ABSTRACT
No economic historian should be arrogant enough to put pen to paper about the greatest literary figure in eighteenth-century England. Moreover, literary scholars, without much help from historians, have already found out virtually every fact which can possibly be known about one of the most explored persons in that century. Compared with what we know in detail about Dr Johnson, such familiar figures of political and economic history as Chatham or James Watt fade into obscure silhouettes. [ 1 ] There can be no new primary sources which have not been exhaustively explored already. Recorded facts alone may be sifted into a different pattern. This is, perhaps, what Johnson meant when he said that, in writing history, ‘all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent’. But he was never the one to condemn honest toil and he also commented, in another place, that ‘the writer is not wholly useless who merely diversifies the surface of knowledge and calls us back to a second view’.[ 2 ] Attempting to do just this, by looking at Johnson through the eyes of an economic historian, is to see a side of him which has been very much ignored. [ 3 ] Most historians have ignored him completely save as a source for the occasional convenient quotation. Until very recently English scholars also turned away from this aspect of his life. In particular, the attitudes of literary critics seem largely to have followed that of Boswell who 296was not particularly curious about this side of the life of his idol and did not record it at all fully. Yet it can be argued that Johnson’s interest in the practical business of the world illuminates many of his attitudes as a writer and as a person. The devastating sanity of Johnson’s comments, his attacks on cant in any form, and his talents in being one of the most perceptive reporters of the details of life in eighteenth-century England all owe not a little to his involvement with and his passion for the business of the world.
