Samuel Johnson was born September 18, 1709, in the city of Lichfield, where his father, a man well respected for sense and learning, carried on the trade of a bookseller, and realized an independence, which he afterwards lost by an unsuccessful speculation. His mother also possessed a strong understanding. From these parents Johnson derived a powerful body, and a mind of uncommon force and compass. Unfortunately both mind and body were tainted by disease: the former by a melancholy, of which he said that it had “made him mad all his life—at least not sober;” the latter by that scrofulous disorder called the king’s evil, for which, in compliance with a popular superstition, recommended by the Jacobite principles of his family, he was touched by Queen Anne. By this disease he lost the sight of one eye, and the other was considerably injured: a calamity which combined with constitutional indolence to prevent his joining in the active sports of his school-fellows. Tardy in the performance of his appointed tasks, he mastered them with rapidity at last, and he early displayed great fondness for miscellaneous reading, and a remarkably retentive memory. After passing through several country schools, and spending near two years in a sort of busy idleness at home, he went to Pembroke College, Oxford, about the age of sixteen. There he made himself more remarkable by wit and humour, and negligence of college discipline, than by his labours for University distinction: his translation of Pope’s Messiah into Latin hexameters was the only exercise on which he bestowed much pains, or by which he obtained much credit. But his high spirits, unless the recollections of his earlier years were tinctured by his habitual despondency, were but the cloak of a troubled mind. “Ah! Sir,” he said to Boswell, “I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit, so I disregarded all power and all authority.” His poverty during this period was indeed extreme: and the scanty remittances by which he was supported, in much humiliation and inconvenience, were altogether stopped at last by his father’s insolvency. He had the mortification to be compelled to quit Oxford in the autumn of 1731, after three years’ residence, without taking a degree; and his father’s death in the December following threw him on the world, with twenty pounds in his pocket.

He first attempted to gain a livelihood in the capacity of usher to a school at Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershire. For that laborious and dreary task he was eminently unfit, except by talent and learning, and he soon quitted a situation which he ever remembered with a degree of aversion amounting to horror. After his marriage he tried the experiment of keeping a boarding-house, near Lichfield, as principal, with little better success. From Bosworth he went to Birmingham, in 1733, where he composed his first work, a translation of the Jesuit Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia. He gained several kind and useful acquaintance in the latter town, among whom was Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he married in 1735. She was double his age, and possessed neither beauty, fortune, nor attractive manners, yet she inspired him with an affection which endured, unchilled by the trials of poverty, unchanged by her death, even to the end of his own life, as his private records fully testify. She died in 1752.

In March, 1737, Johnson set out for the metropolis, in hopes of mending his fortunes, as a man of letters, and especially of bringing on the stage his tragedy of Irene. It was long before his desires were gratified in either respect. Irene was not performed till 1749, when his friend and former pupil, Garrick, had the management of Drury-Lane. Garrick’s zeal carried it through nine nights, so that the author, in addition to one hundred pounds from Dodsley for the copyright, had the profit of three nights’ performance, according to the mode of payment then in use. The play however, though bearing the stamp of a vigorous and elevated mind, and by no means wanting in poetical merit, was unfit for acting, through its want of pathos and dramatic effect: and Johnson perhaps perceived his deficiency in these qualities, for he never again wrote for the stage. Garrick said of his friend, that he had neither the faculty to produce, nor the sensibility to receive the impressions of tragedy: and his annotations upon Shakspeare confirm this judgment.

His first employment after his arrival in London, was as a frequent contributor to the Gentleman’s Magazine, from which, during some years, he derived his chief support. This was a period of labour, poverty, and often of urgent want. Sometimes without a lodging, sometimes without a dinner, he became acquainted with the darker phases of a London life; and among other singular characters, a similarity of fortunes made him acquainted with the notorious Richard Savage, whom he regarded with affection, and whose life is one of the most powerful productions of Johnson’s pen.

In the thoughts suggested, and the knowledge taught, by this rough collision with the world, we may conjecture his imitation of the third satire of Juvenal, entitled London, to have originated. To the majority of the nation it was recommended by its strong invectives against the then unpopular ministry of Sir Robert Walpole, as well as by the energy of thought and style, the knowledge of his subject, and the lively painting in which it abounds: it reached a second edition in the course of a week, and Boswell tells us, on contemporary authority, that “the first buz of the literary circles was, ‘here is an unknown poet, greater even than Pope.’” Yet this admired poem produced only ten guineas to its author, and appears to have done nothing towards improving his prospects, or giving a commercial value to his name: his chief employment was still furnished by the Gentleman’s Magazine; and in November, 1740, he undertook to report, or rather to write, the Parliamentary debates for that publication. At that time the privileges of Parliament were very strictly interpreted, and the avowed publication of debates would have been rigorously suppressed. Such a summary however as could be preserved in the memory, was carried away by persons employed for the purpose, and the task which Johnson undertook was to expand and adorn their imperfect hints from the stores of his own eloquence: in doing which he took care, as he afterwards acknowledged, that “the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.” The speeches of course were referred to fictitious names, and were published under the title, Debates of the Senate of Lilliput: but in February, 1743, Johnson, on finding that they were esteemed genuine, desisted from the employment, declaring that he would not be accessary to the propagation of falsehood. So scrupulous was he on this score, that forty years after, not long before his death, he expressed his regret at having been the author of fictions that had passed for realities.

For a detailed account of this early portion of Johnson’s literary history, we refer the reader to Boswell’s Life, and the list of Johnson’s works thereto prefixed, and pass on at once to those greater performances, to which he owes his eminent rank among British writers. Of these the earliest and most celebrated is his Dictionary of the English Language. How long the plan of this work had been meditated, before it was actually commenced, is uncertain: he told Boswell, that his knowledge of our language was not the effect of particular study, but had grown up insensibly in his mind. That he under-rated the time and labour requisite for such a work, is evident from his promising in his prospectus, issued in 1747, to complete it in three years: he probably had also under-rated the needful knowledge, and amount of preparatory study. In fact it was not published till 1755. He received for it 1575l., of which however a very considerable portion was spent in expenses. The prospectus was addressed to Lord Chesterfield; who expressed himself warmly in favour of the design, and from that time forward treated the author with neglect until the time of publication drew nigh, when he again assumed the character of a patron. Fired at this, Johnson repudiated his assistance in a dignified but sarcastic letter, which is printed by Boswell. The transaction merits notice, for it is characteristic of Johnson’s independent spirit, and excited at the time much curiosity and comment.

The Dictionary was justly esteemed a wonderful work: it established at once the author’s reputation among his contemporaries, and was long regarded as the supreme standard by which disputed points in the English language were to be tried. Johnson’s chief qualification for the task lay in the accuracy of his definitions, and the extent of his various and well-remembered reading; his chief disqualification lay in his ignorance of the cognate Teutonic languages, the stock from which the bulk and strength of our own is derived: and in proportion as the history and philosophy of the English language have been more extensively studied, has the need of a more learned and philosophical work of reference been felt. The verbose style of his definitions is rather a fruitful theme of ridicule than an important fault. Shortly before its publication he received from the University of Oxford, which through life he regarded with great affection and veneration, the honorary degree of M.A., a mark of respect by which he was highly gratified.

That his labour in composing this work was not severe, may be inferred from the variety of literary employments in which, during its progress, he found time and inclination to engage: among which we may select for mention the imitation of Juvenal’s tenth satire, entitled Vanity of Human Wishes, and the periodical paper called the Rambler, which was published twice a week, from March 20, 1750, to March 17, 1752. Of the whole series, according to Boswell, only four papers, and a part of a fifth, were contributed by other pens: and it is remarkable, considering the general gravity of the subjects, and the elaboration of the style, that most of them were struck off at a heat, when constitutional indolence could procrastinate no longer, without even being read over before they were printed. The circulation of the work was small; for its merits, which lie chiefly in moral instruction and literary criticism, were of too grave a cast to ensure favour: the lighter parts, and the attempts at humour, are the least successful. But its popularity increased as the author’s fame rose, and fashion recommended his grandiloquent style; and before his death it went through numerous editions in a collected form.

In 1756 he issued proposals for an edition of Shakspeare, a scheme which he had contemplated as long back as 1745, when he published Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth. He promised to complete it before Christmas, 1757, but it did not appear until October, 1765. Imperfectly versed in the antiquities, literature, and language of the Elizabethan era, the source from which almost all valuable comment on our early dramatists has been drawn, he has done little to elucidate difficulties or correct errors. His preface has been esteemed among the most valuable of his critical essays. But the perusal of his notes, and especially of his summary criticisms on the several plays, will confirm Garrick’s judgment as to his sensibility, and show that he wanted that delicate perception and deep knowledge of the workings of the passions which were necessary to the adequate fulfilment of his most difficult task.

From April 15, 1758, to April 5, 1760, Johnson wrote a second periodical paper, called the Idler. Twelve only, out of one hundred and three essays, were contributed by his friends; the rest were generally written with as much haste, and are of slighter texture, than those of the Rambler. Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, he wrote in the beginning of 1759, to defray the expenses of his mother’s funeral, and pay some trifling debts which she had left. He told Sir Joshua Reynolds, that it was composed in the evenings of one week, and sent to the press in portions as it was written. This anecdote affords a good instance of Johnson’s facility and power, when an adequate stimulus was applied: from the rich imagery, and the varied, powerful strain of reflection which pervade it, and the elaborated pomp of its style, it would assuredly be taken for the product of mature consideration, labour, and frequent revision. For this he received one hundred pounds, and twenty-five pounds more at a second edition. It has been translated into most European languages.

In 1762 Johnson accepted a pension of 300l., for which he underwent considerable obloquy. This was entirely undeserved, though in some sort he had brought it on himself by indulging his satirical bias and political predilections in a wayward definition of the words pension and pensioner, in his Dictionary; where other instances occur of his indulging the humour of the moment, whether it prompted him to spleen or merriment. Why he should not have accepted the pension, no sound reason can be given: his Jacobitical predilections, never probably so strong as he used to represent them in the heat of argument, were lost, like those of others, in the hopelessness of the cause; and his Toryism naturally led him to transfer his full respect and allegiance to the reigning king, who never was suspected of an undue bias towards Whiggism. The sum bestowed was no more than an honourable testimony to his literary eminence, and a comfortable provision for his declining age: and as far as it is possible to form an opinion on such matters, the gift was unstained by any compact, expressed or understood, for political support.

Among the more important events of Johnson’s life, we are bound to mention his acquaintance with Mr. Boswell, which commenced in 1763, not only because it formed an important article among the pleasures of the philosopher’s declining years, but because it led to the composition and publication of the most lively and vivid picture ever given by one man of another, the Life of Johnson. By Boswell, Johnson was induced, in compliance with a wish that he had long before entertained, to undertake a journey to the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides: and it is remarkable that the first English book of travels (as we believe,) into what to the English was then almost a terra incognita, should have been composed by a man so careless of natural beauty, and so little disposed to sacrifice his ease and habits to the cravings of curiosity, as Johnson. His desire to visit that country seems to have arisen rather from a wish to study society in a simple form, than from any taste for the wild beauties of our Northern regions, of which he saw not the most favourable specimen, and has given not a flattering account. His Journey to the Western Islands will be read with pleasure, abounding in acute observation, passages of lofty eloquence, and grateful acknowledgment of the kindness and hospitality which he received; kindness which his snappish railings against the Scotch in general never led him to undervalue or forget. His companion and disciple’s account of their expedition will, however, be read with more amusement, from presenting such vivid pictures of the author himself, as well as of the subject which he painted, and of the varied characters to which they were introduced, and scenes in which they intermingled. We may here add that Johnson was a resolute unbeliever in the authenticity of Macpherson’s Ossian, against which, in his book, he pronounced a decided judgment. He thus gave considerable offence to national vanity. To the claims of second-sight he was more favourable. Throughout life he was influenced by a belief, not only in the possibility, but in the occasional exertion of supernatural agencies, beyond the regular operation of the laws of nature.

In 1775, Johnson received from the University of Oxford the honorary degree of D.C.L. The same degree had been conferred on him some time before by the University of Dublin; but he did not then assume the title of doctor. His only subsequent work which requires notice is the Lives of the English Poets, written for a collective edition of them, which the booksellers were about to publish. To the selection of the authors, praise cannot be given: many ornaments to our literature are omitted, and many obscure persons have found a place in the collection: this however, probably, was not Johnson’s fault. The publication began in 1779, and was not completed till 1781: the lives have gone through many editions by themselves. Though strongly coloured by personal and political predilections, they contain much sound criticism, and form a valuable article in British biography.

Many incidents connected with Johnson’s life, his places of residence, his domestication in Mr. Thrale’s family, his connexion with The Club, and the like, have been made generally known by the amusing works of Boswell, Mrs. Piozzi, and others. Perhaps public curiosity was never so strongly directed towards the person, habits, and conversation of any man known only as an author; and certainly it never has been so amply gratified. Boswell’s Life of Johnson is unique in its kind.

His powers of conversation were very great, and not only commanded the admiration and deference of his contemporaries, but have contributed in a principal degree to the upholding of his traditionary fame. They were deformed by an assumption of superiority, and an intolerance of contradiction or opposition, which often betrayed him into offensive rudeness. Yet his temper was at bottom affectionate and humane, his attachments strong, and his charity only bounded, and scarcely bounded, by his means.

The latter years of Dr. Johnson’s life were overshadowed by much gloom. Many of his old and most valued friends sank into the grave before him; his bodily frame was much shattered by disease; his spirits became more liable to depression; and his sincere and ardent piety was too deeply tinged by constitutional despondency to afford him steady comfort and support under his sufferings. He was struck by palsy in 1783, but recovered to the use both of his bodily and mental faculties. A complication of asthma and dropsy put an end to his existence, December 13, 1785. During his illness, his anxiety for a protracted life was painfully intense: but his last hours are described by the bystanders to have been calm, happy, and confident. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. A statue to his memory is erected in St. Paul’s Cathedral.