Samuel Johnson - Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Johnson

The Complete Works of

SAMUEL JOHNSON

(1709-1784)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2013

Version 1

The Complete Works of

SAMUEL JOHNSON

By Delphi Classics, 2013

Complete Works of Samuel Johnson

First published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2013.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

Delphi Classics

is an imprint of

Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com

www.delphiclassics.com

Parts Edition Now Available!

Love reading Samuel Johnson ?

Did you know you can now purchase the Delphi Classics Parts Edition of this author and enjoy all the novels, plays, non-fiction books and other works as individual eBooks? Now, you can select and read individual novels etc. and know precisely where you are in an eBook. You will also be able to manage space better on your eReading devices.

The Parts Edition is only available direct from the Delphi Classics website.

For more information about this exciting new format and to try free Parts Edition downloads , please visit this link .

Explore Eighteenth Century literature with Delphi Classics

For the first time in digital publishing history, Delphi Classics is proud to present the complete works of these important authors.

www.delphiclassics.com

Breadmarket Street, Lichfield, Staffordshire Johnsons birthplace. The authors father Michael built the house, in which he ran the familys bookshop on the ground floor, facing on to the market square. The building now operates as a museum dedicated to the famous author.

Dr Johnsons Birthplace by Harry Goodwin, 1876

Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds, c. 1769

By Father Jerome Lobo

Translated from the French by Samuel Johnson

After Johnson was forced to abandon his studies at Oxford in 1729 due to a lack of funds, it is believed he lived with his parents above their bookshop in Lichfield. He experienced bouts of mental anguish and physical pain during years of illness, suffering from tics and gesticulations, which are nowadays identified as symptoms of Tourette syndrome. By 1731 Johnsons father was deeply in debt and had lost much of his standing in Lichfield and he died shortly after, having developed an inflammatory fever in December 1731.

In spite of these hardships, Johnson eventually found employment as undermaster at a school in Market Bosworth, which was run by Sir Wolstan Dixie, 4th Baronet who allowed Johnson to teach without a degree. Although Johnson was treated as a servant, he found pleasure in teaching, though at times he complained of finding it weary work. After an argument with Dixie he left the school, and by June 1732 he had once again returned home.

Johnson then spent time with his friend Edmund Hector, who was living in the home of the publisher Thomas Warren. Warren was starting his Birmingham Journal , destined to become the citys first printed newspaper, and he enlisted Johnsons help in writing articles. This connection with Warren grew and Johnson proposed a translation of the Portuguese Jesuit missionary Jeronimo Lobos account of the Abyssinians, having previously read Le Grands French translations and thought that a shorter version might be useful and profitable. Instead of writing the whole work himself, he dictated to Hector, who then took the copy to the printer and made corrections. Johnsons A Voyage to Abyssinia was published a year later, launching Johnsons solo career as a published author.

The original title page

The only known surviving copy of the Birmingham Journal, dated 21 May 1733

by
FATHER JEROME LOBO.

Translated from the French
by
SAMUEL JOHNSON.

CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
london , paris , new york & melbourne .
1887.

Jeronimo Lobo was born in Lisbon in the year 1593. He entered the Order of the Jesuits at the age of sixteen. After passing through the studies by which Jesuits were trained for missionary work, which included special attention to the arts of speaking and writing, Father Lobo was sent as a missionary to India at the age of twenty-eight, in the year 1621. He reached Goa, as his book tells, in 1622, and was in 1624, at the age of thirty-one, told off as one of the missionaries to be employed in the conversion of the Abyssinians. They were to be converted, from a form of Christianity peculiar to themselves, to orthodox Catholicism. The Abyssinian Emperor Segued was protector of the enterprise, of which we have here the story told.

Father Lobo was nine years in Abyssinia, from the age of thirty-one to the age of forty, and this was the adventurous time of his life. The death of the Emperor Segued put an end to the protection that had given the devoted missionaries, in the midst of dangers, a precarious hold upon their work. When he and his comrades fell into the hands of the Turks at Massowah, his vigour of body and mind, his readiness of resource, and his fidelity, marked him out as the one to be sent to the headquarters in India to secure the payment of a ransom for his companions. He obtained the ransom, and desired also to obtain from the Portuguese Viceroy in India armed force to maintain the missionaries in the position they had so far won. But the Civil power was deaf to his pleading. He removed the appeal to Lisbon, and after narrowly escaping on the way from a shipwreck, and after having been captured by pirates, he reached Lisbon, and sought still to obtain means of overawing the force hostile to the work of the Jesuits in Abyssinia. The Princess Margaret gave friendly hearing, but sent him on to persuade, if he could, the King of Spain; and failing at Madrid, he went to Rome and tried the Pope. He was chosen to go to the Pope, said the Patriarch Alfonso Mendez, because, of all the brethren at Goa, the Pater Hieronymus Lupus (Lobo translated into Wolf) was the most ingenious and learned in all sciences, with a mind most generous in its desire to conquer difficulties, dexterous in management of business, and found most able to make himself agreeable to those with whom there was business to be done. The vigour with which he held by his purpose of endeavouring in every possible way to bring the Christianity of Abyssinia within the pale of the Catholic Church is in accordance with the character that makes the centre of the story of this book. Whimsical touches arise out of this strength of character and readiness of resource, as when he tells of the taste of the Abyssinians for raw cows flesh, with a sauce high in royal Abyssinian favour, made of the cows gall and contents of its entrails, of which, when he was pressed to partake, he could only excuse himself and his brethren by suggesting that it was too good for such humble missionaries. Out of distinguished respect for it, they refrained from putting it into their mouths.