Big Johnson and the Legendary But

A Brief Bio of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

Dr. Samuel Johnson, by Joshua Reynolds (Wikipedia)

Dr. Samuel Johnson, the esteemed writer, critic, and lexicographer of the 1800s would hate me. Well, I like to think that we would get along pretty well, but he would certainly despise my writing. I'm partial to subtle puns, rhymes and alliterations, and circumlocution. Johnson didn't care for puns very much at all, and famously criticised writers who used a slew of words when one would do. He's one of the few, and first, to lay criticism on Shakespeare. He's famous for his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), in which he's compiled definitions of words based on how they were used previously and contemporarily. His famous collection of essays and opinions features what literati today refer to as The Johnson "But" or "Yet." Dr. Johnson frequently used these conjunctions to spin his arguments, giving an objective, two-sided view of the topic at hand. An excellent example, and darned-good read in general, is his collection of essays, The Rambler, which was published every Tuesday and Sunday from 1750 - 1752. Totally 208 short papers, the series covers, criticises, then defends everything from whores to procrastination. Check out, too, The Adventurer, a sister series based off Dr. Johnson's travels through Britain with Scottish author and contemporary, James Boswell. Like a good Englishmen, he drank good liquor. His greatest fear was poverty and, as he approached it, death. Apposite to his future, he was born above his father's bookstore in Lichfield, England. Today is his birthday.