A Biographical Sketch of Dr Samuel Johnson was written by Thomas Tyers for The Gentleman's Magazine's December 1784 issue. The work was written immediately after the death of Samuel Johnson and is the first postmortem biographical work on the author. The first full length biography was written by John Hawkins and titled Life of Samuel Johnson.
Read more about A Biographical Sketch Of Dr Samuel Johnson: Background, Biography, Critical Response
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“I told him that Goldsmith had said,... “As I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my coat from the taylor, so I take my religion from the priest.” I regretted this loose way of talking. JOHNSON. Sir, he knows nothing; he has made up his mind about nothing.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Biography, in its purer form, confined to the ended lives of the true and brave, may be held the fairest meed of human virtue—one given and received in entire disinterestedness—since neither can the biographer hope for acknowledgment from the subject, not the subject at all avail himself of the biographical distinction conferred.”
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“We criticize a man or a book most sharply when we sketch out their ideal.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Capt. Rev. Samuel Clayton: What good did that do ya?
Ethan Edwards: By what you preach none. By what that Comanch believes, ain’t got no eyes he can’t enter the spirit land. Has to wander forever between the winds.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)