Book Reviews

SAMUEL JOHNSON: A LIFE

David Nokes

A nation's heroes come in various forms: soldiers, saints and even sinners. Dr Samuel Johnson was one of England's more unlikely national figures, but one whose legacy continues to thrive, inextricably linked as it is with the very language that we speak. These days the English language, thanks to its ubiquitous use on the internet, seems only to go from strength to strength; however, when Dr Johnson began his work as a man of letters in the eighteenth century, its vocabulary hadn't even been collected into a proper dictionary.

Like any good journalist, Dr Johnson saw a gap in the market and filled it. Securing a commission for the stupendous sum of 1,500 guineas (he thought he could do it in three years, but in fact took nine), he finally produced The Dictionary of the English Language in 1755. Johnson's Dictionary remained unequalled until the Oxford English Dictionary appeared some 150 years later.

Johnson himself was a tall and robust figure, but his odd tics and spasms made onlookers edgy; he likely suffered from Tourette's syndrome (then unknown). Nonetheless, he became a friend of the king and a companion to other remarkable figures of his time.

The problem for any biographer is that Dr Johnson's life was chronicled in 1791 by James Boswell, in a work that has been regarded as the last word for over 200 years. But Professor Nokes has managed to give his subject new life by addressing the parts that Boswell left out, describing a man who gave a quarter of the government pension he received to the poor, filled his home with the blind and destitute, and bequeathed his wealth to Frank Barber, an emancipated black slave from Jamaica.

Faber & Faber, 25 pounds