Johnson, Samuel

Johnson, Samuel (1709–84). Johnson was the son of a bookseller in Lichfield (Staffs.). He attended local schools before spending just one year at Pembroke College, Oxford, 1728–9. His early attempts at teaching failed, but he married the widow Elizabeth Porter (1735). The hard life of Grub Street in London beckoned him next. Johnson wrote his fine poem London at this time (1738), containing the line ‘Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed.’ In 1746–55 Johnson worked on his Dictionary, the first full collation of the English language and a masterpiece of prose. He composed The Vanity of Human Wishes in 1749 and lost his wife three years later. To pay for his mother's funeral, Johnson wrote Rasselas (1759) in one week; it is possibly his finest work, a profound novel upon ‘the choice of life’. Between the larger works Johnson composed periodical moral essays under the title of the Rambler, the Idler, and the Adventurer. In 1762, Lord Bute bestowed upon Johnson a pension of £300 a year, ending his financial difficulties. After receiving his pension Johnson's literary output was smaller, but he produced his masterly edition of Shakespeare (1765), Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), and Lives of the Poets (1779–81).

Much of Johnson's fame comes from his personality. To list his friends is to list many of the leading cultural figures of the 18th cent., painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, novelist Oliver Goldsmith, politician Edmund Burke, and actor David Garrick. All were members of the celebrated Literary Club, of which Johnson was a founder; many of the splendid discussions that took place there were recorded by Boswell in his incomparable Life of Johnson (1791). To many Samuel Johnson has become the personification of the 18th cent.