The Life of Samuel Johnson

In March 1776, Boswell and Johnson go on a “ramble” to Lichfield and other places in the country. They go to Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare’s hometown, then to Birmingham and reconnect with Johnson’s old schoolfriend Mr. Hector. There, Johnson also reunites with Mrs. Careless, a clergyman’s widow who was his “first love.” Johnson and she drink tea together, then Johnson expounds his practical, unromantic view of love to Boswell. According to Johnson, married couples would be just as happily married if their marriages were arranged “by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of characters and circumstances” (705).

Boswell and Johnson meet David Garrick’s brother Peter and others in the Lichfield area, then attend a theatrical performance in Lichfield itself. Toward the end of the month, the pair returns to London.

In this section and elsewhere, Boswell presents Johnson exhibiting a generally negative view of cultures other than European. He dismisses Chinese civilization (984) and, a few times, chides Boswell for defending the ways of those he considers “savages” and “barbarians,” including Native Americans and the natives of “Otaheité” (Tahiti) (751). In fact, Johnson disdains foreigners generally, something which Boswell attributes to his national pride as an Englishman.

However, in this section, Boswell also recounts that Johnson became acquainted with Omai, “a native of one of the South Sea Islands” (723) who had come to England. Johnson is impressed by Omai’s elegant behavior and attributes it to his having adopted the best of “genteel” English ways. Johnson rejects the view, held by some Enlightenment philosophers, of the “noble savage” and that “pure nature” is superior to civilization. Boswell, on the other hand, seems more amenable to Enlightenment views, as seen in his curiosity about remote cultures and his support for the Corsican and American independence movements.

In April, Johnson goes to the town of Bath (noted for its therapeutic waters), and Boswell shortly joins him there, where they have more conversation. In May, Johnson offers another legal opinion for one of Boswell’s cases: he writes in favor of a minister who has been censured for accusing a politician in the pulpit. Johnson writes that “[t]the right of censure and rebuke seems necessarily appendant to the pastoral office” (758).

In May, Boswell gets Johnson invited to a gathering at which several people unknown to him are present. Although at first Johnson is awkward in the presence of the strangers, he soon warms to the company which includes Jack Wilkes, a radical journalist and politician whose views are directly opposed to Johnson’s. Boswell tells the readers that he expressly wanted to bring Johnson and Wilkes together to create an “intellectual chymistry” between two very different people—though Boswell’s detractors counter that Boswell really wanted to generate narrative fireworks for his own purposes. Indeed, Boswell’s delight in engineering this encounter gives some credence to his later reputation as someone who flattered and manipulated his biographical subject to get conversation out of him, and thus provide Boswell with exclusive material.