In Johnson met Henry Thrale, a well-to-do brewer, and in the Thrales' home Johnson found an escape from the solitude he had experienced since his wife's death in In Johnson published an eight-volume edition of the works of William Shakespeare — Johnson's last great work, the ten-volume Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets better known as the Lives of the Poets , was completed when he was seventy-two.
It is a series of biographical and critical studies of fifty-two English poets. Johnson was saddened in his last years by the death of his old friend Dr. Robert Levett, by the death of Thrale, and by a quarrel with Thrale's widow, who had remarried with, what seemed to Johnson, inappropriate haste. Johnson died on December 13, , in his house in London, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Bate, W.
Samuel Johnson. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Reprint, Washington, DC: Counterpoint, Clark, Jonathan, and Howard Erskine-Hill, eds. Samuel Johnson in Historical Context. New York: Palgrave, Clifford, James Lowry.
Young Sam Johnson. New York: McGraw-Hill, Krutch, Joseph Wood. Johnson excelled in school and was promoted to the upper school at age nine. Later in , at age nineteen, Johnson entered Pembroke College, Oxford. A shortage of funds forced Johnson to leave Oxford without a degree and move back home to Lichfield.
Johnson attempted to obtain several jobs but failed to be hired because he did not have a degree. Oxford did eventually award him with the degree of Master of Arts. Johnson was also awarded an honorary doctorate in by Trinity College Dublin and in by Oxford. Johnson was known as a charitable, sensible, and caring man. He did not linger on insubstantial complaints, and appreciated the world around him. He was an honest man, and never thought twice about helping those in need. He took in strays from the outside, gave them a place to stay, and supported them throughout his adulthood.
It is known that Johnson gave two thirds of his income to charity, and never turned down a man or woman in need of help. He was an active critic of others work, but when critiquing it, he would say only good things about the authors and poets.
He admired the poets that wrote like him, such as Swift. There was dissatisfaction with the dictionaries of the period, so in June a group of London booksellers hired Johnson to write a dictionary. Johnson took nearly nine years to complete the work, although he had claimed he could finish it in three. Remarkably, Johnson completed the work single-handedly, with only clerical assistance to copy out the illustrative quotations that he had marked in books.
Johnson produced several revised editions during his life. Johnson wrote Rasselas during a time when he desperately needed extra money. Johnson knew that in order to get his hands on the money he needed, he would need to write another composition, therefore Rassela s came to be.
It is the story of a young prince who sets off to see the world only to uncover the harsh reality that the world is all vanity. Writing from the Augustan age looked to inspiration from classical models of literature such as the Roman writers Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, and Greek poet Homer. The Augustan period is also characterized by satire. The son of a bookseller, he rose to become one of the greatest literary figures of the eighteenth century, most famously compiling A Dictionary of the English Language.
Poverty and illness followed Johnson for much of his life. Johnson attended the local grammar school in Lichfield and went on to Pembroke College, Oxford.
However, he was to leave after just 13 months as his parents could no longer afford the fees. In , he married a widow, Elizabeth Porter, and set up a school at Edial; it failed within months.
0コメント