He was a man of immensely strong faith. A faith that balanced well with his reason.
Malcolm Guite on Dr. Johnson
Tag: Samuel Johnson
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The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
– Samuel Johnson, RAMBLER, No. 2
Johnson, Samuel. Samuel Johnson: Selected Works (The Yale Edition). Edited by Howard D. Weinbrot and Robert DeMaria Jr., Yale University Press, 2020 pg. 9
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That the mind of man is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity; and that we forget the proper use of the time now in our power, to provide the enjoyment of that which, perhaps, may never be granted us, has frequently remarked; and as this practice is a commodious subject of raillery to the gay, and of declamation to the serious, it has been ridiculed with all the pleasantry of wit, and exaggerated with all the amplifications of rhetoric.
– Samuel Johnson, RAMBLER, No. 2
At last reading Dr. Johnson. Even in his age the idea of cherishing the present was an ongoing struggle.
The RAMBLER essays are an excellent entry point. They’re short but heavy.
Enjoy the dates on them too, this one from Saturday, 24 March 1750.
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Johnson learned wherever he went. On a visit to an army camp in 1778, when he was nearly sixty, he enquired about many aspects of military practice, including the weight of musket balls, and the range at which they could be effective. He displayed a good knowledge of gunpowder, talked on a range of military topics, and sat up late watching a court martial. The inventor Richard Arkwright said Johnson was the only person who, on first view, ‘understood the principal and powers of his most complicated piece of machinery’. He had been advised by his cousin Cornelius Ford, with whom he spent some formative months as a young man, ‘to obtain some general principles of every science’.
– Henry Oliver
Similar to Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Johnson was a man interested in everything.
Second time through on the Samuel Johnson chapter…
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024. pg181, Kindle edition.
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Take Samuel Johnson’s advice. Resolve, work, fail and resolve again. We should do this not just for ambition, for ‘hope of a better fortune’, but because ‘the time comes at last, in which life has no more to promise’ and all we can do then is remember our lives; and ‘virtue will be ll that we can recollect with pleasure’.
– Henry Oliver
It’s Monday.
Resolve. Work. Fail. Resolve again.
The Samuel Johnson chapter continues to inspires.
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024.
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He once picked up a destitute prostitute in the street and carried her on his back to his house where she stayed for some weeks to recover her health. He loved few things better than a tavern. ‘It is wonderful, Sir, what is to be found in London,’ he told Boswell, ‘the most literary conversation that I have ever enjoyed, was at the table of Jack Ellis, a money scrivener behind the Royal Exchange.’ ‘A great city,’ he believed, was ‘the school for studying life’. It was by studying life, as much as from his scholarly reading, that Johnson became the writer he did.
– Henry Oliver
Henry Oliver’s book is brilliant. Carrying it with me everywhere. Burning through pages.
The Samuel Johnson chapter inspires.
Oliver, Henry. Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life. United Kingdom, John Murray Press, 2024.
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What Carson did was to approach the study of how to create X by turning the question backward—that is, by studying how to create non-X. The great algebraist Jacobi had exactly the same approach as Carson and was known for his constant repetition of one phrase: “Invert, always invert.”83 It is in the nature of things, as Jacobi knew, that many hard problems are best solved only when they are addressed backward.
– Charlie MungerIt’s not only Charlie’s bits of wisdom that leave you in awe, the number and variety of thinkers Charlie Munger references in each chapter is astonishing.
In this speech alone he draws on Samuel Johnson, Cicero, Johnny Carson, Moses, Benjamin Disraelias, Croesus, Issac Newton, Epictetus…
Stripe Press’s online version of Poor Charlie’s Almanack is what digital reading should be.
More to come.
https://www.stripe.press/poor-charlies-almanack/talk-one?progress=66.79%25
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In like manner, almost all the fictions of the last age will vanish, if you deprive them of a hermit and a wood, a battle and a shipwreck.
– Samuel JohnsonBuilding on this from yesterday. Here Samuel Johnson claims one of the qualities writers of this time were lacking was “real-world” experience. The need for getting out of “solitary diligence” and shoving their hands in the mud.
The task of our present writers is very different; it requires, together with that learning which is to be gained from books, that experience which can never be attained by solitary diligence, but must arise from general converse, and accurate observation of the living world. Their performances have, as Horace expresses it, plus oneris quantum veniae minus, 5 little indulgence, and therefore more difficulty. They are engaged in portraits of which every one knows the original, and can detect any deviation from exactness of resemblance. Other writings are safe, except from the malice of learning, but these are in danger from every common reader; as the slipper ill executed was censured by a shoemaker who happened to stop in his way at the Venus of Apelles. 6
Samuel JohnsonCracking Samuel Johnson is a fistfight. One needs assistance to punch through. Chat GPT4 was my tag team partner, leading me to the Rambler, No. 4.
A prompt below:
RAMBLER, No. 4 was a shorter essay than I expected. It’s a good entry point to Samuel Johnson. My initial interpretation is he’s criticizing the novel writing of his day. It needs a second read.
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Occasionally I speculate what sort of chap he can be who takes ten winters out of whatever work he does simply for the purpose of watching peregrines. One must inevitably feel curious about anyone possessed and driven by such a monomania. I experienced a kind of awe, an astonishment, and a real excitement … No bird has ever had such a Boswell.
John MooreFor everyone out their observing and cataloging things for no apparent reason.
Keep going.
Saunders, Hetty. My House of Sky: The life and work of J.A. Baker. Lower Dairy, Toller Fratrum, Dorset: Little Toller Books, 2017. pp113
Floodlights and Goalposts 