The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Johnson, by James Boswell

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Title: Life of Johnson
Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood

Author: James Boswell

Editor: Charles Grosvenor Osgood

Release Date: May 12, 2006 [EBook #1564]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHNSON ***

Produced by Donald Lainson

BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON

By James Boswell

Abridged and edited, with an introduction

by Charles Grosvenor Osgood

Professor of English at Princeton University

Preface

In making this abridgement of Boswell's Life of Johnson I have omitted
most of Boswell's criticisms, comments, and notes, all of Johnson's
opinions in legal cases, most of the letters, and parts of the
conversation dealing with matters which were of greater importance in
Boswell's day than now. I have kept in mind an old habit, common enough,
I dare say, among its devotees, of opening the book of random, and
reading wherever the eye falls upon a passage of especial interest. All
such passages, I hope, have been retained, and enough of the whole book
to illustrate all the phases of Johnson's mind and of his time which
Boswell observed.

Loyal Johnsonians may look upon such a book with a measure of scorn. I
could not have made it, had I not believed that it would be the means
of drawing new readers to Boswell, and eventually of finding for them
in the complete work what many have already found--days and years of
growing enlightenment and happy companionship, and an innocent refuge
from the cares and perturbations of life.

Princeton, June 28, 1917.

INTRODUCTION

Phillips Brooks once told the boys at Exeter that in reading biography
three men meet one another in close intimacy--the subject of the
biography, the author, and the reader. Of the three the most interesting
is, of course, the man about whom the book is written. The most
privileged is the reader, who is thus allowed to live familiarly with an
eminent man. Least regarded of the three is the author. It is his part
to introduce the others, and to develop between them an acquaintance,
perhaps a