Boswells Life of Johnson | Page 7

this mode is more lively, and will
make my readers better acquainted with him, than even most of those
were who actually knew him, but could know him only partially;
whereas there is here an accumulation of intelligence from various
points, by which his character is more fully understood and illustrated.
Indeed I cannot conceive a more perfect mode of writing any man's life,
than not only relating all the most important events of it in their order,
but interweaving what he privately wrote, and said, and thought; by
which mankind are enabled as it were to see him live, and to 'live o'er
each scene' with him, as he actually advanced through the several
stages of his life. Had his other friends been as diligent and ardent as I
was, he might have been almost entirely preserved. As it is, I will
venture to say that he will be seen in this work more completely than
any man who has ever yet lived.
And he will be seen as he really was; for I profess to write, not his
panegyrick, which must be all praise, but his Life; which, great and
good as he was, must not be supposed to be entirely perfect. To be as
he was, is indeed subject of panegyrick enough to any man in this state
of being; but in every picture there should be shade as well as light, and
when I delineate him without reserve, I do what he himself
recommended, both by his precept and his example.
I am fully aware of the objections which may be made to the
minuteness on some occasions of my detail of Johnson's conversation,
and how happily it is adapted for the petty exercise of ridicule, by men
of superficial understanding and ludicrous fancy; but I remain firm and
confident in my opinion, that minute particulars are frequently
characteristick, and always amusing, when they relate to a
distinguished man. I am therefore exceedingly unwilling that any thing,
however slight, which my illustrious friend thought it worth his while

to express, with any degree of point, should perish.
Of one thing I am certain, that considering how highly the small
portion which we have of the table-talk and other anecdotes of our
celebrated writers is valued, and how earnestly it is regretted that we
have not more, I am justified in preserving rather too many of
Johnson's sayings, than too few; especially as from the diversity of
dispositions it cannot be known with certainty beforehand, whether
what may seem trifling to some, and perhaps to the collector himself,
may not be most agreeable to many; and the greater number that an
authour can please in any degree, the more pleasure does there arise to
a benevolent mind.
Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield, in Staffordshire, on the 18th of
September, N. S., 1709; and his initiation into the Christian Church was
not delayed; for his baptism is recorded, in the register of St. Mary's
parish in that city, to have been performed on the day of his birth. His
father is there stiled Gentleman, a circumstance of which an ignorant
panegyrist has praised him for not being proud; when the truth is, that
the appellation of Gentleman, though now lost in the indiscriminate
assumption of Esquire, was commonly taken by those who could not
boast of gentility. His father was Michael Johnson, a native of
Derbyshire, of obscure extraction, who settled in Lichfield as a
bookseller and stationer. His mother was Sarah Ford, descended of an
ancient race of substantial yeomanry in Warwickshire. They were well
advanced in years when they married, and never had more than two
children, both sons; Samuel, their first born, who lived to be the
illustrious character whose various excellence I am to endeavour to
record, and Nathanael, who died in his twenty-fifth year.
Mr. Michael Johnson was a man of a large and robust body, and of a
strong and active mind; yet, as in the most solid rocks veins of unsound
substance are often discovered, there was in him a mixture of that
disease, the nature of which eludes the most minute enquiry, though the
effects are well known to be a weariness of life, an unconcern about
those things which agitate the greater part of mankind, and a general
sensation of gloomy wretchedness. From him then his son inherited,

with some other qualities, 'a vile melancholy,' which in his too strong
expression of any disturbance of the mind, 'made him mad all his life,
at least not sober.' Michael was, however, forced by the narrowness of
his circumstances to be very diligent in business, not only in his shop,
but by occasionally resorting to several towns in the neighbourhood,
some of which were at a considerable distance from Lichfield. At that