title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: At the turn of the 20th century, Marconi began investigating a means to signal across the Atlantic to compete with the transatlantic telegraph cables. Marconi established a wireless transmitting station at Marconi House, Rosslare Strand, County Wexford, in 1901 to act as a link between Poldhu in Cornwall, England, and Clifden in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland. He soon made the announcement that the message was received at Signal Hill in St. John's, Newfoundland (now part of Canada), on 12 December 1901, using a kite-supported antenna for reception—signals transmitted by the company's new high-power station at Poldhu, Cornwall. The distance between the two points was about . It was heralded as a great scientific advance, yet there also was—and continues to be—considerable scepticism about this claim. The exact wavelength used is not known, but it is fairly reliably determined to have been in the neighbourhood of 350 meters (frequency ≈ 850 kHz). The tests took place at a time of day during which the entire transatlantic path was in daylight. It is now known (although Marconi did not know then) that this was the worst possible choice. At this medium wavelength, long-distance transmission in the daytime is not possible because of heavy absorption of the skywave in the ionosphere. It was not a blind test; Marconi knew in advance to listen for a repetitive signal of three clicks, signifying the Morse code letter "S". The clicks were reported to have been heard faintly and sporadically. There was no independent confirmation of the reported reception, and the transmissions were difficult to distinguish from atmospheric noise. A detailed technical review of Marconi's early transatlantic work appears in John S. Belrose's work of 1995. The Poldhu transmitter was a two-stage circuit.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: Feeling challenged by sceptics, Marconi prepared a better organised and documented test. In February 1902, the SS "Philadelphia" sailed west from Great Britain with Marconi aboard, carefully recording signals sent daily from the Poldhu station. The test results produced coherer-tape reception up to , and audio reception up to . The maximum distances were achieved at night, and these tests were the first to show that radio signals for medium wave and longwave transmissions travel much farther at night than in the day. During the daytime, signals had been received up to only about , less than half of the distance claimed earlier at Newfoundland, where the transmissions had also taken place during the day. Because of this, Marconi had not fully confirmed the Newfoundland claims, although he did prove that radio signals could be sent for hundreds of kilometres (miles), despite some scientists' belief that they were limited essentially to line-of-sight distances.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: On 17 December 1902, a transmission from the Marconi station in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, became the world's first radio message to cross the Atlantic from North America. In 1901, Marconi built a station near South Wellfleet, Massachusetts, that sent a message of greetings on 18 January 1903 from United States President Theodore Roosevelt to King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. However, consistent transatlantic signalling was difficult to establish.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: Marconi began to build high-powered stations on both sides of the Atlantic to communicate with ships at sea, in competition with other inventors. In 1904, he established a commercial service to transmit nightly news summaries to subscribing ships, which could incorporate them into their on-board newspapers. A regular transatlantic radio-telegraph service was finally begun on 17 October 1907 between Clifden, Ireland, and Glace Bay, but even after this the company struggled for many years to provide reliable communication to others.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: The role played by Marconi Co. wireless in maritime rescues raised public awareness of the value of radio and brought fame to Marconi, particularly the sinking of the RMS "Titanic" on 15 April 1912 and the RMS "Lusitania" on 7 May 1915.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: RMS "Titanic" radio operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride were not employed by the White Star Line but by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company. After the sinking of the ocean liner on 15 April 1912, survivors were rescued by the RMS "Carpathia" of the Cunard Line. "Carpathia" took a total of 17 minutes to both receive and decode the SOS signal sent by "Titanic". There was a distance of 58 miles between the two ships. When "Carpathia" docked in New York, Marconi went aboard with a reporter from "The New York Times" to talk with Bride, the surviving operator. After this incident, Marconi gained popularity and became more recognised for his contributions to the field of radio and wireless technology.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: On 18 June 1912, Marconi gave evidence to the Court of Inquiry into the loss of "Titanic" regarding the marine telegraphy's functions and the procedures for emergencies at sea. Britain's Postmaster-General summed up, referring to the "Titanic" disaster: "Those who have been saved, have been saved through one man, Mr. Marconi ... and his marvellous invention." Marconi was offered free passage on "Titanic" before she sank, but had taken "Lusitania" three days earlier. As his daughter Degna later explained, he had paperwork to do and preferred the public stenographer aboard that vessel.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: Over the years, the Marconi companies gained a reputation for being technically conservative, in particular by continuing to use inefficient spark-transmitter technology, which could be used only for radio-telegraph operations, long after it was apparent that the future of radio communication lay with continuous-wave transmissions which were more efficient and could be used for audio transmissions. Somewhat belatedly, the company did begin significant work with continuous-wave equipment beginning in 1915, after the introduction of the oscillating vacuum tube (valve). The New Street Works factory in Chelmsford was the location for the first entertainment radio broadcasts in the United Kingdom in 1920, employing a vacuum tube transmitter and featuring Dame Nellie Melba. In 1922, regular entertainment broadcasts commenced from the Marconi Research Centre at Great Baddow, forming the prelude to the BBC, and he spoke of the close association of aviation and wireless telephony in that same year at a private gathering with Florence Tyzack Parbury, and even spoke of interplanetary wireless communication. In 1924, the Marconi Company co-established the Unione Radiofonica Italiana (now RAI).


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: In 1914, Marconi was made a Senator in the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy and appointed Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in the UK. During World War I, Italy joined the Allied side of the conflict, and Marconi was placed in charge of the Italian military's radio service. He attained the rank of lieutenant in the Italian Royal Army and of commander in the "Regia Marina". In 1929, he was made a marquess by King Victor Emmanuel III.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: While helping to develop microwave technology, the "Marchese" Marconi suffered nine heart attacks in the span of three years preceding his death. Marconi died in Rome on 20 July 1937 at age 63, following the ninth, fatal, heart attack, and Italy held a state funeral for him. As a tribute, shops on the street where he lived were "Closed for national mourning". In addition, at 6 pm the next day, the time designated for the funeral, transmitters around the world observed two minutes of silence in his honour. The British Post Office also sent a message requesting that all broadcasting ships honour Marconi with two minutes of broadcasting silence. His remains are housed in the Mausoleum of Guglielmo Marconi in the grounds of Villa Griffone at Sasso Marconi, Emilia-Romagna, which assumed that name in his honour in 1938.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: In 1943, Marconi's elegant sailing yacht, the "Elettra", was commandeered and refitted as a warship by the German Navy. She was sunk by the RAF on 22 January 1944. After the war, the Italian Government tried to retrieve the wreckage, to rebuild the boat, and the wreckage was removed to Italy. Eventually, the idea was abandoned, and the wreckage was cut into pieces which were distributed amongst Italian museums.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: In 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision on Marconi's radio patents restoring some of the prior patents of Oliver Lodge, John Stone Stone, and Nikola Tesla. The decision was not about Marconi's original radio patents and the court declared that their decision had no bearing on Marconi's claim as the first to achieve radio transmission, just that since Marconi's claim to certain patents was questionable, he could not claim infringement on those same patents. There are claims the high court was trying to nullify a World War I claim against the United States government by the Marconi Company via simply restoring the non-Marconi prior patent.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: Marconi was a friend of Charles van Raalte and his wife Florence, the owners of Brownsea Island; and of Margherita, their daughter, and in 1904 he met her Irish friend, The Hon. Beatrice O'Brien (1882–1976), a daughter of The 14th Baron Inchiquin. On 16 March 1905, Beatrice O'Brien and Marconi were married, and spent their honeymoon on Brownsea Island. They had three daughters, Degna (1908–1998), Gioia (1916–1996), and Lucia (born and died 1906), and a son, Giulio, 2nd "Marchese" Marconi (1910–1971). In 1913, the Marconi family returned to Italy and became part of Rome society. Beatrice served as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elena. At Marconi's request, his marriage to Beatrice was annulled on 27 April 1927, so he could remarry. Marconi and Beatrice had divorced on 12 February 1924 in the free city of Fiume (Rijeka).


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: On 12 June 1927 Marconi went on to marry Maria Cristina Bezzi-Scali (2 April 1900 – 15 July 1994), the only daughter of Francesco, Count Bezzi-Scali. To do this he had to be confirmed in the Catholic faith and became a devout member of the Church. He was baptised Catholic but had been brought up as a member of the Anglican Church. On 12 June 1927, Marconi married Maria Cristina in a civil service, with a religious ceremony performed on 15 June. Marconi was 53 years old and Maria Cristina was 26. They had one daughter, Maria Elettra Elena Anna (born 1930), who married Prince Carlo Giovannelli (1942–2016) in 1966; they later divorced. For unexplained reasons, Marconi left his entire fortune to his second wife and their only child, and nothing to the children of his first marriage.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: Marconi wanted to personally introduce in 1931 the first radio broadcast of a Pope, Pius XI, and did announce at the microphone: "With the help of God, who places so many mysterious forces of nature at man's disposal, I have been able to prepare this instrument which will give to the faithful of the entire world the joy of listening to the voice of the Holy Father".


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: Marconi joined the National Fascist Party in 1923. In 1930, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini appointed him President of the Royal Academy of Italy, which made Marconi a member of the Fascist Grand Council. Marconi was an apologist for fascist ideology and actions such as the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: In his lecture he stated: "I reclaim the honour of being the first fascist in the field of radiotelegraphy, the first who acknowledged the utility of joining the electric rays in a bundle, as Mussolini was the first in the political field who acknowledged the necessity of merging all the healthy energies of the country into a bundle, for the greater greatness of Italy".


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: In 2002 researcher Annalisa Capristo found documents in the archives of Rome which showed that during his time as the President of the Royal Academy of Italy, Marconi had marked by hand Jewish applicants' records with an "E", where in the Italian language word for Jew is "Ebreo". Not one Jew was allowed to join during Marconi's tenure as President from 1930, three years before Adolf Hitler took power in Germany and eight years before Benito Mussolini's race laws brought his regime's anti-semitism into the open. Following publication of Capristo's article "The Exclusion of Jews From the Academy of Italy" published in the Israel Monthly Review, historians were divided over whether the discrimination was the personal initiative of a scientist who considered Jews inferior or whether it was the action of a man too weak to oppose the regime's edicts.


title: Guglielmo Marconi

text: The asteroid 1332 Marconia is named in his honour. A large crater on the far side of the moon is also named after him.


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: Jenifer Jeanette Lewis (born January 25, 1957) is an American actress and singer. She began her career appearing in Broadway musicals and worked as a back-up singer for Bette Midler before appearing in films "Beaches" (1988) and "Sister Act" (1992). Lewis is known for playing roles of mothers in the films "What's Love Got to Do With It" (1993), "Poetic Justice" (1993), "The Preacher's Wife" (1996), "The Brothers" (2001), "The Cookout" (2004), "Think Like a Man" (2012) and in the sequel "Think Like a Man Too" (2014), "Baggage Claim" (2013) and "The Wedding Ringer" (2015), as well as in "The Temptations" miniseries (1998).


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: Lewis is known unofficially as "The Mother of Black Hollywood" (also the name of her memoir) given her frequent matriarchal film and television roles. She also provided the voice for Mama Odie in Disney's animated feature "The Princess and the Frog" (2009), and Flo in Pixar's "Cars" series. Additional film roles include "Dead Presidents" (1995), "Cast Away" (2000) and "Hereafter" (2010).


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: On television, Lewis starred as Lana Hawkins in the Lifetime medical drama "Strong Medicine" from 2000 to 2006. She also had recurring roles on sitcoms "A Different World", "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and "Girlfriends". In 2014, Lewis began starring as Ruby Johnson in the ABC comedy series "Black-ish", for which she received two Critics' Choice Television Award nominations.


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: Lewis was born in Kinloch, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, to a nurse's aide mother, Dorothy, and a factory worker father. Lewis is the youngest of seven children. She sang in her church choir at the age of five. She attended Kinloch High School and then college at Webster University in Webster Groves, Missouri. She received an honorary degree from Webster in 2015. After college, Lewis moved to New York.


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: Soon after she arrived in New York City, Lewis debuted on Broadway in a small role in "Eubie" (1979), the musical based on the work of Eubie Blake. She next landed the role of Effie White in the workshop of the Michael Bennett–directed musical "Dreamgirls", but when the show moved to Broadway, Bennett chose Jennifer Holliday for the role.


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: Lewis accepted a position as a Harlette, a back-up singer for Bette Midler which led to Lewis' first TV appearances on Midler's HBO specials. She acquired her first screen role as a result, appearing as a singer in the Otto Titsling production number in the Bette Midler vehicle "Beaches" (1988). At the same time, Lewis was developing her nightclub act, "The Diva Is Dismissed", an autobiographical comedy and music show in New York City cabarets. She performed the show off-Broadway at the Public Theater.


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: After Lewis relocated to Los Angeles, she began appearing in television sitcoms, including "Murphy Brown", "Dream On", "In Living Color", "Roc", "Hangin' with Mr. Cooper" and "Friends". From 1992 to 1993, she played Dean Davenport in the sixth and final season of the NBC sitcom "A Different World". She also had a recurring role as Will Smith's Aunt Helen in the NBC sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" from 1991 to 1996. As a series regular, Lewis starred alongside Patricia Wettig in her short-lived legal drama "Courthouse" in 1995, playing Judge Rosetta Reide, the first main African American lesbian character on television.


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: In 1992, Lewis was cast as one of the back-up singers to Whoopi Goldberg in the comedy film "Sister Act". The following year, Lewis played the mother of Tupac Shakur's character in the film "Poetic Justice", and as Zelma Bullock, Tina Turner's mother, in the biopic "What's Love Got to Do With It" starring Angela Bassett. Lewis has stated that she never auditioned to play Turner, but would have been thrilled to play the iconic singer. Lewis is only one year older than Bassett. For her performance, she received her first NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture nomination. In 1994, she followed with other comedic supporting roles, including Mrs. Coleman, the Unemployment Office lady, in "Renaissance Man" and as Whoopi Goldberg's sister in "Corrina, Corrina". In 1995, she was cast in maternal roles to Kadeem Hardison in "Panther" and to Larenz Tate in "Dead Presidents".


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: In 1996, Lewis appeared as Theresa Randle's telephone sex line boss in the film "Girl 6". Later that year, she played Whitney Houston's character's mother in the film "The Preacher's Wife", for which she received her second NAACP Image Award nomination. She also had roles in "The Mighty" (1998), "The Temptations" miniseries (1998), "Mystery Men" (1999) and "Blast from the Past" (1999), and the leading role in the film "Jackie's Back" (1999).


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: In 2000, Lewis had a supporting role in the adventure drama film "Cast Away", directed by Robert Zemeckis. In the same year, she began starring as Lana Hawkins on the Lifetime television medical drama "Strong Medicine", for which she also performed the theme song. The show ended in February 2006. She also voiced Flo in Pixar's "Cars" franchise. She also had a recurring role as Veretta Childs (Toni's mother) in the UPN sitcom "Girlfriends". In film, she appeared as Morris Chestnut's mother in the romantic comedy "The Brothers" (2001). In 2006, she had a featured role as the wedding planner in Tyler Perry's "Madea's Family Reunion", and also appeared in Perry's comedy-drama "Meet the Browns" (2008) as Vera Brown. She also appeared in "Juwanna Mann" (2002), "The Cookout" (2004), "Nora's Hair Salon" (2004), "Dirty Laundry" (2006) and "Not Easily Broken" (2009).


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: On April 22, 2008, Lewis replaced Darlene Love as Motormouth Maybelle in Broadway's "Hairspray". On television, she guest-starred on "That's So Raven" and "Boston Legal". Lewis also had a number of voice acting roles, including Walt Disney Animation Studios's animated musical "The Princess and the Frog" (2009), for which she was nominated for the Annie Award for Voice Acting in a Feature Production.


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: In June 2010, Lewis told the "Jazz Joy and Roy" syndicated radio show: "I just did a production of "Hello Dolly" at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle and it had to be one of the greatest productions that I have ever done, because I got to just do a character, Dolly Levi, and it was just great." In 2012, Lewis began working with Shangela on the online reality show parody "Jenifer Lewis and Shangela", where she acts as herself alongside Shangela, a "drag queen living in her basement." She later appeared in Shangela's music video for "Werqin Girl (Professional)".


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: In 2010, Clint Eastwood cast Lewis in his fantasy film "Hereafter". The following year, she starred alongside Rosario Dawson and Tracee Ellis Ross in "Five", for which she received her third NAACP Image Award nomination. She also co-starred in the short-lived NBC series "The Playboy Club". She played Terrence J's overbearing mother in box-office hit "Think Like a Man" (2012) and its sequel "Think Like a Man Too" (2014). In 2013, she played Paula Patton's mother in the romantic comedy "Baggage Claim". In 2015, she starred in the romantic comedy "The Wedding Ringer".


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: In 2014, Lewis was cast as Ruby Johnson, Anthony Anderson's character's mother in the ABC comedy series "Black-ish". She was elevated to series regular status as of the second season. In 2016, she received Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Guest Performer in a Comedy Series nomination for her performance. She has also been featured in various TV commercials.


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: In 2017, she published a book about her life and career, entitled "The Mother of Black Hollywood", in which she shared her life experiences with Whoopi Goldberg, Loretta Devine, Chris Rock, Bette Midler, Rosie O'Donnell, Liza Minnelli, Whitney Houston and Aretha Franklin.


title: Jenifer Lewis

text: In 1990, Lewis was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She originally hid her diagnosis, as she felt ashamed, but eventually came to embrace it after 17 years of therapy and 10 years of medication. In a 2014 interview, she said: "You have to look in the mirror... and say—before you can go or grow into anything—you have to say you love yourself."


title: The Seventh Seal

text: The Seventh Seal () is a 1957 Swedish historical fantasy film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Set in Sweden during the Black Death, it tells of the journey of a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) and a game of chess he plays with the personification of Death (Bengt Ekerot), who has come to take his life. Bergman developed the film from his own play "Wood Painting". The title refers to a passage from the Book of Revelation, used both at the very start of the film, and again towards the end, beginning with the words "And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour". Here, the motif of silence refers to the "silence of God", which is a major theme of the film.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: "The Seventh Seal" is considered a classic of world cinema, as well as one of the greatest movies of all time. It established Bergman as a world-renowned director, containing scenes which have become iconic through homages, critical analysis, and parodies.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Disillusioned knight Antonius Block and his cynical squire Jöns return from the Crusades to find the country ravaged by the plague. The knight encounters Death, whom he challenges to a chess match, believing he can survive as long as the game continues. The game they start continues throughout the story.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: The knight and his squire pass a caravan of actors: Jof and his wife Mia, with their infant son Mikael and actor-manager Jonas Skat. Waking early, Jof has a vision of Mary leading the infant Jesus, which he relates to a smilingly-disbelieving Mia.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Block and Jöns visit a church where a fresco of the "Danse Macabre" is being painted, and the squire chides the artist for colluding in the ideological fervor that led to the crusade. In the confessional, Block tells the priest he wants to perform "one meaningful deed" after what he now sees as a pointless life. Upon revealing to him the chess tactic that will save his life, the knight discovers that it is actually Death with whom he has been speaking. Leaving the church, Block speaks to a young woman condemned to be burned at the stake for consorting with the devil. He believes she will tell him about life beyond death, only to find that she is insane.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: In a deserted village, Jöns saves a mute servant girl from being raped by Raval, a theologian who ten years earlier persuaded the knight to join the Crusades and is now a thief. Jöns vows to destroy his face if they meet again. Jöns kidnaps the servant girl and they go into town, where the actors are performing. There, Skat is enticed away for a tryst by Lisa, wife of the blacksmith Plog. The stage show is interrupted by a procession of flagellants led by a preacher who harangues the townspeople.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: At the town's inn, Raval manipulates Plog and other customers into intimidating Jof. The bullying is broken up by Jöns, who slashes Raval's face. The knight and squire are joined by Jof's family and a repentant Plog. Block enjoys a picnic of milk and wild strawberries that Mia has gathered and declares, "I'll carry this memory between my hands as if it were a bowl filled to the brim with fresh milk... And it will be an adequate sign — it will be enough for me."


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Block now invites Plog and the actors to shelter from the plague in his castle. When they encounter Skat and Lisa in the forest, she returns to Plog, while Skat fakes a remorseful suicide. As the group moves on, Skat climbs a tree to spend the night, but Death appears beneath and cuts down the tree.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Meeting the condemned woman being drawn to execution, Block asks her to summon Satan so he can question him about God. The girl claims she has done so, but the knight only sees her terror and gives her herbs to take away her pain as she is placed on the pyre.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: They encounter Raval, stricken by the plague. Jöns stops the servant girl from uselessly bringing him water, and Raval dies alone. Jof tells his wife that he can see the knight playing chess with Death and decides to flee with his family, while Block knowingly keeps Death occupied.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: As Death states "No one escapes me", Block knocks the chess pieces over but Death restores them to their place. On the next move, Death wins the game and announces that when they meet again, it will be the last time for all. Death then asks Block if he achieved the "meaningful deed" he wished to accomplish and the knight replies that he has.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Block is reunited with his wife and the party shares a final supper, interrupted by Death's arrival. The rest of the party then introduce themselves, and the mute servant girl greets him with "It is finished."


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Jof and his family have sheltered in their caravan from a storm, which he interprets as the Angel of Death passing by. In the morning, Jof's second sight allows him to see the knight and his companions being led away over the hillside in a wild Dance of Death.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Ingmar Bergman originally wrote the play "Trämålning" ("Wood Painting") in 1953 / 1954 for the acting students of Malmö City Theatre. Its first public performance, which he directed, was on radio in 1954. He also directed it on stage in Malmö the next spring, and in the autumn it was staged in Stockholm, directed by Bengt Ekerot, who would later play the character Death in the film version.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: In his autobiography, "The Magic Lantern", Bergman wrote that ""Wood Painting" gradually became "The Seventh Seal", an uneven film which lies close to my heart, because it was made under difficult circumstances in a surge of vitality and delight." The script for "The Seventh Seal" was commenced while Bergman was in the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm recovering from a stomach complaint. It was at first rejected by Carl-Anders Dymling, head of Svensk Filmindustri and Bergman was given the go-ahead for the project from Carl-Anders Dymling only after the success at Cannes of "Smiles of a Summer Night". Bergman rewrote the script five times and was given a schedule of only thirty-five days and a budget of $150,000. It was to be the seventeenth film he had directed.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: All scenes except two were shot in or around the Filmstaden studios in Solna. The exceptions were the famous opening scene with Death and the Knight playing chess by the sea, and the ending with the dance of death, which were both shot at Hovs Hallar, a rocky, precipitous beach area in north-western Scania.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: In the "Magic Lantern" autobiography Bergman writes of the film's iconic penultimate shot: "The image of the Dance of Death beneath the dark cloud was achieved at hectic speed because most of the actors had finished for the day. Assistants, electricians, and a make-up man and about two summer visitors, who never knew what it was all about, had to dress up in the costumes of those condemned to death. A camera with no sound was set up and the picture shot before the cloud dissolved."


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Medieval Sweden as portrayed in this movie includes creative anachronisms. The flagellant movement was foreign to Sweden, and large-scale witch persecutions only began in the 15th century. In addition, the main period of the Crusades is well before this era; they took place in a more optimistic period.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: With regard to the relevancy of historical accuracy to a film that is heavily metaphorical and allegorical, John Aberth, writing in "A Knight at the Movies", holds


title: The Seventh Seal

text: the film only partially succeeds in conveying the period atmosphere and thought world of the fourteenth century. Bergman would probably counter that it was never his intention to make an historical or period film. As it was written in a program note that accompanied the movie's premier "It is a modern poem presented with medieval material that has been very freely handled... The script in particular—embodies a mid-twentieth century existentialist angst... Still, to be fair to Bergman, one must allow him his artistic license, and the script's modernisms may be justified as giving the movie's medieval theme a compelling and urgent contemporary relevance... Yet the film succeeds to a large degree because it is set in the Middle Ages, a time that can seem both very remote and very immediate to us living in the modern world... Ultimately "The Seventh Seal" should be judged as a historical film by how well it combines the medieval and the modern."


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Similarly defending it as an allegory, Aleksander Kwiatkowski in the book "Swedish Film Classics", writes


title: The Seventh Seal

text: The international response to the film which among other awards won the jury's special prize at Cannes in 1957 reconfirmed the author's high rank and proved that "The Seventh Seal" regardless of its degree of accuracy in reproducing medieval scenery may be considered as a universal, timeless allegory.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Much of the film's imagery is derived from medieval art. For example, Bergman has stated that the image of a man playing chess with a skeletal Death was inspired by a medieval church painting from the 1480s in Täby kyrka, Täby, north of Stockholm, painted by Albertus Pictor.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Generally speaking, historians Johan Huizinga, Friedrich Heer and Barbara Tuchman have all argued that the late Middle Ages of the 14th century was a period of "doom and gloom" similar to what is reflected in this film, characterized by a feeling of pessimism, an increase in a penitential style of piety that was slightly masochistic, all aggravated by various disasters such as the Black Death, famine, the Hundred Years' War between France and England, and the Papal schism. This is sometimes called the crisis of the Late Middle Ages, and Tuchman regards the 14th century as "a distant mirror" of the 20th century in a way that echoes Bergman's sensibilities.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: The title refers to a passage about the end of the world from the Book of Revelation, used both at the very start of the film, and again towards the end, beginning with the words "And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour" (Revelation 8:1). Thus, in the confessional scene the knight states: "Is it so cruelly inconceivable to grasp God with the senses? Why should He hide himself in a mist of half-spoken promises and unseen miracles?...What is going to happen to those of us who want to believe but aren't able to?" Death, impersonating the confessional priest, refuses to reply. Similarly, later, as he eats the strawberries with the family of actors, Antonius Block states: "Faith is a torment – did you know that? It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call." Melvyn Bragg notes that the concept of the "Silence of God" in the face of evil, or the pleas of believers or would-be-believers, may be influenced by the punishments of silence meted out by Bergman's father, a chaplain in the State Lutheran Church. In Bergman's original radio play sometimes translated as "A Painting on Wood", the figure of Death in a Dance of Death is represented not by an actor, but by silence, "mere nothingness, mere absence...terrifying...the void."


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Some of the powerful influences on the film were Picasso's picture of the two acrobats, Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana", Strindberg's dramas "Folkungasagan" ("The Saga of the Folkung Kings") and "The Road to Damascus", the frescoes at Härkeberga church, and a painting by Albertus Pictor in Täby church. Just prior to shooting, Bergman directed for radio the play "Everyman" by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. By this time he had also directed plays by Shakespeare, Strindberg, Camus, Chesterton, Anouilh, Tennessee Williams, Pirandello, Lehár, Molière and Ostrovsky. The actors Bibi Andersson (with whom Bergman was in a relationship from 1955 to 1959) who played the juggler's wife Mia, and Max von Sydow, whose role as the knight was the first of many star parts he would bring to Bergman's films and whose rugged Nordic dignity became a vital resource within Bergman's "troupe" of key actors, both made a strong impact on the mood and style of the film.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Bergman grew up in a home infused with an intense Christianity, his father being a charismatic rector (this may have explained Bergman's adolescent infatuation with Hitler, which later deeply tormented him). As a six-year-old child, Bergman used to help the gardener carry corpses from the Royal Hospital Sophiahemmet (where his father was chaplain) to the mortuary. When as a boy he saw the film "Black Beauty", the fire scene excited him so much he stayed in bed for three days with a temperature. Despite living a Bohemian lifestyle in partial rebellion against his upbringing, Bergman often signed his scripts with the initials "S.D.G" ("Soli Deo Gloria") — "To God Alone the Glory" — just as J. S. Bach did at the end of every musical composition.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: "Like the gravedigger in "Hamlet", the Squire [...] treats death as a bitter and hopeless joke. Since we all play chess with death, and since we all must suffer through that hopeless joke, the only question about the game is how long it will last and how well we will play it. To play it well, to live, is to love and not to hate the body and the mortal as the Church urges in Bergman's metaphor."


title: The Seventh Seal

text: "[I]t is constructed like an argument. It is a story told as a sermon might be delivered: an allegory...each scene is at once so simple and so charged and layered that it catches us again and again...Somehow all of Bergman's own past, that of his father, that of his reading and doing and seeing, that of his Swedish culture, of his political burning and religious melancholy, poured into a series of pictures which carry that swell of contributions and contradictions so effortlessly that you could tell the story to a child, publish it as a storybook of photographs and yet know that the deepest questions of religion and the most mysterious revelation of simply being alive are both addressed."


title: The Seventh Seal

text: The Jesuit publication "America" identifies it as having begun "a series of seven films that explored the possibility of faith in a post-Holocaust, nuclear age". Likewise, film historians Thomas W. Bohn and Richard L. Stromgren identify this film as beginning "his cycle of films dealing with the conundrum of religious faith".


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Upon its original Swedish release, "The Seventh Seal" was met with a somewhat divided critical response; its cinematography was widely praised, while "Bergman the scriptwriter [was] lambasted." The film won the Nastro d'Argento for Best Non-Italian Film in 1961. Swedish journalist and critic Nils Beyer, writing for "Morgon-tidningen", compared it to Carl Theodor Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" and "Day of Wrath". While finding Dreyer's films to be superior, he still noted that "it isn't just any director that you feel like comparing to the old Danish master." He also praised the usage of the cast, in particular Max von Sydow, whose character he described as "a pale, serious Don Quixote character with a face as if sculpted in wood", and "Bibi Andersson, who appears as if painted in faded watercolours but still can emit small delicious glimpses of female warmth." Hanserik Hjertén for "Arbetaren" started his review by praising the cinematography, but soon went on to describe the film as "a horror film for children" and said that beyond the superficial, it is mostly reminiscent of Bergman's "sophomoric films from the 40s."


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Bergman's international reputation, on the other hand, was largely cemented by "The Seventh Seal". The film ranked 2nd on Cahiers du Cinéma's Top 10 Films of the Year List in 1958. Bosley Crowther had only positive things to say in his 1958 review for "The New York Times", and praised how the themes were elevated by the cinematography and performances: "the profundities of the ideas are lightened and made flexible by glowing pictorial presentation of action that is interesting and strong. Mr. Bergman uses his camera and actors for sharp, realistic effects." Film critic Pauline Kael called it "A magically powerful film."


title: The Seventh Seal

text: The film is now regarded as a masterpiece of cinema. "The Village Voice" ranked "The Seventh Seal" at number 33 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics. The film was included in ""The New York Times" Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made" in 2002. "Empire" magazine, in 2010, ranked it the eighth-greatest film of world cinema. In a poll held by the same magazine, it was voted 335th 'Greatest Movie of All Time' from a list of 500. In addition, on the 100th anniversary of cinema in 1995, the Vatican included "The Seventh Seal" in its list of its 45 "great films" for its thematic values. The film was included in film critic Roger Ebert's list of "The Great Movies" in 2000. "Entertainment Weekly" voted it at No. 45 on their list of "100 Greatest Movies of All Time". In 2007, the film was ranked at No. 13 by The Guardian's readers poll on the list of "40 greatest foreign films of all time". Indian film maker Adoor Gopalakrishnan praised the film saying "One can watch 'Seventh Seal' even without subtitles as it is most appealing to the eye." In January 2002, the film was voted at No. 82 on the list of the "Top 100 Essential Films of All Time" by the National Society of Film Critics. In 2012, the film ranked 93rd on critic's poll and 75th on director's poll in Sight & Sound magazine's 100 greatest films of all time list. In the earlier 2002 version of the list the film ranked 35th in critic's poll and 31st in director's poll. Also in 2012 it was voted one of the 25 best Swedish films of all time by a poll of 50 film critics and academics conducted by film magazine FLM. In 2018 the film was ranked 30th in BBC's list of The 100 greatest foreign language films. In 2021 the film was ranked at No. 43 on Time Out magazine's list of "The 100 best movies of all time".


title: The Seventh Seal

text: The film was selected as the Swedish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 30th Academy Awards, but was not nominated.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 93% based on 67 reviews, with an average rating of 9.20/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Narratively bold and visually striking, "The Seventh Seal" brought Ingmar Bergman to the world stage – and remains every bit as compelling today". On Metacritic, the film has a rating of 88/100 based on 15 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: The Seventh Seal

text: "The Seventh Seal" significantly helped Bergman in gaining his position as a world-class director. When the film won the Special Jury Prize at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, the attention generated by it (along with the previous year's "Smiles of a Summer Night") made Bergman and his stars Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson well known to the European film community, and the critics and readers of "Cahiers du Cinéma", among others, discovered him with this movie. Within five years of this, he had established himself as the first real auteur of Swedish cinema. With its images and reflections upon death and the meaning of life, "The Seventh Seal" had a symbolism that was "immediately apprehensible to people trained in literary culture who were just beginning to discover the 'art' of film, and it quickly became a staple of high school and college literature courses... Unlike Hollywood 'movies,' "The Seventh Seal" clearly was aware of elite artistic culture and thus was readily appreciated by intellectual audiences."


title: The Seventh Seal

text: The representation of Death as a white-faced man who wears a dark cape and plays chess with mortals has been a popular object of parody in other films and television.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: Several films and comedy sketches portray Death as playing games other than or in addition to chess. In the final scene of the 1968 film "De Düva" (mock Swedish for "The Dove"), a 15-minute pastiche of Bergman's work generally and his "Wild Strawberries" in particular, the protagonist plays badminton against Death, and wins when the droppings of a passing dove strike Death in the eye. The photography imitates throughout the style of Bergman's cinematographers Sven Nykvist and Gunnar Fischer.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: The film is referred to in several songs. The plot is recapitulated in Scott Walker's "The Seventh Seal" from his album "Scott 4". There is a passing reference in Bruce Cockburn's song "How I Spent My Fall Vacation", from his album "Humans", in which the song's narrative is bracketed by two young men watching the film in a cinema. On Iron Maiden's album "Dance of Death" (2003), the title track was inspired by the final scene of "The Seventh Seal" where, according to guitarist Janick Gers, "these figures on the horizon start doing a little jig, which is the dance of death."


title: The Seventh Seal

text: In 2016, composer João MacDowell premiered in New York City at Scandinavia House the music for the first act of "The Seventh Seal", a work in progress under contract with the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, sung in Swedish. The work was under production by the International Brazilian Opera (IBOC) as part of the celebrations for the Ingmar Bergman centenary in 2018.


title: The Seventh Seal

text: The posters for the opera with photography by Athena Azevedo and design by Toshiaki Ide and Hisa Ide, featuring dancer Eliana Carneiro, in a collaboration work by the International Brazilian Opera (IBOC) and IF Studio LLC, have won multiple prizes in the Graphis Inc. International Competition, including double Platinum in the Poster and Design categories.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709  – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history".


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, he attended Pembroke College, Oxford until lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher, he moved to London and began writing for "The Gentleman's Magazine". Early works include "Life of Mr Richard Savage", the poems "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes" and the play "Irene". After nine years' effort, Johnson's "A Dictionary of the English Language" appeared in 1755, and was acclaimed as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". Later work included essays, an annotated "The Plays of William Shakespeare", and the apologue "The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia". In 1763 he befriended James Boswell, with whom he travelled to Scotland, as Johnson described in "A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland". Near the end of his life came a massive, influential "Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets" of the 17th and 18th centuries.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: He was a devout Anglican, and a committed Tory. Tall and robust, he displayed gestures and tics that disconcerted some on meeting him. Boswell's "Life", along with other biographies, documented Johnson's behaviour and mannerisms in such detail that they have informed the posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome, a condition not defined or diagnosed in the 18th century. After several illnesses, he died on the evening of 13 December 1784 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: In his later life Johnson became a celebrity, and following his death he was increasingly seen to have had a lasting effect on literary criticism, even being claimed to be the one truly great critic of English literature. A prevailing mode of literary theory in the 20th century drew from his views, and he had a lasting impact on biography. Johnson's "Dictionary" had far-reaching effects on Modern English, and was pre-eminent until the arrival of the "Oxford English Dictionary" 150 years later. James Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson" was selected by Johnson biographer Walter Jackson Bate as "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature".


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Samuel Johnson was born on 18 September 1709, to Sarah (née Ford) and Michael Johnson, a bookseller. His mother was 40 when she gave birth to Johnson in the family home above his father's bookshop in Lichfield, Staffordshire. This was considered an unusually late pregnancy, so precautions were taken, and a man-midwife and surgeon of "great reputation" named George Hector was brought in to assist. The infant Johnson did not cry, and there were concerns for his health. His aunt exclaimed that "she would not have picked such a poor creature up in the street". The family feared that Johnson would not survive, and summoned the vicar of St Mary's to perform a baptism. Two godfathers were chosen, Samuel Swynfen, a physician and graduate of Pembroke College, Oxford, and Richard Wakefield, a lawyer, coroner and Lichfield town clerk.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson's health improved and he was put to wet-nurse with Joan Marklew. Some time later he contracted scrofula, known at the time as the "King's Evil" because it was thought royalty could cure it. Sir John Floyer, former physician to King Charles II, recommended that the young Johnson should receive the "royal touch", and he did so from Queen Anne on 30 March 1712. However, the ritual proved ineffective, and an operation was performed that left him with permanent scars across his face and body. Queen Anne gave Johnson an amulet on a chain he would wear the rest of his life.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: When Johnson was three, Nathaniel was born. According to Nathaniel, in a letter he wrote to Sarah, complained Johnson "would scarcely ever use me with common civility." With the birth of Johnson's brother their father was unable to pay the debts he had accrued over the years, and the family was no longer able to maintain its standard of living.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson displayed signs of great intelligence as a child, and his parents, to his later disgust, would show off his "newly acquired accomplishments". His education began at the age of three, and was provided by his mother, who had him memorise and recite passages from the "Book of Common Prayer". When Samuel turned four, he was sent to a nearby school, and, at the age of six he was sent to a retired shoemaker to continue his education. A year later Johnson went to Lichfield Grammar School, where he excelled in Latin. For his most personal poems, Johnson used Latin. During this time, Johnson started to exhibit the tics that would influence how people viewed him in his later years, and which formed the basis for a posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome. He excelled at his studies and was promoted to the upper school at the age of nine. During this time, he befriended Edmund Hector, nephew of his "man-midwife" George Hector, and John Taylor, with whom he remained in contact for the rest of his life.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: At the age of 16, Johnson stayed with his cousins, the Fords, at Pedmore, Worcestershire. There he became a close friend of Cornelius Ford, who employed his knowledge of the classics to tutor Johnson while he was not attending school. Ford was a successful, well-connected academic, and notorious alcoholic whose excesses contributed to his death six years later. After spending six months with his cousins, Johnson returned to Lichfield, but Hunter, the headmaster, "angered by the impertinence of this long absence", refused to allow Johnson to continue at the school. Unable to return to Lichfield Grammar School, Johnson enrolled at the King Edward VI grammar school at Stourbridge. As the school was located near Pedmore, Johnson was able to spend more time with the Fords, and he began to write poems and verse translations. However, he spent only six months at Stourbridge before returning once again to his parents' home in Lichfield.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: During this time, Johnson's future remained uncertain because his father was deeply in debt. To earn money, Johnson began to stitch books for his father, and it is likely that Johnson spent much time in his father's bookshop reading and building his literary knowledge. The family remained in poverty until his mother's cousin Elizabeth Harriotts died in February 1728 and left enough money to send Johnson to university. On 31 October 1728, a few weeks after he turned 19, Johnson entered Pembroke College, Oxford. The inheritance did not cover all of his expenses at Pembroke, and Andrew Corbet, a friend and fellow student at the college, offered to make up the deficit.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson made friends at Pembroke and read much. His tutor asked him to produce a Latin translation of Alexander Pope's "Messiah" as a Christmas exercise. Johnson completed half of the translation in one afternoon and the rest the following morning. Although the poem brought him praise, it did not bring the material benefit he had hoped for. The poem later appeared in "Miscellany of Poems" (1731), edited by John Husbands, a Pembroke tutor, and is the earliest surviving publication of any of Johnson's writings. Johnson spent the rest of his time studying, even during the Christmas holiday. He drafted a "plan of study" called "Adversaria", which he left unfinished, and used his time to learn French while working on his Greek.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson's tutor, Jorden, left Pembroke some months after Johnson's arrival, and was replaced by William Adams. Johnson enjoyed Adams's tutoring, but by December, was already a quarter behind in his student fees, and was forced to return to Lichfield without a degree, having spent 13 months at Oxford. He left behind many books that he had borrowed from his father because he could not afford to transport them, and also because he hoped to return.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: He eventually did receive a degree. Just before the publication of his "Dictionary" in 1755, the University of Oxford awarded Johnson the degree of Master of Arts. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1765 by Trinity College Dublin and in 1775 by the University of Oxford. In 1776 he returned to Pembroke with Boswell and toured the college with his former tutor Adams, who by then was the Master of the college. During that visit he recalled his time at the college and his early career, and expressed his later fondness for Jorden.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Little is known about Johnson's life between the end of 1729 and 1731. It is likely that he lived with his parents. He experienced bouts of mental anguish and physical pain during years of illness; his tics and gesticulations associated with Tourette syndrome became more noticeable and were often commented upon. By 1731 Johnson's father was deeply in debt and had lost much of his standing in Lichfield. Johnson hoped to get an usher's position, which became available at Stourbridge Grammar School, but since he did not have a degree, his application was passed over on 6 September 1731. At about this time, Johnson's father became ill and developed an "inflammatory fever" which led to his death in December 1731 when Johnson was twenty-two. Devastated by his father's death, Johnson sought to atone for an occasion he did not go with his father to sell books. Johnson stood for a "considerable time bareheaded in the rain" in the spot his father's stall used to be. After the publication of Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson," a statue was erected in that spot.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson eventually found employment as undermaster at a school in Market Bosworth, run by Sir Wolstan Dixie, who allowed Johnson to teach without a degree. Johnson was treated as a servant, and considered teaching boring, but nonetheless found pleasure in it. After an argument with Dixie he left the school, and by June 1732 he had returned home.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson continued to look for a position at a Lichfield school. After being turned down for a job at Ashbourne School, he spent time with his friend Edmund Hector, who was living in the home of the publisher Thomas Warren. At the time, Warren was starting his "Birmingham Journal", and he enlisted Johnson's help. This connection with Warren grew, and Johnson proposed a translation of Jerónimo Lobo's account of the Abyssinians. Johnson read Abbé Joachim Le Grand's French translations, and thought that a shorter version might be "useful and profitable". Instead of writing the work himself, he dictated to Hector, who then took the copy to the printer and made any corrections. Johnson's "A Voyage to Abyssinia" was published a year later. He returned to Lichfield in February 1734, and began an annotated edition of Poliziano's Latin poems, along with a history of Latin poetry from Petrarch to Poliziano; a "Proposal" was soon printed, but a lack of funds halted the project.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson remained with his close friend Harry Porter during a terminal illness, which ended in Porter's death on 3 September 1734. Porter's wife Elizabeth (née Jervis) (otherwise known as "Tetty") was now a widow at the age of 45, with three children. Some months later, Johnson began to court her. William Shaw, a friend and biographer of Johnson, claims that "the first advances probably proceeded from her, as her attachment to Johnson was in opposition to the advice and desire of all her relations," Johnson was inexperienced in such relationships, but the well-to-do widow encouraged him and promised to provide for him with her substantial savings. They married on 9 July 1735, at St Werburgh's Church in Derby. The Porter family did not approve of the match, partly because of the difference in their ages: Johnson was 25 and Elizabeth was 46. Elizabeth's marriage to Johnson so disgusted her son Jervis that he severed all relations with her. However, her daughter Lucy accepted Johnson from the start, and her other son, Joseph, later came to accept the marriage.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: In June 1735, while working as a tutor for the children of Thomas Whitby, a local Staffordshire gentleman, Johnson had applied for the position of headmaster at Solihull School. Although Johnson's friend Gilbert Walmisley gave his support, Johnson was passed over because the school's directors thought he was "a very haughty, ill-natured gent, and that he has such a way of distorting his face (which though he can't help) the gents think it may affect some lads". With Walmisley's encouragement, Johnson decided that he could be a successful teacher if he ran his own school. In the autumn of 1735, Johnson opened Edial Hall School as a private academy at Edial, near Lichfield. He had only three pupils: Lawrence Offley, George Garrick, and the 18-year-old David Garrick, who later became one of the most famous actors of his day. The venture was unsuccessful and cost Tetty a substantial portion of her fortune. Instead of trying to keep the failing school going, Johnson began to write his first major work, the historical tragedy "Irene". Biographer Robert DeMaria believed that Tourette syndrome likely made public occupations like schoolmaster or tutor almost impossible for Johnson. This may have led Johnson to "the invisible occupation of authorship".


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson left for London with his former pupil David Garrick on 2 March 1737, the day Johnson's brother died. He was penniless and pessimistic about their travel, but fortunately for them, Garrick had connections in London, and the two were able to stay with his distant relative, Richard Norris. Johnson soon moved to Greenwich near the Golden Hart Tavern to finish "Irene". On 12 July 1737 he wrote to Edward Cave with a proposal for a translation of Paolo Sarpi's "The History of the Council of Trent" (1619), which Cave did not accept until months later. In October 1737 Johnson brought his wife to London, and he found employment with Cave as a writer for "The Gentleman's Magazine". His assignments for the magazine and other publishers during this time were "almost unparalleled in range and variety," and "so numerous, so varied and scattered" that "Johnson himself could not make a complete list".


title: Samuel Johnson

text: In May 1738 his first major work, the poem "London", was published anonymously. Based on Juvenal's , it describes the character Thales leaving for Wales to escape the problems of London, which is portrayed as a place of crime, corruption, and poverty. Johnson could not bring himself to regard the poem as earning him any merit as a poet. Alexander Pope said that the author "will soon be déterré" (unearthed, dug up), but this would not happen until 15 years later.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: In August, Johnson's lack of an MA degree from Oxford or Cambridge led to his being denied a position as master of the Appleby Grammar School. In an effort to end such rejections, Pope asked Lord Gower to use his influence to have a degree awarded to Johnson. Gower petitioned Oxford for an honorary degree to be awarded to Johnson, but was told that it was "too much to be asked". Gower then asked a friend of Jonathan Swift to plead with Swift to use his influence at the University of Dublin to have a master's degree awarded to Johnson, in the hope that this could then be used to justify an MA from Oxford, but Swift refused to act on Johnson's behalf.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Between 1737 and 1739, Johnson befriended poet Richard Savage. Feeling guilty of living almost entirely on Tetty's money, Johnson stopped living with her and spent his time with Savage. They were poor and would stay in taverns or sleep in "night-cellars". Some nights they would roam the streets until dawn because they had no money. During this period, Johnson and Savage worked as Grub Street writers who anonymously supplied publishers with on-demand material. In his "Dictionary," Johnson defined "grub street" as "the name of a street in Moorfields in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called "grubstreet."" Savage's friends tried to help him by attempting to persuade him to move to Wales, but Savage ended up in Bristol and again fell into debt. He was committed to debtors' prison and died in 1743. A year later, Johnson wrote "Life of Mr Richard Savage" (1744), a "moving" work which, in the words of the biographer and critic Walter Jackson Bate, "remains one of the innovative works in the history of biography".


title: Samuel Johnson

text: In 1746, a group of publishers approached Johnson with the idea of creating an authoritative dictionary of the English language. A contract with William Strahan and associates, worth 1,500 guineas, was signed on the morning of 18 June 1746. Johnson claimed that he could finish the project in three years. In comparison, the Académie Française had 40 scholars spending 40 years to complete their dictionary, which prompted Johnson to claim, "This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman." Although he did not succeed in completing the work in three years, he did manage to finish it in eight. Some criticised the dictionary, including the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, who described Johnson as "a wretched etymologist," but according to Bate, the "Dictionary" "easily ranks as one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship, and probably the greatest ever performed by one individual who laboured under anything like the disadvantages in a comparable length of time."


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson's constant work on the "Dictionary" disrupted his and Tetty's living conditions. He had to employ a number of assistants for the copying and mechanical work, which filled the house with incessant noise and clutter. He was always busy, and kept hundreds of books around him. John Hawkins described the scene: "The books he used for this purpose were what he had in his own collection, a copious but a miserably ragged one, and all such as he could borrow; which latter, if ever they came back to those that lent them, were so defaced as to be scarce worth owning." Johnson's process included underlining words in the numerous books he wanted to include in his "Dictionary". The assistants would copy out the underlined sentences on individual paper slips, which would later be alphabetized and accompanied with examples. Johnson was also distracted by Tetty's poor health as she began to show signs of a terminal illness. To accommodate both his wife and his work, he moved to 17 Gough Square near his printer, William Strahan.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: In preparation, Johnson had written a "Plan" for the "Dictionary". Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, was the patron of the "Plan", to Johnson's displeasure. Seven years after first meeting Johnson to go over the work, Chesterfield wrote two anonymous essays in "The World" recommending the "Dictionary". He complained that the English language lacked structure and argued in support of the dictionary. Johnson did not like the tone of the essays, and he felt that Chesterfield had not fulfilled his obligations as the work's patron. In a letter to Chesterfield, Johnson expressed this view and harshly criticised Chesterfield, saying "Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind: but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it." Chesterfield, impressed by the language, kept the letter displayed on a table for anyone to read.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: The "Dictionary" was finally published in April 1755, with the title page noting that the University of Oxford had awarded Johnson a Master of Arts degree in anticipation of the work. The dictionary as published was a large book. Its pages were nearly tall, and the book was wide when opened; it contained 42,773 entries, to which only a few more were added in subsequent editions, and it sold for the extravagant price of £4 10s, perhaps the rough equivalent of £350 today. An important innovation in English lexicography was to illustrate the meanings of his words by literary quotation, of which there were approximately 114,000. The authors most frequently cited include William Shakespeare, John Milton and John Dryden. It was years before "Johnson's Dictionary", as it came to be known, turned a profit. Authors' royalties were unknown at the time, and Johnson, once his contract to deliver the book was fulfilled, received no further money from its sale. Years later, many of its quotations would be repeated by various editions of the "Webster's Dictionary" and the "New English Dictionary".


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson's dictionary was not the first, nor was it unique. Other dictionaries, such as Nathan Bailey's "Dictionarium Britannicum", included more words, and in the 150 years preceding Johnson's dictionary about twenty other general-purpose monolingual "English" dictionaries had been produced. However, there was open dissatisfaction with the dictionaries of the period. In 1741, David Hume claimed: "The Elegance and Propriety of Stile have been very much neglected among us. We have no Dictionary of our Language, and scarce a tolerable Grammar." Johnson's "Dictionary" offers insights into the 18th century and "a faithful record of the language people used". It is more than a reference book; it is a work of literature. It was the most commonly used and imitated for the 150 years between its first publication and the completion of the "Oxford English Dictionary" in 1928.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson also wrote numerous essays, sermons, and poems during his years working on the dictionary. In 1750, he decided to produce a series of essays under the title "The Rambler" that were to be published every Tuesday and Saturday and sell for twopence each. During this time, Johnson published no fewer than 208 essays, each around 1,200-1,500 words long. Explaining the title years later, he told his friend, the painter Joshua Reynolds: "I was at a loss how to name it. I sat down at night upon my bedside, and resolved that I would not go to sleep till I had fixed its title. "The Rambler" seemed the best that occurred, and I took it." These essays, often on moral and religious topics, tended to be more grave than the title of the series would suggest; his first comments in "The Rambler" were to ask "that in this undertaking thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld from me, but that I may promote thy glory, and the salvation of myself and others." The popularity of "The Rambler" took off once the issues were collected in a volume; they were reprinted nine times during Johnson's life. Writer and printer Samuel Richardson, enjoying the essays greatly, questioned the publisher as to who wrote the works; only he and a few of Johnson's friends were told of Johnson's authorship. One friend, the novelist Charlotte Lennox, includes a defence of "The Rambler" in her novel "The Female Quixote" (1752). In particular, the character Mr. Glanville says, "you may sit in Judgment upon the Productions of a "Young", a "Richardson", or a "Johnson". Rail with premeditated Malice at the "Rambler"; and for the want of Faults, turn even its inimitable Beauties into Ridicule." (Book VI, Chapter XI) Later, the novel describes Johnson as "the greatest Genius in the present Age."


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Not all of his work was confined to "The Rambler". His most highly regarded poem, "The Vanity of Human Wishes", was written with such "extraordinary speed" that Boswell claimed Johnson "might have been perpetually a poet". The poem is an imitation of Juvenal's "" and claims that "the antidote to vain human wishes is non-vain spiritual wishes". In particular, Johnson emphasises "the helpless vulnerability of the individual before the social context" and the "inevitable self-deception by which human beings are led astray". The poem was critically celebrated but it failed to become popular, and sold fewer copies than "London". In 1749, Garrick made good on his promise that he would produce "Irene", but its title was altered to "Mahomet and Irene" to make it "fit for the stage." "Irene," which was written in blank verse, was received rather poorly with a friend of Boswell's commenting the play to be "as frigid as the regions of Nova Zembla: now and then you felt a little heat like what is produced by touching ice." The show eventually ran for nine nights.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Tetty Johnson was ill during most of her time in London, and in 1752 she decided to return to the countryside while Johnson was busy working on his "Dictionary". She died on 17 March 1752, and, at word of her death, Johnson wrote a letter to his old friend Taylor, which according to Taylor "expressed grief in the strongest manner he had ever read". Johnson wrote a sermon in her honour, to be read at her funeral, but Taylor refused to read it, for reasons which are unknown. This only exacerbated Johnson's feelings of loss and despair. Consequently, John Hawkesworth had to organise the funeral. Johnson felt guilty about the poverty in which he believed he had forced Tetty to live, and blamed himself for neglecting her. He became outwardly discontented, and his diary was filled with prayers and laments over her death which continued until his own. She was his primary motivation, and her death hindered his ability to complete his work.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: On 16 March 1756, Johnson was arrested for an outstanding debt of £5 18s. Unable to contact anyone else, he wrote to the writer and publisher Samuel Richardson. Richardson, who had previously lent Johnson money, sent him six guineas to show his good will, and the two became friends. Soon after, Johnson met and befriended the painter Joshua Reynolds, who so impressed Johnson that he declared him "almost the only man whom I call a friend". Reynolds's younger sister Frances observed during their time together "that men, women and children gathered around him [Johnson]", laughing at his gestures and gesticulations. In addition to Reynolds, Johnson was close to Bennet Langton and Arthur Murphy. Langton was a scholar and an admirer of Johnson who persuaded his way into a meeting with Johnson which led to a long friendship. Johnson met Murphy during the summer of 1754 after Murphy came to Johnson about the accidental republishing of the "Rambler" No. 190, and the two became friends. Around this time, Anna Williams began boarding with Johnson. She was a minor poet who was poor and becoming blind, two conditions that Johnson attempted to change by providing room for her and paying for a failed cataract surgery. Williams, in turn, became Johnson's housekeeper.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: To occupy himself, Johnson began to work on "The Literary Magazine, or Universal Review", the first issue of which was printed on 19 March 1756. Philosophical disagreements erupted over the purpose of the publication when the Seven Years' War began and Johnson started to write polemical essays attacking the war. After the war began, the "Magazine" included many reviews, at least 34 of which were written by Johnson. When not working on the "Magazine", Johnson wrote a series of prefaces for other writers, such as Giuseppe Baretti, William Payne and Charlotte Lennox. Johnson's relationship with Lennox and her works was particularly close during these years, and she in turn relied so heavily upon Johnson that he was "the most important single fact in Mrs Lennox's literary life". He later attempted to produce a new edition of her works, but even with his support they were unable to find enough interest to follow through with its publication. To help with domestic duties while Johnson was busy with his various projects, Richard Bathurst, a physician and a member of Johnson's Club, pressured him to take on a freed slave, Francis Barber, as his servant.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson's work on "The Plays of William Shakespeare" took up most of his time. On 8 June 1756, Johnson published his "Proposals for Printing, by Subscription, the Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare", which argued that previous editions of Shakespeare were edited incorrectly and needed to be corrected. Johnson's progress on the work slowed as the months passed, and he told music historian Charles Burney in December 1757 that it would take him until the following March to complete it. Before that could happen, he was arrested again, for a debt of £40, in February 1758. The debt was soon repaid by Jacob Tonson, who had contracted Johnson to publish "Shakespeare", and this encouraged Johnson to finish his edition to repay the favour. Although it took him another seven years to finish, Johnson completed a few volumes of his "Shakespeare" to prove his commitment to the project.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: In 1758, Johnson began to write a weekly series, "The Idler", which ran from 15 April 1758 to 5 April 1760, as a way to avoid finishing his "Shakespeare". This series was shorter and lacked many features of "The Rambler". Unlike his independent publication of "The Rambler", "The Idler" was published in a weekly news journal "The Universal Chronicle", a publication supported by John Payne, John Newbery, Robert Stevens and William Faden.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Since "The Idler" did not occupy all Johnson's time, he was able to publish his philosophical novella "Rasselas" on 19 April 1759. The "little story book", as Johnson described it, describes the life of Prince Rasselas and Nekayah, his sister, who are kept in a place called the Happy Valley in the land of Abyssinia. The Valley is a place free of problems, where any desire is quickly satisfied. The constant pleasure does not, however, lead to satisfaction; and, with the help of a philosopher named Imlac, Rasselas escapes and explores the world to witness how all aspects of society and life in the outside world are filled with suffering. They return to Abyssinia, but do not wish to return to the state of constantly fulfilled pleasures found in the Happy Valley. "Rasselas" was written in one week to pay for his mother's funeral and settle her debts; it became so popular that there was a new English edition of the work almost every year. References to it appear in many later works of fiction, including "Jane Eyre", "Cranford" and "The House of the Seven Gables". Its fame was not limited to English-speaking nations: "Rasselas" was immediately translated into five languages (French, Dutch, German, Russian and Italian), and later into nine others.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: By 1762, however, Johnson had gained notoriety for his dilatoriness in writing; the contemporary poet Churchill teased Johnson for the delay in producing his long-promised edition of Shakespeare: "He for subscribers baits his hook / and takes your cash, but where's the book?" The comments soon motivated Johnson to finish his "Shakespeare", and, after receiving the first payment from a government pension on 20 July 1762, he was able to dedicate most of his time towards this goal. Earlier that July, the 24-year-old King George III granted Johnson an annual pension of £300 in appreciation for the "Dictionary". While the pension did not make Johnson wealthy, it did allow him a modest yet comfortable independence for the remaining 22 years of his life. The award came largely through the efforts of Sheridan and the Earl of Bute. When Johnson questioned if the pension would force him to promote a political agenda or support various officials, he was told by Bute that the pension "is not given you for anything you are to do, but for what you have done".


title: Samuel Johnson

text: On 16 May 1763, Johnson first met 22-year-old James Boswell—who would later become Johnson's first major biographer—in the bookshop of Johnson's friend, Tom Davies. They quickly became friends, although Boswell would return to his home in Scotland or travel abroad for months at a time. Around the spring of 1763, Johnson formed "The Club", a social group that included his friends Reynolds, Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith and others (the membership later expanded to include Adam Smith and Edward Gibbon, in addition to Boswell himself). They decided to meet every Monday at 7:00 pm at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street, Soho, and these meetings continued until long after the deaths of the original members.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: On 9 January 1765, Murphy introduced Johnson to Henry Thrale, a wealthy brewer and MP, and his wife Hester. They struck up an instant friendship; Johnson was treated as a member of the family, and was once more motivated to continue working on his "Shakespeare". Afterwards, Johnson stayed with the Thrales for 17 years until Henry's death in 1781, sometimes staying in rooms at Thrale's Anchor Brewery in Southwark. Hester Thrale's documentation of Johnson's life during this time, in her correspondence and her diary ("Thraliana"), became an important source of biographical information on Johnson after his death.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson's edition of "Shakespeare" was finally published on 10 October 1765 as "The Plays of William Shakespeare, in Eight Volumes ... To which are added Notes by Sam. Johnson" in a printing of one thousand copies. The first edition quickly sold out, and a second was soon printed. The plays themselves were in a version that Johnson felt was closest to the original, based on his analysis of the manuscript editions. Johnson's revolutionary innovation was to create a set of corresponding notes that allowed readers to clarify the meaning behind many of Shakespeare's more complicated passages, and to examine those which had been transcribed incorrectly in previous editions. Included within the notes are occasional attacks upon rival editors of Shakespeare's works. Years later, Edmond Malone, an important Shakespearean scholar and friend of Johnson's, stated that Johnson's "vigorous and comprehensive understanding threw more light on his authour than all his predecessors had done".


title: Samuel Johnson

text: On 6 August 1773, eleven years after first meeting Boswell, Johnson set out to visit his friend in Scotland, and to begin "a journey to the western islands of Scotland", as Johnson's 1775 account of their travels would put it. That account was intended to discuss the social problems and struggles that affected the Scottish people, but it also praised many of the unique facets of Scottish society, such as a school in Edinburgh for the deaf and mute. Also, Johnson used the work to enter into the dispute over the authenticity of James Macpherson's Ossian poems, claiming they could not have been translations of ancient Scottish literature on the grounds that "in those times nothing had been written in the Earse [i.e. Scots Gaelic] language". There were heated exchanges between the two, and according to one of Johnson's letters, MacPherson threatened physical violence. Boswell's account of their journey, "The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides" (1786), was a preliminary step toward his later biography, "The Life of Samuel Johnson". Included were various quotations and descriptions of events, including anecdotes such as Johnson swinging a broadsword while wearing Scottish garb, or dancing a Highland jig.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: In the 1770s, Johnson, who had tended to be an opponent of the government early in life, published a series of pamphlets in favour of various government policies. In 1770 he produced "The False Alarm", a political pamphlet attacking John Wilkes. In 1771, his "Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands" cautioned against war with Spain. In 1774 he printed "The Patriot", a critique of what he viewed as false patriotism. On the evening of 7 April 1775, he made the famous statement, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." This line was not, as widely believed, about patriotism in general, but what Johnson considered to be the false use of the term "patriotism" by Wilkes and his supporters. Johnson opposed "self-professed Patriots" in general, but valued what he considered "true" patriotism.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: The last of these pamphlets, "Taxation No Tyranny" (1775), was a defence of the Coercive Acts and a response to the Declaration of Rights of the First Continental Congress, which protested against taxation without representation. Johnson argued that in emigrating to America, colonists had "voluntarily resigned the power of voting", but they still retained "virtual representation" in Parliament. In a parody of the Declaration of Rights, Johnson suggested that the Americans had no more right to govern themselves than the Cornish, and asked "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" If the Americans wanted to participate in Parliament, said Johnson, they could move to England and purchase an estate. Johnson denounced English supporters of American separatists as "traitors to this country", and hoped that the matter would be settled without bloodshed, but he felt confident that it would end with "English superiority and American obedience". Years before, Johnson had stated that the French and Indian War was a conflict between "two robbers" of Native American lands, and that neither deserved to live there. After the signing of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, marking the colonists' victory over the British, Johnson became "deeply disturbed" with the "state of this kingdom".


title: Samuel Johnson

text: On 3 May 1777, while Johnson was trying and failing to save Reverend William Dodd from execution for forgery, he wrote to Boswell that he was busy preparing a "little Lives" and "little Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets". Tom Davies, William Strahan and Thomas Cadell had asked Johnson to create this final major work, the "Lives of the English Poets", for which he asked 200 guineas, an amount significantly less than the price he could have demanded. The "Lives", which were critical as well as biographical studies, appeared as prefaces to selections of each poet's work, and they were longer and more detailed than originally expected. The work was finished in March 1781 and the whole collection was published in six volumes. As Johnson justified in the advertisement for the work, "my purpose was only to have allotted to every Poet an Advertisement, like those which we find in the French Miscellanies, containing a few dates and a general character."


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson was unable to enjoy this success because Henry Thrale, the dear friend with whom he lived, died on 4 April 1781. Life changed quickly for Johnson when Hester Thrale became romantically involved with the Italian singing teacher Gabriel Mario Piozzi, which forced Johnson to change his previous lifestyle. After returning home and then travelling for a short period, Johnson received word that his friend and tenant Robert Levet, had died on 17 January 1782. Johnson was shocked by the death of Levet, who had resided at Johnson's London home since 1762. Shortly afterwards Johnson caught a cold that developed into bronchitis and lasted for several months. His health was further complicated by "feeling forlorn and lonely" over Levet's death, and by the deaths of his friend Thomas Lawrence and his housekeeper Williams.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Although he had recovered his health by August, Johnson experienced emotional trauma when he was given word that Hester Thrale would sell the residence that Johnson shared with the family. What hurt Johnson most was the possibility that he would be left without her constant company. Months later, on 6 October 1782, Johnson attended church for the final time in his life, to say goodbye to his former residence and life. The walk to the church strained him, but he managed the journey unaccompanied. While there, he wrote a prayer for the Thrale family:


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Hester Thrale did not completely abandon Johnson, and asked him to accompany the family on a trip to Brighton. He agreed, and was with them from 7 October to 20 November 1782. On his return, his health began to fail, and he was left alone after Boswell's visit on 29 May 1783.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: On 17 June 1783, Johnson's poor circulation resulted in a stroke and he wrote to his neighbour, Edmund Allen, that he had lost the ability to speak. Two doctors were brought in to aid Johnson; he regained his ability to speak two days later. Johnson feared that he was dying, and wrote:


title: Samuel Johnson

text: By this time he was sick and gout-ridden. He had surgery for gout, and his remaining friends, including novelist Fanny Burney (the daughter of Charles Burney), came to keep him company. He was confined to his room from 14 December 1783 to 21 April 1784.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: His health began to improve by May 1784, and he travelled to Oxford with Boswell on 5 May 1784. By July, many of Johnson's friends were either dead or gone; Boswell had left for Scotland and Hester Thrale had become engaged to Piozzi. With no one to visit, Johnson expressed a desire to die in London and arrived there on 16 November 1784. On 25 November 1784, he allowed Burney to visit him and expressed an interest to her that he should leave London; he soon left for Islington, to George Strahan's home. His final moments were filled with mental anguish and delusions; when his physician, Thomas Warren, visited and asked him if he were feeling better, Johnson burst out with: "No, Sir; you cannot conceive with what acceleration I advance towards death."


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Many visitors came to see Johnson as he lay sick in bed, but he preferred only Langton's company. Burney waited for word of Johnson's condition, along with Windham, Strahan, Hoole, Cruikshank, Des Moulins and Barber. On 13 December 1784, Johnson met with two others: a young woman, Miss Morris, whom Johnson blessed, and Francesco Sastres, an Italian teacher, who was given some of Johnson's final words: ""Iam Moriturus"" ("I who am about to die"). Shortly afterwards he fell into a coma, and died at 7:00 p.m.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Langton waited until 11:00 p.m. to tell the others, which led to John Hawkins' becoming pale and overcome with "an agony of mind", along with Seward and Hoole describing Johnson's death as "the most awful sight". Boswell remarked, "My feeling was just one large expanse of Stupor ... I could not believe it. My imagination was not convinced." William Gerard Hamilton joined in and stated, "He has made a chasm, which not only nothing can fill up, but which "nothing has a tendency to fill up". –Johnson is dead.– Let us go to the next best: There is nobody; –"no man can be said to put you in mind of Johnson"."


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson's works, especially his "Lives of the Poets" series, describe various features of excellent writing. He believed that the best poetry relied on contemporary language, and he disliked the use of decorative or purposefully archaic language. He was suspicious of the poetic language used by Milton, whose blank verse he believed would inspire many bad imitations. Also, Johnson opposed the poetic language of his contemporary Thomas Gray. His greatest complaint was that obscure allusions found in works like Milton's "Lycidas" were overused; he preferred poetry that could be easily read and understood. In addition to his views on language, Johnson believed that a good poem incorporated new and unique imagery.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: In his smaller poetic works, Johnson relied on short lines and filled his work with a feeling of empathy, which possibly influenced Housman's poetic style. In "London", his first imitation of Juvenal, Johnson uses the poetic form to express his political opinion and approaches the topic in a playful and almost joyous manner. However, his second imitation, "The Vanity of Human Wishes", is completely different; the language remains simple, but the poem is more complicated and difficult to read because Johnson is trying to describe complex Christian ethics. These Christian values are not unique to the poem, but contain views expressed in most of Johnson's works. In particular, Johnson emphasises God's infinite love and argues that happiness can be attained through virtuous action.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: When it came to biography, Johnson disagreed with Plutarch's use of biography to praise and to teach morality. Instead, Johnson believed in portraying the biographical subjects accurately and including any negative aspects of their lives. Because his insistence on accuracy in biography was little short of revolutionary, Johnson had to struggle against a society that was unwilling to accept biographical details that could be viewed as tarnishing a reputation; this became the subject of "Rambler" 60. Furthermore, Johnson believed that biography should not be limited to the most famous and that the lives of lesser individuals, too, were significant; thus in his "Lives of the Poets" he chose both great and lesser poets. In all his biographies he insisted on including what others would have considered trivial details to fully describe the lives of his subjects. Johnson considered the genre of autobiography and diaries, including his own, as one having the most significance; in "Idler" 84 he writes that a writer of an autobiography would be the least likely to distort his own life.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson's thoughts on biography and on poetry coalesced in his understanding of what would make a good critic. His works were dominated with his intent to use them for literary criticism. This was especially true of his "Dictionary" of which he wrote: "I lately published a Dictionary like those compiled by the academies of Italy and France, "for the use of such as aspire to exactness of criticism, or elegance of style"". Although a smaller edition became the household standard, Johnson's original "Dictionary" was an academic tool that examined how words were used, especially in literary works. To achieve this purpose, Johnson included quotations from Bacon, Hooker, Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser, and many others from what he considered to be the most important literary fields: natural science, philosophy, poetry, and theology. These quotations and usages were all compared and carefully studied in the "Dictionary" so that a reader could understand what words in literary works meant in context.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson did not attempt to create schools of theories to analyse the aesthetics of literature. Instead, he used his criticism for the practical purpose of helping others to better read and understand literature. When it came to Shakespeare's plays, Johnson emphasised the role of the reader in understanding language: "If Shakespeare has difficulties above other writers, it is to be imputed to the nature of his work, which required the use of common colloquial language, and consequently admitted many phrases allusive, elliptical, and proverbial, such as we speak and hear every hour without observing them".


title: Samuel Johnson

text: His works on Shakespeare were devoted not merely to Shakespeare, but to understanding literature as a whole; in his "Preface" to Shakespeare, Johnson rejects the previous dogma of the classical unities and argues that drama should be faithful to life. However, Johnson did not only defend Shakespeare; he discussed Shakespeare's faults, including what he saw as lack of morality, vulgarity, carelessness in crafting plots, and occasional inattentiveness when choosing words or word order. As well as direct literary criticism, Johnson emphasised the need to establish a text that accurately reflects what an author wrote. Shakespeare's plays, in particular, had multiple editions, each of which contained errors caused by the printing process. This problem was compounded by careless editors who deemed difficult words incorrect, and changed them in later editions. Johnson believed that an editor should not alter the text in such a way.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson's tall and robust figure combined with his odd gestures were confusing to some; when William Hogarth first saw Johnson standing near a window in Richardson's house, "shaking his head and rolling himself about in a strange ridiculous manner", Hogarth thought Johnson an "ideot, whom his relations had put under the care of Mr. Richardson". Hogarth was quite surprised when "this figure stalked forwards to where he and Mr. Richardson were sitting and all at once took up the argument ... [with] such a power of eloquence, that Hogarth looked at him with astonishment, and actually imagined that this ideot had been at the moment inspired". Beyond appearance, Adam Smith claimed that "Johnson knew more books than any man alive", while Edmund Burke thought that if Johnson were to join Parliament, he "certainly would have been the greatest speaker that ever was there". Johnson relied on a unique form of rhetoric, and he is well known for his "refutation" of Bishop Berkeley's immaterialism, his claim that matter did not actually exist but only seemed to exist: during a conversation with Boswell, Johnson powerfully stomped a nearby stone and proclaimed of Berkeley's theory, "I refute it "thus"!"


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson was a devout, conservative Anglican and a compassionate man who supported a number of poor friends under his own roof, even when unable to fully provide for himself. Johnson's Christian morality permeated his works, and he would write on moral topics with such authority and in such a trusting manner that, Walter Jackson Bate claims, "no other moralist in history excels or even begins to rival him". However, Johnson's moral writings do not contain, as Donald Greene points out, "a predetermined and authorized pattern of 'good behavior, even though Johnson does emphasise certain kinds of conduct. He did not let his own faith prejudice him against others, and had respect for those of other denominations who demonstrated a commitment to Christian beliefs. Although Johnson respected Milton's poetry, he could not tolerate Milton's Puritan and Republican beliefs, feeling that they were contrary to England and Christianity. He was an opponent of slavery on moral grounds, and once proposed a toast to the "next rebellion of the negroes in the West Indies". Beside his beliefs concerning humanity, Johnson is also known for his love of cats, especially his own two cats, Hodge and Lily. Boswell wrote, "I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson was also known as a staunch Tory; he admitted to sympathies for the Jacobite cause during his younger years but, by the reign of George III, he came to accept the Hanoverian Succession. It was Boswell who gave people the impression that Johnson was an "arch-conservative", and it was Boswell, more than anyone else, who determined how Johnson would be seen by people years later. However, Boswell was not around for two of Johnson's most politically active periods: during Walpole's control over British Parliament and during the Seven Years' War. Although Boswell was present with Johnson during the 1770s and describes four major pamphlets written by Johnson, he neglects to discuss them because he is more interested in their travels to Scotland. This is compounded by the fact that Boswell held an opinion contradictory to two of these pamphlets, "The False Alarm" and "Taxation No Tyranny", and so attacks Johnson's views in his biography.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: In his "Life of Samuel Johnson" Boswell referred to Johnson as 'Dr. Johnson' so often that he would always be known as such, even though he hated being called such. Boswell's emphasis on Johnson's later years shows him too often as merely an old man discoursing in a tavern to a circle of admirers. Although Boswell, a Scotsman, was a close companion and friend to Johnson during many important times of his life, like many of his fellow Englishmen, Johnson had a reputation for despising Scotland and its people. Even during their journey together through Scotland, Johnson "exhibited prejudice and a narrow nationalism". Hester Thrale, in summarising Johnson's nationalistic views and his anti-Scottish prejudice, said: "We all know how well he loved to abuse the Scotch, & indeed to be abused by them in return."


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Johnson had several health problems, including childhood tuberculous scrofula resulting in deep facial scarring, deafness in one ear and blindness in one eye, gout, testicular cancer, and a stroke in his final year that left him unable to speak; his autopsy indicated that he had pulmonary fibrosis along with cardiac failure probably due to hypertension, a condition then unknown. Johnson displayed signs consistent with several diagnoses, including depression and Tourette syndrome.


title: Samuel Johnson

text: There are many accounts of Johnson suffering from bouts of depression and what Johnson thought might be madness. As Walter Jackson Bate puts it, "one of the ironies of literary history is that its most compelling and authoritative symbol of common sense—of the strong, imaginative grasp of concrete reality—should have begun his adult life, at the age of twenty, in a state of such intense anxiety and bewildered despair that, at least from his own point of view, it seemed the onset of actual insanity". To overcome these feelings, Johnson tried to constantly involve himself with various activities, but this did not seem to help. Taylor said that Johnson "at one time strongly entertained thoughts of suicide". Boswell claimed that Johnson "felt himself overwhelmed with an horrible melancholia, with perpetual irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery".


title: Samuel Johnson

text: Early on, when Johnson was unable to pay off his debts, he began to work with professional writers and identified his own situation with theirs. During this time, Johnson witnessed Christopher Smart's decline into "penury and the madhouse", and feared that he might share the same fate. Hester Thrale Piozzi claimed, in a discussion on Smart's mental state, that Johnson was her "friend who feared an apple should intoxicate him". To her, what separated Johnson from others who were placed in asylums for madness—like Christopher Smart—was his ability to keep his concerns and emotions to himself.