SAMUEL JOHNSON AUTHOR OF THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY : PART 2

The influence Jonathan Swift had at Trinity College,Dublin was then sought, when Lord Gower asked a friend of Swift, to plead with him to use that influence,to try to obtain a Masters Degree for Johnson from Dublin, in the hope that this would then justify an MA from Oxford.The plea was turned down however,for Swift refused to act on Johnson's behalf.

The next few years were a desperate time of poverty for Johnson.He stopped living with Tetty through guilt at living off her money.

It was in 1746,that a group of publishers asked Johnson to create a dictionary of the English Language.To this he agreed and a contract was signed on 18 June 1746 for 1,500 guineas.

Literacy was improving quite rapidly and with newspapers and magazines becoming available at a reasonable price, the print media was expanding quite rapidly as a consequence.It was therefore decided, that standard spelling and the meaning of words were required by the various publishers and printing companies.

So began "The Dictionary "which according to Bate " easily ranks as one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship,probably the greatest ever performed by one individual who laboured under anything like the disadvantages in a comparable length of time."

Johnson claimed that he could finish the project in three years.Although he did not achieve this, he did manage to complete it in nine.A remarkable achievement, by any stretch of the imagination,but even much more so, when one considers it took The Academie Francais, forty years using forty scholars to complete their dictionary.

The Dictionary was finally published in1756 the Title Page acknowledging that Oxford University had awarded Johnson a Master of Arts Degree in anticipation of his work.

An important innovation was to illustrate the meanings of his words by literary quotations,the authors most frequently used in the book are Shakespeare,Milton and Dryden.

The Dictionary did not make any profit for many years after it was finished and Johnson received no further money from the sales after his cotract to deliver the book had been fulfilled.

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary was not the first nor was it unique.It was the most commonly used however for the next one hundred and fifty years until the Oxford English Dictionary made its appearance in 1928.

Samuel Johnson, we are told was grief stricken when he wrote a letter to his friend Taylor, informing him of the death of his wife Tetty,which according to Taylor "expressed grief in the strongest manner he had ever read"

In 1758, he met and befriended the painter Joshua Reynolds and in 1763, the 22 year old James Boswell (who was later to become his biographer and close friend) in the bookshop of Johnson's friend,Tom Davies.It was around this time that Johnson formed the club,(although many people reserve that distinction for Joshua Reynolds) a social group made up of his friends,which now included,Reynolds,Boswell.Edmund Burke,Oliver Goldsmith and some others.Later the group would include Edward Smith and Adam Gibbon.

By this time King George III had become a great admirer of Johnson and it was in 1763 that he awarded Johnson, an annual pension of £300, which although not making him wealthy, did however allow him a much more comfortable existance for the remainder of his life.

In 1765 Arthur Murphy,another friend of Johnson's, introduced him to the brewer Henry Thrale and his wife Hester.

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