Volume 22, Number 2 · February 20, 1975
A Misunderstood Genius
By Irvin Ehrenpreis
Samuel Johnson
by John Wain
Viking, 388 pp., $12.50
The Treasure of Auchinleck: The Story of the Boswell Papers
by David Buchanan
McGraw-Hill, 371 pp., $14.95
In dealing with Samuel Johnson, our need is to bring his writings as close to us as Boswell brought his conversations. There are hundreds of good stories to rivet our attention on the man. Coming home late at night, Johnson would find poor children asleep in doorways or on stalls, and would put pennies into their hands so they might buy themselves breakfast in the morning. Yet when Mrs. Thrale, who had comforted him for sixteen years, decided to remarry (after the death of a greedy, adulterous husband), Johnson could heap abuse on her for picking an Italian musician for her spouse: 'If you have abandoned your children and your religion, God forgive your wickedness.' Johnson harbored in his house a small troop of charity cases; he not only denounced American slavery but made a freed black man the residual heir to his estate. Yet he defended a schoolmaster who dragged pupils by the hair, kicked them, and beat them with wooden squares. 'No scholar,' said Johnson, 'has gone from him either blind or lame, or with any of his limbs or powers injured or impaired.'
Review, 2669 words
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