Samuel Johnson is an English critic, biographer, essayist, poet and lexicographer. It is considered one of the greatest figures of life and literature of the XVIII century. Another reason for the popularity that Samuel Johnson enjoys today is the writer's quotes.
short biography
Johnson Samuel was born September 18, 1709 in the provincial city of Lichfield, in the county of Staffordshire, in the family of Michael Johnson, who was engaged in the sale of books and stationery, and Sarah. His father (like his son later) was prone to bouts of melancholy, but he was respected: by the time Samuel was born, he was already serving as a sheriff. Johnson Samuel was a sickly child and did not have to survive. In 1711, at the age of two years, he was almost blind, partially deaf, suffering from scrofula and tuberculosis, and was taken to Queen Anne to heal the patient with her touch. But miraculous healing, however, did not happen.
In 1716, Johnson, sensitive, awkward and out of his age, entered Lichfield Grammar School. She was led by the educated but cruel John Hunter, who beat his students in order to save them from the gallows, he said. Samuel later insisted that if he had not been beaten, he would not have achieved anything. However, under Hunter, he learned Latin and Greek and began to write poetry. In 1725, at the age of 16, provincial Johnson spent six months visiting with his cousin Cornelius Ford, a refined and dashing former teacher in Cambridge. There he first learned about the existence of the intellectual and literary world of the country.
The escape
In 1726, he graduated from high school and went to work at his father's bookstore. That was a mistake. The life of Samuel Johnson in the next two years was unhappy, but at the same time he continued to eagerly and haphazardly study English and classical literature.
In 1728, with a small fortune of forty pounds left to his mother after the death of a relative, he unexpectedly entered Pembroke College in Oxford. There, however, he was unable to provide himself with enough food, as, indeed, for many years to come. Here, signs of melancholy began to appear, which would haunt him for the rest of his life. As a result, he paid little attention to his studies and in 1789, extremely depressed and too poor to continue his education, left Oxford without receiving a diploma.
First books
Johnson's translation of the Messiah Latin by Pope during his studies was published in 1731, but by then poor, in debt, depression, partially blind and deaf, scared of scrofula and smallpox, Samuel was afraid for his sanity. In addition, in December of that year, his father died, also bankrupt.
In 1732, Johnson found a doorman job at Market Bosworth High School. While visiting Birmingham, he met Henry Porter and his wife Elizabeth. The following year, lying in bed during his next long visit to new friends, Samuel dictated an abridged English version of the French translation of The Journey to Abyssinia, written in the 17th century. Portuguese jesuit. She became his first published book, and Johnson received five guineas for her.
Marriage
In 1735, at the age of twenty-five, Johnson married the widowed 46-year-old Elizabeth Porter. For his wife’s dowry of £ 700, Samuel founded a private academy near Lichfield. Among the students was David Garrick, who became the most famous actor of his time and Johnson's close friend. By 1737, the academy went bankrupt, and Samuel decided to make a fortune in the literary field, having left for London accompanied by Garrick.
Creation
In 1738, living in London in extreme poverty, Johnson began writing for Edward Cave's Gentleman's Magazine. There he published "London" - an imitation of the satire of Juvenal on the decline of Ancient Rome, for which he received ten guineas. In addition, he met with Richard Savage, another impoverished poet with a dubious reputation.
Between 1740 and 1743, he edited parliamentary debates for The Gentleman's Magazine. Years later, he was praised for his impartiality.
In 1744, Richard Savage died in a Bristol prison. Johnson wrote Savage's Life, remarkable for its honest portrayal of the strengths and weaknesses of a friend's character. The work was the first prose of the writer, which attracted the attention of the reading public.
In 1745, "Various Observations on the Macbeth Tragedy" were published. The following year, he signed a contract with a group of publishers and did a great job of compiling an English dictionary similar to the forty members of the French Academy published in France. He turned with his "Dictionary Plan" to Earl Chesterfield, but he turned out to be a very mediocre patron. A consequence of this was Johnson's next definition of the word “patron”: “He is the one who promotes, helps and protects. Usually this is a villain who supports arrogant in exchange for flattery."
In 1748, with six assistants, Johnson moved to a large house on Fleet Street and began work on a dictionary. In 1749, his melancholy work, The Vanity of Human Desires, appeared, and Garrick staged Johnson's tragedy Irene on Drury Lane.
Between 1750 and 1752 in two weeks he created more than two hundred Rambler essays. In 1752 his wife died. Two years later, Johnson returned to Oxford, where he met Thomas Wharton, the future poet laureate. The following year, with the help of Wharton, Samuel finally received his master's degree at Oxford. In the same year, his large English dictionary was finally completed and published, and although he was still very poor, his literary reputation was finally established. During this period, he met young Joshua Reynolds, Bennett Langton and Tofam Bocklerk.
In 1756, Johnson Samuel wrote "Proposals for a New Edition of Shakespeare", which, however, did not appear until 1765. He also continued to work as a journalist, editor and preface writer. When he was arrested for debt, Samuel Richardson pledged. Between 1758 and 1760, he wrote a series of essays, “Lazy Dog”. In 1759, his mother, Sarah, died, and, in a gloomy mood, he wrote the moral fable "Russell" to pay, according to him, the funeral.
Retired
In 1762, after the accession to the throne of George III, Samuel Johnson, whose books did not bring him much income, to his pleasure received a pension of 300 pounds per year. However, the appointment of the guesthouse confused him even more, for he was a supporter of the Tory party and, remembering the Whig abuse, defined the word "pension" in his dictionary as "paying civil servants for treason to their country." For the first time in his life, he was not forced to save on necessities, and although his appearance remained surprisingly and inevitably uncouth, he became one of the most famous literary lions in the world. When several young ladies, meeting him at a literary evening, expressed surprise at the strangeness of his figure, as if he were some kind of monster from the deserts of Africa, Johnson noticed that he was tamed and could be stroked.
In 1763, he first met James Boswell. Despite his Scottish origin (Johnson abhorred the Scots - hence his famous definition: “Oats are the grain that horses eat in England, and people in Scotland”), they got along well with each other. In 1764, the Literary Club was formed, of which Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Garrick, Boswell and Johnson became members.
Samuel in 1765, under his editorship, published Shakespeare's plays with a magnificent and insightful introduction and received the title of Honorary Doctor of Law at Trinity College Dublin. He also met wealthy Henry and Esther Trails, with whom he would spend most of his time over the next sixteen years (talking a lot, but not doing much creativity). Once Johnson remarked: "Only morons write for nothing."
In 1769, Boswell, having become a lawyer in Edinburgh, married, and remained in Scotland until 1772. Between 1770 and 1775, Johnson produced a series of violent, but characteristically categorical political pamphlets. In August 1773, although he always despised Scotland, Samuel embarked on a memorable trip with Boswell to the Hebrides. In July 1774, Johnson with the Trails went to Wales. In the same year, Oliver Goldsmith, one of the few contemporaries whom he sincerely admired, died, and the writer felt a huge loss.
Samuel Johnson on patriotism
Then he wrote the pamphlet The Patriot, where he criticized what he saw as false patriotism. On the evening of April 7, 1775, he uttered the famous phrase that patriotism is the last refuge of the villain. Contrary to popular belief, this sentence did not refer to patriotism as a whole, but to the false use of the term by John Stuart, Earl of Butte, and his supporters and enemies who played on his non-English background. Johnson opposed the self-proclaimed patriots in general, but appreciated the "true" patriotism.
Redemption
In 1775, he published his Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland. In the same year, Johnson received an honorary degree from Oxford University, and also visited France with the Trails (which he found worse than Scotland). Samuel violently reacted to the American revolution, characterizing the rebellious colonists as a "race of convicts." In 1776, he and Boswell traveled to Oxford, Ashbourne, and Lichfield, where in the rain with his bare head he stood in the market square in front of the building where his father’s bookstore was located, redeeming the “violation of filial piety” committed 50 years ago. Today it houses the Samuel Johnson Museum.
