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Person and Character. Style. Junius.

EARLY LIFE AND CAREER.

Doctor Samuel Johnson was poet, dramatist, essayist, lexicographer,
dogmatist, and critic, and, in this array of professional characters,
played so distinguished a part in his day that he was long regarded as a
prodigy in English literature. His influence has waned since his
personality has grown dim, and his learning been superseded or
overshadowed; but he still remains, and must always remain, the most
prominent literary figure of his age; and this is in no small measure due
to his good fortune in having such a champion and biographer as James
Boswell. Johnson's Life by Boswell is without a rival among biographies:
in the words of Macaulay: "Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic
poets; Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists;
Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is
the first of biographers;" and Burke has said that Johnson appears far
greater in Boswell's book than in his own.


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