Category: Biographies

Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. During the Last Twenty Years of His Life

Mrs. Piozzi, by her second marriage, was by her first marriage the Mrs. Thrale in whose house at Streatham Doctor Johnson was, after the year of his first introduction, 1765, in days of infirmity, an honoured and a cherished friend. The year of the beginning of the friendship...

Chapters

11. Part 11

Dr. Johnson had indeed a veneration for the voice of mankind beyond what most people will own; and as he liberally confessed that all his own disappointments proceeded from hims...

9. Part 9

His manner of criticising and commending Addison's prose was the same in conversation as we read it in the printed strictures, and many of the expressions used have been heard t...

12. Part 12

When one day he had at my house taken tincture of antimony instead of emetic wine, for a vomit, he was himself the person to direct us what to do for him, and managed with as mu...

8. Part 8

Dr. Johnson did not, I think, much delight in that kind of conversation which consists in telling stories. "Everybody," said he, "tells stories of me, and I tell stories of nobo...

5. Part 5

Though Mr. Johnson had but little reverence either for talents or fortune when he found them unsupported by virtue, yet it was sufficient to tell him a man was very pious, or ve...

3. Part 3

"'You seem, my lord, to be concerned at the judicious apprehension that while you are sapping the foundations of royalty at home, and propagating here the dangerous doctrine of...

7. Part 7

I asked him upon this if he ever disputed with his wife? (I had heard that he loved her passionately.) "Perpetually," said he: "my wife had a particular reverence for cleanlines...

10. Part 10

One day, when he was in a humour to record some of them, he told us the following tale:--"A person," said he, "had for these last five weeks often called at my door, but would n...

2. Part 2

At eight years old he went to school, for his health would not permit him to be sent sooner; and at the age of ten years his mind was disturbed by scruples of infidelity, which...

1. Part 1

Mrs. Piozzi, by her second marriage, was by her first marriage the Mrs. Thrale in whose house at Streatham Doctor Johnson was, after the year of his first introduction, 1765, in...

4. Part 4

"Long may live my lovely Hetty! Always young and always pretty, Always pretty, always young, Live my lovely Hetty long! Always young and always pretty! Long may live my lovely H...

6. Part 6

Of that respectable society I have heard him speak in the highest terms, and with a magnificent panegyric on each member, when it consisted only of a dozen or fourteen friends;...

13. Part 13

I will add one or two peculiarities more before I lay down my pen. Though at an immeasurable distance from content in the contemplation of his own uncouth form and figure, he di...