own Artists; the best possible resemblance of a Reality; like the very image thereof in a clear mirror. Which indeed it was: let but the mirror be clear, this the great point; the picture must and will be genuine. How the babbling Bozzy, inspired only by love, and the recognition and vision which love can lend, epitomises nightly the words of Wisdom, the deeds and aspects of Wisdom, and so, by little and little, unconsciously works together for us a whole Johnsoniad ; a more free, perfect, sunlit and spirit-speaking likeness than for many centuries had been drawn by man of man!”
Macaulay’s view that the book was great because of the baseness of Boswell was brushed aside by Carlyle –(“Falser hypothesis, we may venture to say, never rose in human soul”)
“Boswell wrote a good Book because he had a heart and an eye to discern Wisdom, and an utterance to render it forth; because of his free insight, his lively talent, above all, of his Love and childlike Open-mindedness. His sneaking sycophancies, his greediness and forwardness, whatever was bestial and earthy in him, are so many blemishes in his Book, which still disturb us in its clearness; wholly hindrances, not helps. Towards Johnson, however, his feeling was not Sycophancy, which is the lowest, but Reverence, which is the highest of human feelings.”
“As for the Book itself,” wrote Carlyle, "questionless the universal favour entertained for it is well merited. In worth as a Book we have rated it beyond any other product of the eighteenth century: all Johnson’s own Writings, laborious and in their kind genuine above most, stand on a quite inferior level to it...”
More recent critics have been mostly positive. Frederick Pottle suggests that "the crowning achievement of an artist who for more than twenty five years had been deliberately disciplining himself for such a task." W. K. Wimsatt argues, "the correct response to Boswell is to value the man through the artist, the artist in the man". Leopold Damrosch claims that the work is of a type that "do not lend themselves very easily to the usual categories by which the critic explains and justifies his admiration". Walter Jackson Bate emphasized the uniqueness of the work when he says "nothing comparable to it had existed. Nor has anything comparable been written since, because that special union of talents, opportunities, and subject matter has never been duplicated."
However, many critics disagree with the positive assessment of the work as a biography; Leopold Damrosch explains the potential problems with Boswell's Life: "[T]he usual claim that it is the world’s greatest biography seems to me seriously misleading. In the first place, it has real defects of organization and structure; in the second place (and more importantly) it leaves much to be desired as the comprehensive interpretation of a life." Brady Frank describes the mixed feelings that critics have in regards to The Life of Samuel Johnson when he says, "Though Boswell is the world’s greatest, critics have consistently patronized Boswell the man." Although Donald Greene thought that Boswell's The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. is a travel journal by Scotsman James Boswell first published in 1785. In 1773, Boswell enticed his English friend Samuel Johnson to accompany him on a tour through the highlands and western islands of Scotland. Johnson was then in...
is a "splendid performance", he felt that the Life was inadequate and Johnson's later years deserved a more accurate biography.
External links
- A scanned version of Life of Johnson available from Google Book Search. (Abridged edition)
- Edition of Life of Johnson broken down by year