In an effort to educate myself, I am reading The Oxford Book of Essays, chosen and edited by John Gross. [copies for sale here] There’s 142 of the blighters, so it will take me all year. To make this “stick” I am going to blog each essay.
This essay is online
Who was the author:
Samuel Johnson (18 September [O.S. 7 September] 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him “arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history”.[1]
What happened the year they were born (and the C02 ppm): 1709
The Big Events they were alive for: xx
What happened in the year they died (and the C02 ppm): 1784
My awareness of/appreciation of this author (if any): I love him – Rasselas, the “What Have ye Done?” essay. Robbie Coltrane’s thing in Black Adder 3.
What’s the essay?
The essay is called “Dignity and the Uses of Biography.” It’s 4 pages long. For me, the key take-aways were that Samuel Johnson was pompous on occasion but exceedingly perceptive.
Best line(s)
“Our passions are therefore more strongly moved, in proportion as we can more readily adopt the pains or pleasure proposed to our minds, by recognising them as once our own, or considering them as naturally incident to our state of life. It is not easy for the most artful writer to give us an interest in happiness or misery, which we think ourselves never likely to feel, and with which we have never yet been made acquainted.”
“We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.”
“ If a life be delayed till interest and envy are at an end, we may hope for impartiality, but must expect little intelligence; for the incidents which give excellence to biography are of a volatile and evanescent kind, such as soon escape the memory, and are rarely transmitted by tradition.”
“There are many who think it an act of piety to hide the faults or failings of their friends, even when they can no longer suffer by their detection; we therefore see whole ranks of characters adorned with uniform panegyric, and not to be known from one another but by extrinsic and casual circumstances.”
Stuff I had to look up
Parva si non fiunt quotidie, says Pliny, . “these things would be trifling, had they not to be endured daily”.
Theanus
Jacques Auguste de Thou (sometimes known by the Latin version of his name Thuanus) (8 October 1553, Paris – 7 May 1617, Paris) was a French historian, book collector and president of the Parlement of Paris.
Jacques Auguste de Thou – Wikipedia
Melanchhtnon Philip Melanchthon[a] (born Philipp Schwartzerdt;[b] 16 February 1497 – 19 April 1560) was a German Lutheran reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, an intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and influential designer of educational systems.
Philip Melanchthon – Wikipedia
De Wit
Stuff worth thinking about.
xx
Stuff to look up
xxx
Connects to (watch this space – if there are later essays that resonate with this one, I’ll come back and add a link to the post for that essay).
marchudson.net 
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