ABSTRACT
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), who at the age of fifty-five became Doctor of Laws, and was thereafter known as “Doctor,” was doubtless the most magisterial among the conservatives of the later eighteenth century.1 His very great achievement was two-fold: that of writer and that of conversationalist. One might add a third function: being the subject of the greatest biography ever written, that by James Boswell. Largely through Boswell’s picturesque efforts Johnson still lives, and through his own gifts in conversation as well as through Boswell’s gifts in retailing small anecdotes, he lives chiefly as a psychological eccentric-which he certainly was. In thinking of him, however, as representative of his period and in some sense of his race, we must not forget to conceive of him as a man of typical mind.
