Johnson, SAMUEL, so famous in his own day as a lexicographer, an essayist, and a critic, and still so famous, though rather perhaps for personal than for literary reasons, rather as a brilliant conversationalist and a sincere and brave man than as a writer of the highest order, was born at Lichfield, September 18 (N.S.), 1709. His father, Michael Johnson, a native of Derbyshire, of obscure extraction, was an old bookseller—what we call a second-hand bookseller—and seems to have been a person of some mark and importance in his neighbourhood, where booksellers of any kind were then scarce. 'He propagates learning all over the diocese,' wrote Lord Gower's chaplain in 1716, 'and advanceeth knowledge to its just height; all the clergy here are his pupils, and suck all they have from him.' His municipal position, too, was good. He served the offices of junior bailiff, of sheriff (the city of Lichfield being then styled a county), of mayor. His wife, Sarah Ford, came of a yeoman's family living in Warwickshire, and seems to have been a woman of some capacity. Thus his early circumstances were not so unfriendly to the future lexicographer as they are sometimes represented. On the other hand, he inherited from his father 'a vile melancholy,' a terrible tendency to depression and despair, which never wholly ceased to dominate him, and possibly some tendency to superstition, as he was credulously taken up to London to be 'touched' for the 'king's evil,' being afflicted with scrofula. Moreover, his father did not prove a successful man of business, however notable his knowledge of books; and pecuniary troubles soon began to be felt. Thus in his social rank, and his early experience of comfort followed by adversity, Johnson's early life closely parallels that of Shakespeare. He was sent to a dame's school, and then to the Lichfield grammar-school (1716-26), and for a while to the school of Stourbridge; and then for two years (1727-29) he studied or idled at home. All through life he was of indolent habits; but his quickness of apprehension and his strength of memory were amazing. As some one said of him, he 'tore out the heart of books.' And so during his school-days he became a prodigy of learning. Probably the hours spent at will amidst his father's books did more to make him so than the lessons and the floggings of Messrs Hawkins and Hunter, and Mr Wentford. At last, in 1729, probably through the assistance of his godfather, Dr Swinfen, he went up to Pembroke College, Oxford. His attainments were soon recognised; a Latin translation of Pope's Messiah increased his fame; and he became a figure of note and of influence in the 'nest of singing birds' of which he was a member. But he was 'miserably poor;' though then, as always, he bore his poverty without complaining or in any way abating his independent spirit. When some well-intentioned fellow-student placed at his door a pair of new boots, of which he stood sorely in need, he flung them out of the window. In the year 1731 things grew worse and worse; he left Oxford finally in October, without a degree; in December his father died.
The terrible struggle with poverty which began at Oxford, or even earlier, lasted some thirty years more (1731-62), and might never have ceased but for the intervention of the royal bounty. For some years after he left the university his life is obscure. He attempted schoolmastering, as do so many when there is nothing else before them, though he could scarcely have been less well fitted for such work physically or in his habits than in fact he was. He was liable to convulsive starts and facial contortions; and he never learned how to control his temper. 'He has the character,' says an extant letter concerning one of his candidatures, 'of being a very haughty, ill-natured gentleman; and that (sic) he has such a way of distorting his face (which though he can't help), the gentlemen think it may affect some young lads.' After a few months at Market Bosworth, he relinquished a situation which all his life long he recollected with 'the strongest aversion and even a degree of horror.' Clearly he liked the pedagogic profession as little as it liked him. He now made approaches towards the career to which he was destined. Visiting Birmingham in search of employment, he began his connection with the press by producing an abridged translation of Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia. Also, he wrote to Cave, the proprietor of the Gentleman's Magazine, then recently started, proposing to become a contributor. In 1735, his fortunes being at their lowest ebb, he, aged twenty-five, was bold enough to marry the widow of a Birmingham mercer, aged forty-six. She brought him a portion of £800, part of which seems to have been lost by the insolvency of an attorney. The accounts given of his 'pretty charmer,' as he called her, are not very fascinating; but, as he said in after years to Beaulerck, 'Sir, it was a love match on both sides.' And certainly his attachment, at all events, was deep, and tender, and constant. Once more, and no doubt with the remainder of his wife's portion, he attempted schoolmastering; but it is not surprising that parents did not crowd with their offspring to the boarding-house opened at Edial Hall, near Lichfield. There was now nothing for it but to try the metropolis. In 1737, with a tragedy and twopence-halfpenny in his pocket, he came up, along with his Edial pupil, Garrick, to London, which henceforward was to be his abode. Later in the year he fetched Mrs Johnson. It is certain he had a terrible struggle to make a living. One publisher, noticing his burly frame, advised him to buy a porter's knot; another gave him the task of compiling a catalogue of the Harleian Library, and him Johnson knocked down with a folio Septuagint when he accused him wrongfully of negligence. He was sometimes dinnerless (yours, impransus, is his signature to a letter to Cave), occasionally bedless (we hear of his walking round St James's Square with Savage all one night 'for want of a lodging'), always ill fed and shabbily dressed. But he bore all with a splendid courage. He neither whined about hardships he had to endure, nor boasted of the fortitude with which he endured them. There is no more heroic figure in the history of our literature. Meanwhile, in spite of circumstances, he was becoming the foremost writer of his time, and was already obtaining an influence and a power due to something more than his writings—due to the force and the nobility of his character. In 1738 he became a regular contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine, and from November 1740 to February 1743 he wrote the debates in parliament published by Cave under the title of The Senate of Lilliput, and 'took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.'
In 1738 he attempted to do with Juvenal what Pope had been doing with Horace; he published his London, a poem between whose lines may be read the piteous story of the harsh experiences he was undergoing. It is interesting to note that Pope on first reading the poem promised that its unknown author should soon be détéré, and got Lord Gower to write to a friend to beg Swift to obtain Johnson a Dublin degree in order to help him to a mastership of £60 a year. A few years later, in 1747, he published his proposal of a new Dictionary of the English Language. It was paradoxical indeed that one in his starving position should undertake a task so gigantic and so unremunerative. But it was not only undertaken, but achieved. Just when this huge labour was nearing completion a nobleman whose help at an earlier period would have been thrice welcome extended towards him a patronising hand; and to this overture Johnson replied in the famous letter of February 7, 1755, which for its just indignation, and its passion of independence, to say nothing of its fine quality as a piece of writing, would make its author memorable had he no other claim on the admiration of posterity. During the years mainly devoted to the Dictionary he had produced also his Vanity of Human Wishes, another and yet more brilliant adaptation of Juvenal, and also the series of essays called The Rambler, in which his genius showed to less advantage, though it is frequently perceptible in the acuteness of the observations he records. In 1752, just after he had concluded The Rambler, his wife died. His grief was profound and enduring. For some forty days this man who to the world at large seemed, and often in manner was, so rough and savage, buried his face and wept. 'Sir,' he said some years after to an old fellow Oxonian who asked him if he had been married, 'I have known what it was to have a wife, and I have known what it is to lose a wife. It had almost broke my heart.' Indeed, one of the most striking characteristics of Johnson, when he is seen beneath the surface, is the infinite tenderness of his nature to children, to women, to poverty, and to every form of distress. As Garrick put it, he had nothing of the bear but the skin. During nearly all the Dictionary period and three years beyond it—i.e. from 1748 to 1758—he was living in a house still standing in Gough Square, off Fleet Street. In 1759 his mother died; and to meet the expenses connected with her death he wrote Rasselas in the evenings of a single week. The novel had lately arisen in our literature; and so this work took the shape of a tale. But Johnson had little talent for that kind of writing; and the value of Rasselas lies in far other directions. In respect of its view of life, it has been well described as but a prose edition of the Vanity of Human Wishes; and it has much in common, though the differences also are striking, with Voltaire's Candide, which was published almost exactly at the same time. In 1758 he again attempted the periodical essay, adopting The Idler for his title. During all these years he performed also much hack work. Yet, for all his efforts, he was more than once arrested for debt.
At last he was relieved from his oppressive and incessant penury by the bestowal upon him by the crown of a well-deserved pension of £300 a year. And for the last twenty-two years of life (1762–84) he lived in what was comparative affluence, finding himself able to accommodate in his house in Johnson's Court, whither he migrated in 1765, and mainly to support two homeless friends—viz. Mrs Williams and Mr Levett, as well as his black servant Francis Barber; and in his house in Bolt Court, which he occupied from 1777 to his death, no less than three others besides—viz. Mrs Desmoulins and her daughter, and a Miss Carmichael, to say nothing of occasional waifs and strays for whom he provided a night's lodging. These strange inmates of what he called his 'seraglio' were far from being always harmonious, but all their petulance could not weary out his benevolence. We read of his carrying home a poor creature he found lying on the streets upon his back, and putting pennies into the hands of the sleeping street Arabs on his way home from the club, that they might have something for breakfast when they awoke in the morning. In the London of that day he filled an almost, if not quite, unique position. He was a sort of literary monarch. 'He seemed to me,' said one of his many friends, 'to be considered as a kind of public oracle, whom everybody thought they had a right to visit and consult.' In 1763 the lion-hunting Boswell became his eager and faithful follower, and treasured up with wonderful skill every roar that was uttered. It is mainly to his faithful and reverent recollection that we owe our intimate knowledge of the peculiarities of the great man—his insatiable tea-drinking, and love of late hours; his slovenliness in dress and strange gesticulations; his physical strength and courage; his antipathy to Scotchmen, and love of London streets; his insensibility to music and painting; his hearty old Toryism, hatred of Whigs, and honest old-fashioned patriotism; his reverence for the church, and his sincere religion yet strange shrinking from death; his abhorrence of all false sentimentality, and rigid truthfulness; his delight in conversation, his marvellous dexterity in retort, and his frequent browbeating of his antagonists. Even his cat Hodge has become a living personality to posterity from the inspired faithfulness of his chronicler.
In 1764 the famous club known as the Literary Club was formed, having amongst its original members Johnson, Reynolds, Burke, Goldsmith, Langton, Sir John Hawkins. Probably in 1765 Johnson made the acquaintance of Mr Thrle and his sprightly wife, who made a new home for him both in Southwark and at Streatham, and in other ways did much to make his life bright and happy for the long space of more than sixteen years. With them he travelled to Bath, to Brighton, to North Wales, to France. In 1773 Boswell persuaded him to visit Scotland and the Hebrides, which was perhaps the most striking event of his later years. So far as his terrible enemy melancholia permitted, he found life worth living and pleasant to live during this period. He delighted to fold his legs and have out his talk; and there was no lack of appreciative and reverent listeners. But he wrote little. To set himself to write was always an effort; and he shrank from making it. His best thought and wit found an outlet in conversation. His Journey to the Hebrides and his Lives of the Poets are the only works of any importance belonging to this time of his kingship. Some time in March 1781, he writes, 'I finished the Lives of the Poets, which I wrote in my usual way, dilatorily and hastily, unwilling to work and working with vigour and haste.' Meanwhile, his social circle began to be sadly invaded and broken. Goldsmith died in 1774, Garrick in 1779, Beaulerck in 1780, Mr Thrle in 1781, and Levett, whom he commemorated in a touching poem, in 1782. For a while after her husband's death Mrs Thrle kept up the old relationship, but by the autumn of 1782 she had determined to marry Piozzi, an Italian musician and Catholic, and Johnson's displeasure at what he considered a degrading step at length dissolved a friendship which had 'soothed twenty years of a life radically wretched.' The marriage actually took place in June 1784, less than six months before Johnson's death. In 1783 Mrs Williams passed away; and for all her peevishness was sincerely missed. For Johnson, too, the end was approaching. In 1783 he suffered a paralytic stroke. He rallied to some extent, and was once more seen in his old haunts. But in the following year dropsy and asthma attacked him. By November there was but little hope of his recovery. All that medical skill and all that the tenderest affection could do to relieve and to smooth his dying hours was faithfully done. He took solemn leave of Langton, Burke, Reynolds, and other dear friends he had loved with a constant affection, and sent a tender blessing to his young favourite Fanny Burney, who watched weeping at his door. 'I am afraid,' said Burke one day, 'that so many of us must be oppressive to you.' 'No, sir, it is not so,' replied Johnson, 'and I must be in a wretched state indeed when your company would not be a delight to me.' 'My dear sir,' said Burke, with a breaking voice, 'you have been always too good to me,' as he left him for the last time. The brave-hearted Johnson faced the inevitable with heroic courage, refusing at the last to take his opiates, that he might 'render up his soul to God unclouded.' He died on the evening of December 13, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey near Garrick, Dryden, and Cowley. A monument was raised to him in St Paul's.
The estimate of him as a writer is by no means so high now as in his own day. As a writer, it must be said of him that he was rather of an age than for all time. His greatest interest for us is that he so exactly represents the current ideas of his age, such as they were. He never fully expressed himself in literature. And, excellent as are several of his works, or at least passages in them, we should never have known his real greatness but for Boswell's admirable portraiture of him, and his masterly reports of his conversations. Boswell's skill in these respects is beyond praise, and deserves a better acknowledgment than Macaulay and some other critics have vouchsafed him. In Boswell's pages Johnson will live for ever, and be better known than anybody that ever lived. And the more he is known, the more readily will be recognised the nobleness of his nature, the vigour of his genius, and the value of his literary services.
Editions of his works have been numberless: the best is that published at Oxford in 11 vols. in 1825. See the article BOSWELL, the Life by Sir J. Hawkins (1787), and the editions of Boswell's Life of Johnson by Croker, Napier, Henry Morley, and Birkbeck Hill; the Essays by Arthur Murphy, Macaulay, and Carlyle, as well as Macaulay's perfect biography in miniature, contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica (1856); also Birkbeck Hill's Dr Johnson, his Friends and his Critics (1878), his edition of the Letters (2 vols. 1892); Leslie Stephen's admirable book in 'English Men of Letters' (1878), and the little book by Col. F. Grant in 'Great Writers' (with a bibliography, 1887). Matthew Arnold edited the chief six of the Lives of the Poets (1878); a good edition of the whole is that by Mrs Napier (1890). See also Madame D'Arblay's Diary and Letters, Mrs Piozzi's Autobiography, and Mrs Napier's Johnsoniana (1884)—the last made up from the writings of Mrs Piozzi, Richard Cumberland, Bishop Percy, T. Tyers, Dr Campbell, Hannah More, Madame D'Arblay, Rev. T. Twining, Miss Reynolds, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Arthur Murphy.