"Literary Studies."—Bagehot.
"The Thackeray Country."—Benjamin.
"Victorian Prose Masters."—Brownell.
"Thackeray's Haunts and Homes."—Crowe.
"With Thackeray in America."—Crowe.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
(1709–1784)
Johnson was born at Lichfield, Staffordshire, and studied at Oxford. His early years were one continuous struggle with poverty, first as a teacher at Lichfield and other places and afterwards as a hack writer in London. During the latter period, besides his ordinary duties as an editor of various magazines, he found time to turn his hand to the most diverse forms of literature. He wrote poems, "London" and the "Vanity of Human Wishes"; a drama, "Irene"; a philosophic romance, "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia"; two series of essays, the "Rambler" and the "Idler," after the model of Addison's "Spectator"; and prepared the first English dictionary.
In 1862 he was granted a pension of £300 by Lord Bute, from which time dates his literary dictatorship. His only subsequent works of importance were his "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland" and his "Lives of the Poets." The latter is his best work and one of the monuments of English criticism in spite of its prejudiced tone.