The Life of Samuel Johnson, vol 1 | Page 6

I discovered that the story told of
Johnson's listening to Dr. Sacheverel's sermon is not in any way
improbable[22], and that Johnson's 'censure' of Lord Kames was quite
just[23]. The ardent advocates of total abstinence will not, I fear, be
pleased at finding at the end of my long note on Johnson's
wine-drinking that I have been obliged to show that he thought that the
gout from which he suffered was due to his temperance. 'I hope you
persevere in drinking,' he wrote to his friend, Dr. Taylor. 'My opinion is
that I have drunk too little[24].'
In the Appendices I have generally treated of subjects which demanded
more space than could be given them in the narrow limits of a foot-note.
In the twelve pages of the essay on Johnson's Debates in Parliament[25]
I have compressed the result of the reading of many weeks. In
examining the character of George Psalmanazar[26] I have complied
with the request of an unknown correspondent who was naturally

interested in the history of that strange man, 'after whom Johnson
sought the most[27].' In my essay on Johnson's Travels and Love of
Travelling[28] I have, in opposition to Lord Macaulay's wild and
wanton rhetoric, shown how ardent and how elevated was the curiosity
with which Johnson's mind was possessed. In another essay I have
explained, I do not say justified, his strong feelings towards the
founders of the United States[29]; and in a fifth I have examined the
election of the Lord Mayors of London, at a time when the City was
torn by political strife[30]. To the other Appendices it is not needful
particularly to refer.
In my Index, which has cost me many months' heavy work, 'while I
bore burdens with dull patience and beat the track of the alphabet with
sluggish resolution[31],' I have, I hope, shown that I am not unmindful
of all that I owe to men of letters. To the dead we cannot pay the debt
of gratitude that is their due. Some relief is obtained from its burthen, if
we in our turn make the men of our own generation debtors to us. The
plan on which my Index is made will, I trust, be found convenient. By
the alphabetical arrangement in the separate entries of each article the
reader, I venture to think, will be greatly facilitated in his researches.
Certain subjects I have thought it best to form into groups. Under
America, France Ireland, London, Oxford, Paris, and Scotland, are
gathered together almost all the references to those subjects. The
provincial towns of France, however, by some mistake I did not include
in the general article. One important but intentional omission I must
justify. In the case of the quotations in which my notes abound I have
not thought it needful in the Index to refer to the book unless the
eminence of the author required a separate and a second entry. My
labour would have been increased beyond all endurance and my Index
have been swollen almost into a monstrosity had I always referred to
the book as well as to the matter which was contained in the passage
that I extracted. Though in such a variety of subjects there must be
many omissions, yet I shall be greatly disappointed if actual errors are
discovered. Every entry I have made myself, and every entry I have
verified in the proof-sheets, not by comparing it with my manuscript,
but by turning to the reference in the printed volumes. Some indulgence
nevertheless may well be claimed and granted. If Homer at times nods,

an index-maker may be pardoned, should he in the fourth or fifth
month of his task at the end of a day of eight hours' work grow drowsy.
May I fondly hope that to the maker of so large an Index will be
extended the gratitude which Lord Bolingbroke says was once shown
to lexicographers? 'I approve,' writes his Lordship, 'the devotion of a
studious man at Christ Church, who was overheard in his oratory
entering into a detail with God, and acknowledging the divine goodness
in furnishing the world with makers of dictionaries[32].'
In the list that I give in the beginning of the sixth volume of the books
which I quote, the reader will find stated in full the titles which in the
notes, through regard to space, I was forced to compress.
The Concordance of Johnson's sayings which follows the Index[33]
will be found convenient by the literary man who desires to make use
of his strong and pointed utterances. Next to Shakespeare he is, I
believe, quoted and misquoted the most frequently of all our writers. 'It
is not every man that can carry a bon-mot[34].' Bons-mots that are
miscarried of all kinds of good things suffer the most. In this