THE LIFE OF

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

SAMUEL JOHNSON
LL.D. BY JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.
EDITED WITH NOTES BY ARNOLD
GLOVER OF THE INNER TEMPLE

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY AUSTIN DOBSON

FULLY ILLUSTRATED WITH ABOUT ONE HUNDRED
DRAWINGS IN PEN AND INK BY HERBERT RAILTON

AND MANY PORTRAITS IN PHOTOGRAVURE

PUBLISHED IN LONDON & TORONTO BY
J. M. DENT AND SONS LIMITED
AND IN NEW YORK BY E. P. DUTTON & CO.

IN THE YEAR MCMXXV

This book is a reprint of the edition published in 1901

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

THA

HAT Dr. Johnson frequently began his sentences with “Sir" is

a statement to be safely hazarded. But that he said—“Sir,

let us take a walk down Fleet Street," is, it seems, a mere invention, unvouched for by Boswell.1 And yet, though uncanonical, it is not of necessity apocryphal. The Doctor, in all probability, did utter something of the sort, although his “ faithful chronicler has omitted to record it. For Fleet Street-that chronicler assures us—was his “ favourite street," and there is abundant evidence that he would have preferred it even to the Vale of Tempé. If, by chance, his now-unsubstantial shade should

“anywhere linger, Touching impalpable posts with an imperceptible finger”

it must assuredly be between Temple Bar and Ludgate Hill,Ludgate Hill, which, in his day, showed no obstructing viaduct to bar the prospect of St. Paul's. How that ghost must marvel at the

1 In Sala's Journal for 2nd July, 1892, the late Mr. G. A. Sala confessed that he had concocted this characteristic and highly-popular proposal as a motto for the magazine called Temple Bar, which he founded in December, 1860. Temple Bar still flourishes, buc the counterfeit quotation has long since disappeared from its cover. Johnson did, however, say to Mr. Hoole in 1783,—" Let you and I, Sir, go together, and eat a beef-steak in Grub-street,”—where, strangely enough, and despite the definition in the Dictionary, he had never been before.