The Life of Samuel Johnson

This section comprises the last year of Johnson’s life. Johnson’s friends lobby to have him travel to Italy for his health. Instead, Johnson goes back to his roots in Lichfield and Ashbourne. Here his health continues to be weak and precarious from dropsy and other maladies, but he is able to improve his symptoms through rest and exercise. At the same time, he experiences loneliness and melancholy relieved only by correspondence with Boswell and other friends. In May, Johnson has a religious experience of consolation in the midst of his physical suffering, which he tells Boswell about and interprets as the “interposition of Divine Providence” (1276).

Johnson and Boswell visit Oxford in June, and later that same month Johnson has what will turn out to be his last meeting with the Literary Club and, at the very end of the month, his final dinner with Boswell. Johnson is very grateful to his friends’ efforts to help him in his illness and their “steady and kind attachment” (1384) to him. Johnson makes out his will, leaving a “liberal provision” to his “faithful servant” Francis Barber. On his deathbed, he is visited by many of his friends and prays in the presence of a minister; Johnson asks God to “pardon the multitude of my offences” (1392).

Johnson dies peacefully on December 13, 1784. He is buried in Westminster Abbey after a funeral attended by many friends and members of the Literary Club.

Boswell concludes the book with a summation of Johnson’s character both as a writer and as a man. Johnson was a person who united many disparate qualities: moral gravity with “wit and humour” and “colloquial pleasantry,” and possessed “a vast and various collection of learning and knowledge” (1400) from which he drew for his eloquent poetry and prose.

He was also a forceful conversationalist with “a spirit of contradiction” and “delight in shewing his powers” (1402). Although he could be prickly and difficult at times, piety and truth were the backbone of his character, and everyone who knew him was enriched. Boswell is confident that both the “present age” and “posterity” will regard Johnson with “admiration and reverence” (1402).

Boswell’s account of Johnson’s final year shows his desire to dramatize, rather than only monumentalize, Johnson’s life by imbuing it with emotional resonance. Boswell portentously sets this section off by saying, “And now I am arrived at the last year of the life of SAMUEL JOHNSON […]” (1263), spending almost 40 pages to dwell on the final year of Johnson’s life, as if to bid a prolonged farewell to his friend.

Throughout this final section Boswell highlights the physical suffering and loneliness Johnson endured during his illness, especially during his stay at Lichfield. The poignant scenes once again reinforce Boswell’s claims to have unprecedented access to his famous subject, and continue the biography’s motif of describing Johnson’s body and physical presence in great detail. It is particularly important for Boswell to do this, since Boswell is not actually present during Johnson’s final days, and must present instead the recollections of a friend named John Nichols.

Boswell shows that joy, peace, and friendship can still exist in the midst of suffering, highlighting Johnson’s human spirit and will to live, as he tries various remedies in an effort to recover and continues his literary correspondences and meetings with friends, such as his last dinner with Boswell on June 30—a last meeting that Boswell sets apart as significant in retrospect: “When I now look back to it, I am vexed that a single word should have been forgotten” (1325). Indeed, even while on his deathbed Johnson entertains the possibility of getting better and continuing his work (1387); he also shows his trademark wit and humor (1388).

Boswell’s other purpose in the final section is to sum up Johnson’s legacy, both literary and personal. On Pages 1370–1372, he presents several examples of “serious imitators of Johnson’s style” (1370), which shows the influence that Johnson had as a writer. These examples all exhibit Johnson’s habitual long sentences with stately cadences and dignified diction that set Johnson’s writing apart. Other legacies are more personal. Boswell emphasizes that Johnson’s faith has helped him at this difficult time (Pages 1276, 1387, 1391–1392), a series of asides that reminds readers about the quasi-paternal role that Johnson has often played in Boswell’s life. Another significant legacy is financial: Because Johnson has no “near relations,” he leaves a sizable inheritance to Francis Barber, whom Boswell says he always treated “as an humble friend” (1380), granting Barber more than the amount that servants typically inherited. As known from later records, this legacy enabled Barber to establish himself in Lichfield. This shows the importance that Barber had for Johnson, in a time when friendships between Black and white people were unusual. (See Key Figures for more discussion of the life of Barber.)

After recounting Johnson’s death and burial, Boswell ends by once more going over the moral and physical qualities of Johnson that he has discussed throughout the book; he emphasizes that the power of Johnson’s writings transcends these qualities and will endure. The final few pages, indeed, are a digest of the entire Life, summarizing Johnson’s being and character.