The Life of Samuel Johnson

PENGUIN CLASSICS

THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON

JAMES BOSWELL (1740-95) was born in Edinburgh and studied law at Edinburgh University and at Utrecht. At the insistence of his domineering father he practised as an advocate, but he was greatly interested in politics and writing. He travelled in Europe during 1765-6, made the acquaintance of Voltaire and Rousseau, and developed an interest in Corsican affairs. His Account of Corsica (1768) and a less successful sequel (1769) brought him the fame he so desired. Boswell is best remembered for this masterly biography of Johnson. His Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides appeared in 1785, one year after Johnson’s death. The rest of Boswell’s life was dedicated to the unsuccessful pursuit of a political career.

DAVID WOMERSLEY is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, and a professorial fellow of St Catherine’s College. He has published widely on English literature from the Renaissance to the early nineteenth century, his most recent book being Gibbon and the ‘Watchmen of the Holy City’: The Historian and his Reputation, 1776-1815 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). For Penguin he has edited Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Augustan Critical Writing, Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful and Other Pre-Revolutionary Writings, and Samuel Johnson’s Selected Essays. He is a general editor of The Complete Writings of Jonathan Swift (Cambridge University Press), for which he is editing the volume devoted to Gulliver’s Travels.

JAMES BOSWELL

The Life of Samuel Johnson

Edited with an introduction by
DAVID WOMERSLEY

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PENGUIN CLASSICS

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First published 1791
First published in Penguin Classics 2008
1

Editorial material copyright © David Womersley, 2008
All rights reserved

The moral right of the editor has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
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ISBN: 9781101489758

978-0-14-190743-7

Contents

Acknowledgements

Chronologies

Introduction

Further Reading

A Note on the Text

THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON

Appendix 1: Selected Variants in the First Three Editions

Appendix 2: Selected MS Variants

Notes

Index of Subjects

Index of Places

Index of Literary Works and Characters

Biographical Index:

    Johnson

    Boswell

    Others

Acknowledgements

It is a pleasure to acknowledge here the contribution to the preparation of this edition made by my research assistants, Guy Bingley, Rachel Hewitt and (above all) Guy Cuthbertson. The generous grant of a term of sabbatical leave in early 2007 gave me time to prepare the final document; for that, and for various other kinds of practical support, I am very grateful to the University of Oxford, and to its Faculty of English.

St Catherine’s College, Oxford
2007

Chronologies

SAMUEL JOHNSON

1709 Born on 18 September in Lichfield; son of Michael and Sarah Johnson.

1712 Touched for the king’s evil, or scrofula, by Queen Anne.

1717–25 Attends Lichfield Grammar School.

1728 Enters Pembroke College, Oxford, in October.

1729 Leaves Oxford in December.

1731 Death of his father, Michael Johnson.

1732 Works as an usher, or assistant teacher, at Market Bosworth school.

1733 Translates Jerome Lobo’s A Voyage to Abyssinia; contributes essays to the Birmingham Journal.

1735 Marries Elizabeth Porter; opens school at Edial.

1737 Leaves for London in March, accompanied by one of his pupils, David Garrick; begins working for the publisher Edward Cave, and contributes to the Gentleman’s Magazine.

1738 Publication of London: A Poem.

1739 Publication of A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage.

1744 Publication of The Life of Mr. Richard Savage and The Harleian Miscellany.

1746 A Dictionary of the English Language undertaken.

1747 Publication of the ‘Plan’ of the Dictionary.

1749 Publication of The Vanity of Human Wishes; Garrick produces Irene.

1750 Begins The Rambler.

1752 Death of Elizabeth Johnson; The Rambler concludes.

1753 Begins contributing to The Adventurer in March.

1754 Ceases to contribute to The Adventurer in March; publishes biography of Cave.

1755 MA, Oxford; publication of the Dictionary.

1758 Begins The Idler, published in the Universal Chronicle.

1759 Death of his mother, Sarah Johnson; publication of Rasselas.

1760 The Idler concludes.

1762 Receives pension of £300 per annum from George III.

1763 Meets James Boswell.

1764 Founding of ‘The Club’.

1765 LLD, Dublin; publication of The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare. Meets the Thrales.

1770 Publication of The False Alarm.

1771 Publication of Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland’s Islands.

1773 Tour of the highlands of Scotland and the Hebrides.

1774 Publication of The Patriot; tour of Wales with the Thrales.

1775 DCL, Oxford; visits Paris with the Thrales; publication of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Taxation No Tyranny.

1777 Begins work on the The Lives of the English Poets.

1779 Publication of first instalment of The Lives of the English Poets.

1781 Publication of second instalment of The Lives of the English Poets.

1783 Founding of the Essex Head Club.

1784 Dies on 13 December.

JAMES BOSWELL

1740 Born on 29 October in Edinburgh.

1753 Admitted to University of Edinburgh.

1759 Admitted to University of Glasgow.

1762 Passes examination in Civil Law.
Leaves Edinburgh for London on 15 November.

1763 Publishes Letters between the Honourable Andrew Erskine and James Boswell, Esq.
Meets Samuel Johnson on 16 May.
August: goes to Utrecht to study law.

1764 Tour of Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Corsica and France.

1766 Returns to London on 12 February.
26 July: begins legal career as member of Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh.

1768 Publishes An Account of Corsica on 18 February.

1769 Marries Margaret Montgomerie on 25 November.

1777 Begins publishing essays in the London Magazine as ‘The Hypochondriack’.

1782 Death of his father, Lord Auchinleck, on 30 August makes Boswell laird of the family estate.

1785 Publishes The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides on 1 October.

1786 Called to the English bar on 13 February.

1789 Death of his wife on 4 June.

1791 Publishes The Life of Samuel Johnson on 16 May.

1795 Dies in London on 19 May.
Buried in family vault at Auchinleck on 8 June.

Introduction

James Boswell met Samuel Johnson on 16 May 1763, while drinking tea in the back room of Thomas Davies’s bookshop in Covent Garden. Boswell had arrived in London during the previous winter, and in his journal he recorded his sentiments when the capital was laid out before his eyes:

When we came upon Highgate hill and had a view of London, I was all life and joy. I repeated Cato’s soliloquy on the immortality of the soul, and my soul bounded forth to a certain prospect of happy futurity. I sung all 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 in.1

‘Cato’s soliloquy’ is, of course, the famous speech from the coda to Joseph Addison’s immensely popular play in which, on the point of being defeated by Caesar’s forces and contemplating suicide, Cato the Younger is persuaded by the arguments advanced by Socrates in the Phaedo concerning the immortality of the soul:

It must be so – Plato, thou reasonest well –
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
’Tis the divinity that stirs within us:
’Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.2

It is typical of Boswell that his recollection of this high-minded and improving speech should be followed immediately by an intimation of a more earthly kind of future happiness, in his extemporized song about a sexual encounter with a ‘pretty girl’. The pages of his London journal oscillate between moments of pious, hopeful sobriety –

I went to Mayfair Chapel and heard prayers and an excellent sermon from the Book of Job on the comforts of piety. I was in a fine frame. And I thought that God really designed us to be happy. I shall certainly be a religious old man. I was much so in youth. I have now and then flashes of devotion, and it will one day burn with a steady flame.3

– and episodes of debauch, occasionally furtive –

I was really unhappy for want of women. I thought it hard to be in such a place without them. I picked up a girl in the Strand; went into a court with intention to enjoy her in armour [i.e. a condom]. But she had none. I toyed with her. She wondered at my size, and said if I ever took a girl’s maidenhead, I would make her squeak.4

– occasionally more uninhibited, as in his consummation of his liaison with the actress he refers to as ‘Louisa’:

A more voluptuous night I never enjoyed. Five times was I fairly lost in supreme rapture. Louisa was madly fond of me; she declared I was a prodigy, and asked me if this was not extraordinary for human nature. I said twice as much might be, but this was not, although in my own mind I was somewhat proud of my performance.5

However, beneath the varied surface of Boswell’s London life there lies a common denominator.