Samuel Johnson:传记、成就与不朽的遗产

Johnson was a devout Anglican Christian and a committed Tory. Although tall and robust, he was deaf in one ear and blind in one eye. For most of his life he made regular and uncontrolled gestures and tics that disconcerted some upon meeting him. Boswell and other biographers documented Johnson's behaviour and mannerisms in such detail that they have informed a posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome, a condition neither defined nor manageable in the 18th century. After several illnesses, and extended periods of mental struggle and loneliness, Johnson died on the evening of 13 December 1784, aged 75; he is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Johnson became a celebrity in his later life, "the acknowledged Head of Literature in this kingdom". Following his death, he was increasingly recognised as having had a major and lasting effect on the practice of literary criticism—it was even claimed that he was the one truly great critic of English literature. A prevailing mode of literary theory in the 20th century (one focused upon the language used by literature) drew heavily upon his work, and he likewise had a lasting impact on the forms, research and writing of biography. Johnson's Dictionary had and continues to have far-reaching effects on Modern English—this was an early, major, and widely respected, dictionary of English: it was pre-eminent, at least until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary some 150 years later. His life was also a story worth telling: Boswell's 1791 biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LLD, was selected by fellow Johnson-biographer Walter Jackson Bate as "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature".