Johnson was nothing if not opinionated. Yet, coming from him, they are never merely opinions. There is always a great degree of heft and weight supporting them (no pun intended, as he was an immense man physically as well as intellectually)). Though he received only an honorary degree from Oxford (he was too poor to remain at school), he was one of the most learned men of any era. The range and breadth of his reading is unsurpassed by any other major literary figure, with the possible exception of Milton. Yet Johnson never comes across as overblown, nor does he ever trumpet his learning. His writing is informed be a sense of humility and compassion, that no doubt were among the attributes that endeared him to so many of the leading lights of his generation. And of course, he also had a marvelous sense of humor, which also comes through in this collection. Unfortunately for him, his good moods were often followed by serious bouts of depression, which is reflected in his most famous poem, "The Vanity of Human Wishes." By today's standards, he would be diagnosed most probably as a manic-depressive. There were many days when he found it difficult to summon the resolve to get out of bed and face the day. What saved him was his naturally gregarious nature. He thoroughly enjoyed the company he found in London's taverns.

His compassion for others is legendary. He thought that the character of a country was determined by the degree to which it ministered to the poor. He was an ardent foe, as exhibited in one of his "Idler" articles, of so-called scientific experimentation on animals. He viscerally describes the cruel and inhumane use that dogs were subjected to by anatomy researchers in his era. It is one of the most compellingly moving diatribes against this still-controversial subject that one is likely to encounter. One of the marks of great authors is that they say things we sometimes think of ourselves in such an adroit and pithy manner that we think they could not be better expressed. Take this Johnson quote on "idleness," for example: "As pride sometimes is hid under humility, idleness is often covered by turbulence and hurry. He that neglects his own duty and real employment, naturally endeavors to crowd his mind with something that may bar out the remembrance of his own folly, and does anything but what he ought to do with eager diligence, that he may keep himself in his own favor."

Dr. Johnson was also one of the foremost literary critics in history. Though one may not always agree with his assessments, one has to acknowledge the force of his arguments. In his encomiums to such writers as Shakespeare, Milton and Pope, he intermittently sprinkles censure. For those of us who don't like to see our icons brought down to earth, this is sometimes painful. What Johnson is really doing, however, is showing us that our own judgments are often unbalanced, and we fail to see what are real flaws in the great edifices. Johnson is never interested in pure panegyrics. His task is to examine the entire picture and to report as accurately as possible the grandeur, as well as the shortcomings of a work, whether it is Pope's Iliad, Shakespeare's Hamlet, or Milton's Paradise Lost. If there is a last word that could be said to have been delivered on these monumental works, it may well be Johnson's.

If you haven't visited the Doctor recently, do yourself some good and remedy the situation.


Johnson's Mojor Works   October 18, 2001
 18 out of 18 found this review helpful

Johnson is best known from Boswell's excellent biography, but I've come to like reading Johnson as much. Boswell's Johnson and Johnson's own writing give very different pleasures. In Boswell Johnson is always speaking, and so his opinions -- of which he was stuffed -- come over with colloquial force and humour. As Boswell himself noted, Johnson's writings aren't often very funny.

That said, it's not true that there's no humour in Johnson. His poems, for example, are mainly what could be called light verse; and there are the two imitations of Juvenal's satires, which although not funny, or witty, in the way Pope is, are comedic -- worldly and cynical -- in outlook. The Lives of the Poets have a similar outlook; and are written with a style that is much clearer and, for me, more palatable than some of Johnson's earlier prose.

Johnson's not very widely read at the moment, which is a pity -- he's not a writer merely for "students of literature"; although at the same time, it must be confessed, not a writer who is likely to become immensely popular. There are more entertaining writers (and as entertainment Boswell's biography is justly more widely read than Johnson's own works): Johnson offers what, perhaps, will become more valued -- surety, rootedness and freedom from all types of trick. He's the opposite of spin and showiness.

There's so much in this book to read. (Which is, much to OUP's credit, a few quid cheaper than the previous edition.) There are extracts from articles, essays, poems, diaries, meditations, letters, the Lives of the Poets, the dictionary, a few pages reprinted from Johnson's edition of Shakespeare to show what that looked like, and from Johnson's account of his and Boswell's trip to Scotland. Rasselas (which *is* entertaining) is in full; all the major poems are included. There's too much in it to read at once; but it's very enjoyable. Johnson, like Coleridge, is a writer who is best represented by a fat volume of complete and selected works: like Coleridge he had a large understanding that sought to encompass all the life of his time.