Johnson, Samuel(1709–1784)
Samuel Johnson, the English man of letters, poet, lexicographer, moralist, and humanist, was born in Lichfield, the son of an indigent bookseller. After his early education at Lichfield Grammar School, he tried schoolmastering for a brief period. In 1728 he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, but was compelled to leave the following year because of lack of funds. As a child he had suffered from scrofula and later from melancholia, a mental illness that plagued him throughout life, at times pushing him to the brink of insanity. In 1735 he married Mrs. Henry Porter, a widow who was twenty years his senior. After more futile attempts at schoolmastering, Johnson set out for London on horseback in 1737, taking with him one of his pupils, David Garrick. A journalist and hack writer par excellence, Johnson wrote for the Gentleman's Magazine and in addition produced poetry, essays, biographies, translations, a play, a proposal for a new edition of William Shakespeare, and a proposal for a new dictionary. As a "harmless drudge" he labored from 1746 to 1755 on the Dictionary of the English Language, a work that established the practice of elucidating definition of words by quotations from leading authors. Its appearance brought him fame and belated honorary doctorates from Dublin (1765) and Oxford (1775), but little money.
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