The measure of a persons life may best be made by contemporaries who can judge it by the mores of the times in which they lived and compare the successes and failures to that of other individuals who had similar advantages or disadvantages.

      It is inappropriate to evaluate an individual using modern concepts and philosophies that were unknown during the subjects lifetime. Actions should not be compared to those who lived in the current or a different era because social, economic and political views are undoubtedly different. There has been  a great deal of progress in the fields of individual rights and personal opportunities since the eighteenth century. Standards have changed as have the expectations of a persons actions and responsibilities.  Human rights and liberties, refinement of religion and choice in life styles continue to develop and are constantly being altered.

     With this in mind contemporary comments relative to the deaths of Samuel Johnson and of James Boswell follow:

SAMUEL JOHNSON

James Boswell   

 “My feeling was just one large expanse of Stupor…I could not believe it.  My imagination was not convinced.”

William Gerard Hamilton        

“He has made a chasm, which not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a tendency to fill up. – Johnson is dead. – Let us go to the next best: There is nobody; - no man can be said to put you in mind of Johnson.”

Joshua Reynolds (attribution from Private Papers of James Boswell (F.A. Pottle)

Edmund Burke (attribution from Samuel Johnson (John Wain) 

“His work is almost done; and well has he done it!”

Gentleman’s Magazine Obituary Column Records        

“On December 13 a little before seven in the evening, without a pang long before oppressed with a complication of dreadful maladies, the great and good Dr. Samuel Johnson, the pride of English literature and of human nature (died).”

John Hoole & William Seward        

“The most awful sight of Dr. Johnson laid out on his bed, without life!”

Arthur Murphy        

 “The author of these Memoirs has been anxious to give the features of the man, and The true character of the author. He has not suffered the hand of partiality to color is Excellences with too much warmth; nor has he endeavoured to throw his Singularities too much into the shade. Dr. Johnson’s failings may well be forgiven for the Sake of his virtues. His defects were spots in the fun. His piety, his kind affections and the goodness of his heart, present an example worthy of imitation. His works still remain a monument of genius and learning.”

“It may be said, the death of Dr. Johnson kept the public mind in agitation beyond a all former example. No literary character ever excited so much attention; and, when the press has teemed with anecdotes, apophthegms, essays, and publications of every kind, what occasion now for a new tract on the same threadbare subject?”

Horace Walpole         

“Often, indeed, Johnson made the most brutal speeches…for though he was good-natured at bottom, he was very ill-natured at top…If his opponents were weak, he told them they were fools; if they vanquished him, he was scurrilous  - to nobody more than Boswell himself, who was contemtible for flattering him so grossly, and for enduring the coarse things he was continually vomiting on Boswell’s own country, Scotland…I never would be in the least acquainted with Johnson…nor did I ever exchange a syllable with him.”

John Hawkins        

 “I have been thus minute in recording the particulars of his last moments, because I wished to attract attention to the conduct of this great man, under the most trying circumstances human nature is subject to. Many persons have appeared possessed of more serenity of mind in this awful scene; some have remained unmoved at the dissolution of the vital union; and, it may be deemed a discouragement from the severe practice of religion, that Dr. Johnson, whose whole life was a preparation for his death  and a conflict with natural infirmity, was disturbed with terror at the prospect of  the grave.”

Hester Lynch Piozzi   

“I have recovered myself sufficiently to think what will be the Consequence to me of Johnson’s Death, but must wait the Event as all Thoughts on the future in this World are vain. Poor Johnson! I see they will leave nothing untold that I laboured so long to keep secret; & I was so very delicate in trying to conceal his fancied Insanity, that I retained no Proofs of it – or hardly any – nor ever mentioned it in these Books, lest by my dying first they might be printed and the Secret (for such I thought it) discovered.”

“The best Writers are not the best Friends, and the last Character is more to be valued than the first – by contemporaries.”                                                                                                                                                 

Charles Burney         

“Poor Johnson is gone! I truly reverenced his genius, learning and piety, without being blind to his prejudices. I think I know and could name them all. We often differed in matters of taste, and in our judgements of individuals. My respect for what I thought excellent in him never operated on my reason sufficiently to incline me to subscribe to his decisions when I thought them erronious.”

Fanny Burney         

“Dec. 20^th. – This day was the ever-honored, ever-lamented Dr. Johnson committed to the earth. Oh, how sad a day to me! My father attended, and so did Charles. I could not keep my eyes dry all day; nor can I now, in the recollecting it; but let me pass over what to mourn is now so vain.”

Hannah More         

“His death made a kind of era in literature.”

Miss Berry        

“The world of literature was perplexed and distressed – as a swarm of bees that have lost Their queen – when Dr. Johnson died.”

Anna Seward        

“I have lately been in almost daily habit of contemplating a very melancholy spectacle.  The great Dr. Johnson is here, labouring under a paroxysms of a disease, which must speedily be fatal. He shrinks from the consciousness with the extremest horror. It is by his repeatedly expressed desire that I visit him often: yet I am sure he neither does, nor ever did feel much regard for me; but he would fain escape, for a time, in any society, from the terrible idea of his approaching dissoulution. I never would be awed by his sarcasms, or his frowns, into acquiescence with his general injustice to the merits of  other writers; with his national, or party aversions; but I feel the truest compassion for his present sufferings.”

"Extinct is that mighty spirit, in which so much large expansion and illiberal narrowness of mind were blended."

"Those who are not interested in Johnson's anecdotes can have little intellectual curiosity and no imagination. Often have nobles, princes, perhaps kings, stood awed in the presence of the son of a Lichfield bookseller."

Edmond Malone       

“I suppose you know poor Boswell died on Tuesday morning, without any pain. I don’t think he at any time of his illness knew his danger. I shall miss him more and more every day. He was in the constant habit of calling on me almost daily, and used to grumble sometimes at his turbulence, but now miss and regret his noise and hilarity and his perpetual good humour, which had no bounds. Poor fellow, he has somehow stolen away from us, without any notice, and without my being at all prepared for it.”

“Considerable intellectual powers, people should recall James Boswell as a person possessing an inexhaustible fund of good humour and good nature, as ready to exert himself for his friends as any other man.”

He was “extremely warm in his attachments.”

Sir William Forbes         

“The most striking memorials of the high degree of estimation in which he was held by a numerous and respectable a circle of acquaintance as any private gentleman, I believe, could boast of.”

“I went on Sunday to Auchinleck House and on Monday assisted at paying the last mournful tribute to the memory of a friend with whom I lived in the strictist intimacy for thirty-six years, and to whose steady and unalterable regard and attachment I shall ever look back with gratitude and affection.”

Reverend Charles Rogers        

 “Seldom has Scottish landlord evinced greater consideration for his tenantry amd domestics.”

A Contemporary        

“It was impossible, to look upon his face without being moved by the comicality

which always reigned upon it.”

John Taylor, Esq.        

 “It is no wonder that Mr. Boswell was universally well received. He was full of anecdote, well acquainted with the most distinguished characters, good-humoured and ready at repartee. There was a kind of jovial bluntness in his manner, which threw off all restraint even with strangers, and immediately kindled a social familiarity.”

Thomas Barnard        

 “No doubt that Boswell would go to heaven, for his Principals were  those of a Chrisitian, and not lightly taken up.”

Gentleman’s Magazine (Anonymous)        

“His enemies are welcome, if they please, to dwell on his failings. Of these he had not many, and they were injurious to no person. It seems to me that he never did, or could, injure any human being intentionally.”

Sir William Scott      

 “I regret with you most heartily that we have lost a companion in poor Bozzy whose place is never to be supplied. Poor fellow! I lament our loss of him beyond measure.”

Richard Cumberland        

“I loved the man; he had great convivial powers and an inexhaustible fund of good humour in society; nobody could detail the spirit of conversation in the true style and character of the parties more happily than my friend James Boswell, especially when his vivacity was excited and his heart exhilerated by the circulation of the glass and the grateful odour of a well-broiled lobster.”

Joseph Farington, R.A.