Without Lifting A Finger

Excerpt from Boswell's Journal: After dinner to-day, we talked of the extraordinary fact of Lady Grange's being sent to St Kilda, and confined there for several years, without any means of relief. [Footnote: The true story of this lady, which happened in this century, is as frightfully romantick as if it had been the fiction of a gloomy fancy. She was the wife of the Lords of Session in Scotland, a man of the very first blood of his country. For some mysterious reasons, which have never been discovered, she was seized and carried off in the dark, she knew not by whom, and by nightly journies was conveyed to the Highland shores, from whence she was transported by sea to the remote rock of St Kilda, where she remained, amongst its few wild inhabitants, a forlorn prisoner, but had a constant supply of provisions, and a woman to wait on her. No inquiry was made after her, till she at last found means to convey a letter to a confidential friend, by the daughter of a Catechist who...

Excerpt from Boswell's journal (trip to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson): We spoke of death. Dr. Johnson on this subject observed, that the boastings of some men, as to dying easily, were idle talk, proceeding from partial views. I mentioned Hawthornden's Cypress Grove, where it is said that the world is a mere show; and that it is unreasonable for a man to wish to continue in the show-room, after he has seen it. Let him go cheerfully out, and give place to other spectators. JOHNSON. 'Yes, sir, if he is sure he is to be well, after he goes out of it. But if he is to grow blind after he goes out of the show-room, and never to see any thing again; or if he does not know whither he is to go next, a man will not go cheerfully out of a show-room. No wise man will be contented to die, if he thinks he is to go into a state of punishment. Nay, no wise man will be contented to die, if he thinks he is to fall into annihilation: for however unhappy any man's existence may be, ...

Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [ O.S. 7 September]  – 13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson , was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer . Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory , and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". [1] He is also the subject of "the most famous single biographical work in the whole of literature," James Boswell 's Life of Samuel Johnson . [2] Born in Lichfield , Staffordshire, Johnson attended Pembroke College, Oxford for just over a year, before his lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher he moved to London, where he began to write for The Gentleman's Magazine . His early works include the biography Life of Mr Richard Savage , the poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes , and the play Irene . After nine y...

Picked up (downloaded) Boswell's account of B & J's trip to the Hebrides (thought it might be fun to read before I go to Scotland in the summer -- nothing certain yet, and I certainly don't know if I'll have the chance to travel so far afield). Enjoying the read thus far. *** James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck ( / ˈ b ɒ z ˌ w ɛ l , - w ə l / ; 29 October 1740 – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer and diarist, born in Edinburgh . He is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson , which the modern Johnsonian critic Harold Bloom has claimed is the greatest biography written in the English language. Boswell's surname has passed into the English language as a term ( Boswell , Boswellian , Boswellism ) for a constant companion and observer, especially one who records those observations in print. In A Scandal in Bohemia , Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 's character Sherlock Holmes affect...