![]() ![]() Johnson was given to extreme fits of melancholy. He would wander around London in a haze and was often so disoriented that people who encountered him thought him to be an idiot. They are not pained by incivility, nor mortified by the mutilation of a compliment, but this happiness is like that of the malefactor who ceases to feel the cords that bind him when the pincers are tearing his flesh.įor two years after leaving Oxford, Johnson was in a state of severe depression. The poor indeed are insensible of many little vexations which sometimes embitter the possessions of the rich. In the review of a philosophical book that supported the view that the poor were somehow better off than the rich because they seemingly had less about which to be concerned, Johnson wrote: Even later in life when he was well established Johnson remained something of a champion of the poor. ![]() Johnson's early financial difficulty made him extremely sensitive to the suffering of the poor. He never returned to the University life that was so befitting a man of his talents, but was awarded an honorary degree from Dublin University in 1765 and another from Oxford in 1766. The influence of these books can be seen in his early poem 'The Young Author' and in his poetic masterpiece 'The Vanity of Human Wishes', both of which share the common theme of not being deceived by false hope. While at Oxford, he read Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, With an Enquiry Into the Origin of Moral Virtue and William Law's book Serious Call To a Devout and Holy Life two books that were to have strong influence on his personal and literary philosophy. In 1728, Johnson went to Pembroke College, Oxford, but lack of money forced him to leave shortly after a year. Despite his life long connection to the city (indeed Johnson is often considered one of the great Urban Poets), and his enormous size he remained a capable sportsman throughout his life, even going on an intrepid journey with Boswell to the remote Hebrides in 1775 described in his 'Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland', 1775. He developed into a capable boxer, swimmer, and climber. ![]() Johnson was always fiercely independent, and even as a child worked to ensure that his appearance and medical problems did not make him the object of pity. A later childhood infection of smallpox left his face more disfigured. He developed a tubercular condition from a wet nurse that left him severely disfigured, nearly blind, and deaf in the left ear. (1791).Samuel Johnson was born the son of bookseller Michael Johnson near Birmingham, England in the town of Lichfield in 1709. Although Johnson wrote a small number of outstanding poems, he is perhaps best remembered for his other literary achievements and as the subject of the first great English Biography: James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. His influence in his own time was so profound that the latter half of the century is often simply called the Age of Johnson. Samuel Johnson is the towering figure of 18th Century English letters. ![]()
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