JOHNSON, SAMUEL

(1709-84), Eng. man of letters; s. of a Lich field bookseller; Coll., Oxford; left Oxford (1731) without a degree. ‘Till 1762 he had a severe struggle with destitution; after failing as a school-master, started journalism in connection with Cave’s Gentleman's Magazine, on which he was parliamentary reporter. Published poem London (1738), and started (1747) work on a new Dictionary of the English Language; there followed Vanity of Human Wishes, The Rambler (1752), the novel Ra elas 1759), and the periodical e ay paper The Idler (1758). In 1735 he had married a Birmingham widow, who died in 1752, In 1762 he was given a royal pension of L300 a year, and lived comfortably after that. In 1763 began his friendship with BosweEL.t (gq. v.), and soon after the Literary Club was founded, with Burke, Boswell, Hawkins, Goldsmith, Johnson, among its members. J. now began to travel both in Britain and on the Continent with newly made friends, Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. In 1773 he visited Scotland. The rest of his life was embittered by ill-health, and the death or defection of many of his friends. The only literary fruits of this period were the Journey to the He brides and the Lives of the Poets 1781. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. His Work.—In criticism J. belongs to ton’s freedom of prosody; he objects to the Romantic Movement, and is suspicious of Gray’s poetry. Yet he is a great critic, in spite of his ‘correctne .’ The Vanity of Human Wishes is not great poetry; it is too correct, too scholarly. The novel Ra elas fails in character delineation; nominally it is a tale of Imlac, an Aby in i an prince; in reality it is a book of wisdom and literary criticism. His prose, ‘Johnsonese,’ is much Latinised, sometimes ponderous; it is balanced, but regular antithesis makes it rhetorical sometimes.: Eoevell: Life; Raleigh, Siz E ays on