The Life of Samuel Johnson
James Boswell
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
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN CLASSICS
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First published 1791
First published in Penguin Classics 2008
1
Editorial material copyright © David Womersley, 2008
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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.
&nb
sp; 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. Boswell’s piety and profligacy are both informed by the self-dramatizing, self-regarding quality of his character. In this respect Boswell’s journal is not a record of his actions, nor even a record of the impressions that his actions made upon himself. It is rather the transcript of his appreciation of actions undertaken with more than half an eye to their eventual reception and remembrance.6 Boswell’s London life was a dramatic performance, and metaphors of the theatre run insistently through his journal entries, perhaps most strikingly in this encounter with Louisa: ‘When I came to Louisa’s, I felt myself stout and well, and most courageously did I plunge into the fount of love, and had vast pleasure as I enjoyed her as an actress who had played many a fine lady’s part.’7 It would be hard to find a more concentrated example of Boswell’s performative idea of character, so perfectly parallel are its reflecting planes of performance and reception.
Into this strange worldof dissoluteness, fantasyand delusion walked Samuel Johnson. At the time, Boswell recorded Johnson’s arrival with these words:
I drank tea at Davies’s in Russell Street, and about seven came in the great Mr. Samuel Johnson, whom I haveso long wishedto see. Mr. Davies introduced me to him. As I knew his mortal antipathy at the Scotch, I cried to Davies, ‘Don’t tell where I come from.’ However, he said, ‘From Scotland.’ ‘Mr. Johnson,’ said I, ‘indeed I come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.’ ‘Sir,’ replied he, ‘that, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.’ Mr. Johnson is a man of a most dreadful appearance. He is a very big man, is troubled with sore eyes, the palsy, and the king’s evil. He is very slovenly in his dress and speaks with a most uncouth voice. Yet his great knowledge and strength of expression command vast respect and render him very excellent company. He has great humour and is a worthy man. But his dogmatical roughness of manners is disagreeable. I shall mark what I remember of his conversation.8
However, when it came to writing this up in The Life of Samuel Johnson, Boswell chose slightly different words, and a more elaborate treatment:
At last, on Monday the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies’s back-parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies having perceived him through the glass-door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing towards us, – he announced his aweful approach to me, somewhat in the manner of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father’s ghost, ‘Look, my Lord, it comes.’ I found that I had a very perfect idea of Johnson’s figure, from the portrait of him painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after he had published his Dictionary, in the attitude of sitting in his easy chair in deep meditation, which was the first picture his friend did for him, which Sir Joshua very kindly presented to me, and from which an engraving has been made for this work. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, ‘Don’t tell where I come from.’ – ‘From Scotland,’ cried Davies roguishly. ‘Mr. Johnson, (said I) I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.’ I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to sooth and conciliate him, and not as an humiliating abasement at the expence of my country. But however that might be, this speech was somewhat unlucky; for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression ‘come from Scotland,’ which I used in the sense of being of that country, and, as if I had said that I had come away from it, or left it, retorted, ‘That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.’ This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I felt myself not a little embarrassed, and apprehensive of
what might come next.9
Comparing the two versions, one notices at once the fuller and more ceremonious form the episode takes in the Life; next, perhaps, the softening of Boswell’s original sense of Johnson’s disagreeableness into the milder emotion of nonplussed embarrassment. But it is the characteristic Boswellian allusion to the theatre – ‘he announced his aweful approach to me, somewhat in the manner of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father’s ghost, “Look, my Lord, it comes”’ – which is the pivotal element in the transformation of the original impression into the eventual work of literary art. The encounter between Hamlet and his father’s ghost is the event which determines the shape of, and gives direction to, young Hamlet’s life; at the same time, it is the occasion when old Hamlet lays an obligation on his son to do for him what death prevents him from doing for himself. Boswell’s reference to Hamlet was apt to his own case – in addition, of course, (and this is once again characteristically Boswellian) to being ludicrously self-flattering, casting Boswell as the glamorous protagonist in the momentous drama of his own life. But it was pertinent also to the case of Johnson. The task of memorializing Johnson gave shape and direction to Boswell’s life (and it was a task he performed with occasional Hamlet-like waverings and delays).10 Moreover, the friendship launched by that meeting in Davies’s back-parlour bestowed on Johnson a posthumous reach which would have eluded him had he been obliged to rely on his other biographers – that troop of the now all but unread, comprising Sir John Hawkins, Mrs Piozzi, Isaac Reed, George Steevens, Thomas Tyers, William Cooke, William Shaw, Joseph Towers, James Harrison, et al.11 That meeting, then, was not only the beginning of Johnson and Boswell’s friendship. It was also the seed of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and it is therefore appropriate that Boswell should have folded into his account of that primal scene a reference to the book which would result from it, when he mentioned the Reynolds portrait of Johnson ‘from which an engraving has been made for this work’.12
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