• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

p. 430, 1775

… in this rhapsody. [He seemed to me instead of a dexterous Champion to be a furious Bull turned loose to trample down and toss and gore the Colonists and all their friends.]

That this…

p. 436, 27 March 1775

… variety of them.’

[I half persuaded him to go with me ↑ after the Play ↑ to sup at Beauclerk’s. He went a part of the way. But suddenly stopped short and took a resolution to go home. He said with a placid look ‘But I don’t love Beauclerk the less.’ Such little circumstances may to some appear too slight ∫ may by some be thought too small. But I draw the portrait of Johnson in the style of a flemish painter. I am not satisfied with hitting the large features. I must be exact as to every line in his countenance every hair, every mole. But I am chiefly anxious not to omit any trait however slight that evinces ∫ illustrates the philanthropy of his disposition which has been so grossly misunderstood. There was an affectionate caveat in his ‘But I don’t love Beauclerk the less’ which indicated a tenderness more than common.]

At Mr. Beauclerk’s…

p. 459, 18 April 1775

… one wild beast or many?’ [But let me now observe that happily we are not under a necessity of being under either one or the other ∫ there is not the necessity for our having either one or the other. In our noble constitution as Blackstone has ably illustrated it, there is absolute power neither in one nor in many fallible men ∫ no doubt but it is lodged not in one nor in many fallible beings. It is inherent in the law of the Land.]

Johnson praised…

Index of Subjects

abbreviating names, S.J.’s habit of 54, 59, 190, 191, 398, 914

abjuration, oath of 434, n. a

abridgements, defended by S.J. 11, 82, 976

abroad, advice to people going 946

abruptness, in poetry 214

absolute princes 459 abstemious, S.J., not ‘temperate’ 246, 804

absurdities, delineating 771

abuse, coarse and refined 928

‘Acade´mie Franc¸ais’ 106, 162

Academy, the Royal, see Royal Academy

‘Accademia della Crusca’ 162, 234

‘accommodate’ 783

account-keeping 862

accuracy 375, 441, 771, 964; see also under Index of Persons, Boswell II

achievement and non-achievement 328

Achilles, shield of 780

‘acid’ 455

acquaintance 520, 862, 972

acting 896–7

action in speaking 178–9, 372

actors, see players

Adamites 395

addresses to the throne in 1784 167, 909

admiration 454

adoption, ancient mode of 138

‘adscititious’ 116–17

adultery 291, 714, 742

Advent-Sunday 416

Adventure, the 339

adversaries, see antagonists advisers, the common deficiency of 720

advocates, see lawyers

‘Ægri Ephemeris’ 976

affairs, managing one’s 812

affectation 247, 603, 664–5, 777, 803; see also singularity

affection 311, 733, 879

afforestation 574, 634–5

age: old, see old age; present 444, 521, 646, 665, 923

air, new kinds of 893

air-bath, Monboddo’s 613

alchymy 462–3

‘alias’ 883

Almack’s Club 531

almanac 457

‘almost nothing’ 503 n. a

alms-giving, see charity

ambassador, Russian 745

ambition 539

America, American Colonies and Americans, see Index of Places

amusements 350, 938

ancestry 342, 400

ancient and modern writers compared 704

ancient times worse than modern 883

anecdotes 266

‘anfractuosity’, ‘anfractuousness’ 765

animals 290, 393, 545; see also dogs; Index of Persons, Johnson I: cats

animus irritandi 835

annihilation 605, 683

anonymous writings 727

antagonists 501

‘Antigallican’, popular epithet 172

antimosaical remark 514

antiquarian 674, 703–4

Apelles’ Venus 820

Apollo Press 584

apologies, ‘seldom of any use’ 262

apostolical ordination 313

apparitions, see ghosts

applause 780

apple dumplings 329

application 812

apprehensions, see Index of Persons, Boswell II: imagination

April fool 578

Arabic 777

archbishop 872

arches, semicircular and elliptical 187

architecture 13, 148, 499; see also Index of Persons, Others: Chambers, Sir William

Argonauts 241

arguing 524–5

argument 283, 518, 519, 919

Argyll, Synod of 594;