Samuel Johnson's Library [antikvár]

SAMUEL JOHNSON'S LIBRARY: AN ANNOTATED GUIDEINTRODUCTIONYou have shown to all who shall hereafter attempt the study of our ancient authors the way to success, by directing them to the perusal of the books which those authors had read. . . .The reason why the authors which are yet read of the sixteenth century are so little understood is that they are read alone, and no help is borrowed from those who lived with them or before them. Some part of this ignorance I hope to remove by my book. . . . So Johnson wrote to Thomas Warton in 1754, complimenting him on his Observations on The Faerie Queene, and alluding to his own forthcoming Dictionary, with its wealth of quotation from earlier writers.^ Johnson's statement about eighteenth-century readers grappling ignorantly with sixteenth-century authors applies also to twentieth-century readers grappling with eighteenth-century authors, particularly an author who had read so widely as Johnsoh. Much distortion of what Johnson was trying to say has taken place, and is still taking place, through the naive practice of reading him in the context of twentieth-century ideas and values, instead of the ideas and values that he acquired from "those who lived with, or before" him.That Johnson was widely read in many fields of learning was well known in his time; and it was very proper that the founding father of the great house of Christie, when offering Johnson's library for sale at auction two months after his death, should have worded the title page of his sale catalogue A Catalogue of the Valuable Library of Books of the Late Learned Samuel Johnson, Esq; LL.D.2 Nevertheless, the fact of Johnson's learning has often been subordinated to the Boswellian and Macaulayan tradition of his powers as a dogmatic conversationalist, the "quaintness" of his personality, the perverseness of his prejudices, his bad table manners, and the like. It might have been thought that a study of the titles of the books which Johnson possessed in his library would have helped to counteract this neglect of Johnson's very real and impressive intellectual attainments. Unfortunately Mr. Christie's attempt at cataloguing his library has proved an extraordinarily baffling obstacle to the would-be student of those attainments. It must be a very determined scholar whose heart does not fail when he encounters the supremely discouraging opening entry in the catalogue: "1. Eleven miscell."It is quite possible that this 28-page pamphlet can claim the distinction of being the worst book catalogue ever produced. At least, it fully deserves the strictures of one of its t arly students, A.W. Hutton:It is but a very sorry production, sadly unworthy of the occasion that called it into existence. That the cataloguer of the Harleian Library^ should have had his own books thus catalogued is a melancholy thought, and make's one reflect on what may happen to any of us when we are gathered to our cataloguers and bibliographers. The first Christie, the auctioneer who is responsible for this catalogue, and who sold the books in Pall Mall in February, 1785, had resigned a commission in the navy in order to become an auctioneer. It is a pity he did not remain in the navy. Hardly an entry in the