SAMUEL JOHNSON

1709- 1784
"the Age of Johnson" (Augustan Age)
writer of exceptional range: a poet, a lexicographer, a translator, a journalist and essayist,
a travel writer, a biographer, an editor, and a critic
humble origins, much of his life spent in relative poverty
born in 1709 at Lichfield in Staffordshire, son of a successful bookseller
intellectual prodigy - excelled in the local grammar school (Latin and Greek)
forced to leave Pembroke College, Oxford (studied religion)
miscellaneous writer - - Gentleman's Magazine - biographical essays, political reports,
and brief literary notices
decade of the 1750s - established his reputation as a major literary figure - following
the pattern of Addison and Steele's famous Spectator papers, he produced the Rambler
- wide range of topics in social life, literary criticism, and moral thought
leading critic of the age - classical tradition derived from Aristotle and Horace -
preface to The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765): "The end of writing is to instruct;
the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing"
uneasiness about fictional invention - allegory in Rambler number 96: "The muses
wove, in the loom of Pallas, a loose and changeable robe, like that in which Falsehood
captivated her admirers; with this they invested Truth, and named her Fiction"
Rambler - March 1750 - published just after the great series of fictional innovations of
the 1740s--Richardson's Pamela and Clarissa, Smollett's Roderick Random, and
Fielding's Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. Johnson defines the new works of fiction by
their realism - they "exhibit life in its true state" + rooted in the wish-fulfilling fantasy
of the old romances (submerged basis of all fictional plots) - condemns this as a
violation of "truth"
old romances - so improbable that nobody could mistake them for reality
new novels - so plausible in detail that readers are in danger of overlooking their
implausibility in structure
1755 - A Dictionary of the English Language - 40,000
definitions
prescribes standards of usage for the English language
(composed the definitions himself, giving examples,
synonyms, and showing the importance of context -
quotations)
preface - intention to assemble a dictionary ‘by which the
pronunciation of our language may be fixed, and its
attainment facilitated; by which its purity may be preserved,
its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened’
aware: inevitability of linguistic change: sounds are too
volatile and subtle for legal restraints; to enchain syllables,
and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride,
unwilling to measure its desire by its strength
honorary M.A. from Oxford
Monument of linguistic scholarship
 1759, The Prince of Abissinia
(Rasselas)
predicament of Prince Rasselas in the Edenic Happy Valley – trope of incarceration,
imprisonment - moral and theological center of the book - metaphorical hunger of the
human imagination --perpetual dissatisfaction with what it has and its desire for
something beyond what it possesses
originally entitled the tale “The Choice of Life”
“the dangerous prevalence of imagination”

"All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity.... To indulge the power of fiction,
and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in
silent speculation.... In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all other
intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly
to the favourite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended
with the bitterness of truth.... Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions
fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish."
powerful rejection of fiction as wish fulfilment
not easy to categorize - not a realistic novel, either in Richardson's sense of realism or
in Fielding's - romance – escapist visions – discussion of imagination - Oriental taste -
foreshadows Romantic aesthetics
! philosophical fable
1781, The Lives of the Poets
52 contributions - comprehensive perspective on English literary
culture – observations, interpretations, anecdotes and evaluative
assessments – axiology – valorisation - hierarchy
groundbreaking analysis of metaphysical poetry
assessments of works as different as Milton's Paradise Lost and
Pope's Rape of the Lock ; panoramic view of the Augustan era
biographical narrative, literary analysis, and moral reflection that
no other writer has ever equalled