...a blockhead ever wrote except for money." I took delight in his blunt rebuke of Lord Chesterfield: "Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern...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...

...in Britain, after the Great Reform Act, the electorate was, roughly, 10 per cent of adult males, * 'Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern...life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?' (Samuel Johnson, Letter to Lord Chesterfield). 409 and in the United States...

...Chesterfield's supposed belated redemption of his earlier offer of support for Johnson's dictionary project: "Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern...life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?"39 On useless bustle: "It is like getting on horseback in a ship."40 From...

...workers, the crisis had a surreal, almost wartime air. It was now that the president showed his new spurs. "Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water," Dr. Johnson had famously quipped to Lord Chesterfield, who had failed to support the famous literary...

...amorous and sociable. Samuel Johnson gracefully outlines this naive aspect of pastoral when he remarks, "The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks." For later poets, too, the pastoral realm appeared simple and blessedly ordinary, in contrast to the...