An all-around interesting guy and a really amazing, galvanic presence in English letters. In my undergrad days, studying English Lit, I was a big fan of Samuel Johnson and wrote a long, long paper on the guy. I thought I might become one of those Johnson scholars the way some people are Twain or Shakespeare scholars. (I didnt. Social media got in the way.) Johnson often gets a bad rep because of his religious conservatism and some relatively retrograde (the the time) opinions, and because he was a Tory, but he held some opinions that were also fairly radical at the time - or at least, in hindsight, were kind of interesting. For instance: In the 1770s, Johnson, who had tended to be an opponent of the government early in life, published a series of pamphlets in favour of various government policies....On the evening of 7 April 1775, he made the famous statement, Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel..... [His pamphlet] Taxation No Tyranny (1775), was a defence of the Coercive Acts and a response to the Declaration of Rights of the First Continental Congress of America, which protested against taxation without representation. Johnson argued that in emigrating to America, colonists had voluntarily resigned the power of voting, but they still had virtual representation in Parliament. In a parody of the Declaration of Rights, Johnson...asked How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes? (Zing!) Johnson denounced English supporters of American separatists as traitors to this country, and hoped that the matter would be settled without bloodshed, but he felt confident that it would end with English superiority and American obedience. Years before, Johnson had stated that the English and the French were just two robbers who were stealing land from the natives, and that neither deserved to live there. After the signing of the 1783 Peace of Paris treaty, marking the colonists defeat of the British, Johnson was deeply disturbed with the state of this kingdom.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 23:36:41 +0000
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