Saturday, 13 December 2014
Hymns for Advent (14): ‘Almighty God who art the author
and giver of all wisdom’ (Samuel Johnson, Bernard Rose)
As part of my spiritual reflections for Advent this year, I am looking at an appropriate hymn for Advent each morning. Today (13 December) is marked in the Church of England with a lesser commemoration in Common Worship (see p. 16) for Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), and so this morning I have chosen the Anthem Almighty God who art the author and giver of all wisdom, a setting by Bernard Rose of a prayer by Samuel Johnson.
Although this may seem an unusual choice of a hymn for Advent this morning, this anthem is a prayer filled with the hope we should have during Advent when we face our fears in the world. It was written by Johnson in November 1765, and is included in many collections of his works.
The historian AJP Taylor was asked from time to time, “Who do you think is the greatest Englishman,” He would reply: “I have never been at a loss for an answer. Samuel Johnson of course. Not Churchill, not Wellington or Nelson. Certainly not Darwin.”
Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was one of the most important writers of the 18th century. Due to James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Johnson’s personality has often eclipsed his writings and many famous Johnson quotes actually come from Boswell’s recollections of conversation, rather than Johnson’s own writing.
Next only to Shakespeare, Johnson is perhaps the most quoted English writer. And Lichfield, where he was born, loves Samuel Johnson as much as Stratford-upon-Avon loves William Shakespeare.
Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield on 18 September 1709. A childhood infection left him deaf in his left ear, almost blind in his left eye, with impaired vision in his right eye, and with scar tissue that disfigured his face.
At the age of 19, Johnson entered Pembroke College, Oxford, 1728, but he was forced to leave a year later because of poverty and unpaid fees. But during that year he was deeply influenced by reading William Law’s Serious Call To a Devout and Holy Life.
In 1735, he married the widowed Elizabeth (“Tetty”) Porter, who was 20 years older than him. The newly-married Johnson opened a private school at Edial Hall, west of Lichfield, where one of his first students was David Garrick, who became a life-long friend and was the foremost actor of his day.
When the school closed, Johnson and Garrick decided to seek their fortune in London, where Johnson began writing for The Gentleman’s Magazine. In the next few years, he wrote short biographies, poems in Latin and English; monthly articles on politics and other current affairs, and on literature, politics, religion, ethics, agriculture, trade, business, philology, classical scholarship, aesthetics, metaphysics, medicine, chemistry, travel, exploration, and Chinese architecture.
In 1746, he began working on his Dictionary of the English Language. He wrote definitions of over 40,000 words, with different shades of meaning, illustrating the meanings with about 114,000 quotations he had gathered. His work has served as the basis for all English dictionaries since.
For two years, from March 1750 to March 1752, he published the Rambler, a periodical, every Tuesday and Saturday. Each issue included one of his essays, and he wrote 208 essays in all. But while he was working on his Dictionary, his wife Tetty died in March 1752, and his grief was overwhelming.
But Johnson completed his task in nine years, and his Dictionary was published in 1755. Oxford University honoured his work with an MA degree.
In 1756, after finishing his Dictionary, he was asked to supervise a new periodical, the Literary Magazine. But the magazine did not last. In 1759 he wrote a short novel, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
In 1762, he was awarded a pension for life of £300 a year. Meanwhile, he began working on a new edition of the works of Shakespeare in 1756. It took nine years and was published in 1765.
In 1766, his friends Henry and Hester Thrale found him agitated, with acute depression. He became 