Samuel Johnson and Sir Thomas Browne Christian Nicholas Henry Hitchings Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University College London University of London (July 2002) ProQuest Number: 10015053 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10015053 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract of thesis This thesis explores the literary and intellectual relationship between Samuel Johnson and Sir Thomas Browne. It demonstrates the importance of Johnson’s contribution to the history of criticism of Browne, and also constitutes a case study of Johnson’s methods in compiling his Dictionary. I show what grounds there are for believing that Browne was of special importance to Johnson, and that there were significant affinities between the two writers. I set my work against the background of existing scholarship, which tends to neglect the links between Johnson and Browne. I consider the decline of Browne’s reputation in the years that followed his death, suggesting how it is possible to see Johnson’s work on Browne as a significant recuperation. I then examine Johnson’s Life of Browne and the edition of Christian Morals to which it was prefixed, arguing that the Life is an important event in the development of Johnson’s biographical method. I next consider the relationship between Browne’s natural philosophy and Johnson’s, focusing on three particular areas in which their thinking is allied: the emphasis on experiment and observation, the moral purpose of natural philosophy, and the attraction o f‘strangeness’. Thereafter I examine in detail Johnson’s extensive use of extracts from Browne’s works in his Dictionary. First I provide a description of Johnson’s deployment of illustrative quotations culled from Browne, showing the distribution and sources of quotations, including those added for the fourth edition; the result is a ‘map’ of the Dictionary's use of Browne. I then analyse these findings, in order to determine what fields of knowledge they delineate, as well as how they illustrate Johnson’s critical interests and priorities. Finally, I consider Browne’s nineteenth-century afterlife. I chart the influence of Johnson’s critique and uses of Browne, and examine the championing of Browne by Coleridge, Hazlitt, Lamb and others. Contents Abstract 2 Contents 3 Acknowledgements 4 Key to abbreviations 5 Introduction 7 Chapter 1: Browne before Johnson, and the conditions in Which Johnson took on the Life o f Browne 35 Chapter 2: theLife o f Browne and the business of Literary biography 71 Chapter 3: Johnson and Browne — doubt, truth and natural philosophy 115 Chapter 4: Johnson and theDictionary — lexicographical precedents and the uses of Sir Thomas Browne 179 Chapter 5: Browne’s contribution to the Dictionary 242 Chapter 6: Browne after Johnson; the nineteenth- century after-life of Sir Thomas Browne 306 Appendix A: the availability of Johnson’sDictionary - print runs and prices 349 Appendix B: a list of the words under which Browne is cited by Johnson in the Dictionary 351 Bibliography 366 Acknowledgements In the course of my work researching and writing this thesis, I have incurred a number of debts of gratitude. I should like first to thank John Mullan for his generous and good-humoured supervision. Henry Woudhuysen and Tim Langley also read drafts of chapters, and I am grateful to them for their comments. Robert DeMaria, Kwasi Kwarteng, Tony Nuttall and Robin Robbins fielded my enquiries patiently. Lindsay Duguid of the Times Literary Supplement afforded me an opportunity to review several volumes that I was later glad to have in my possession. My research has been facilitated by the staff of the British Library and The University of London Library at Senate House. I especially wish to thank my parents for their unstinting support and encouragement over the past four years. Key to abbreviations used Works by or about Johnson JM Johnsonian Miscellanies, Edited by G. B. Hill. 2 vols. Oxford, 1897. Letters The Letters of Samuel Johnson. The Hyde Edition, edited by Bruce Bedford. 5 vols. Oxford, 1992-4. Life James Boswell. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., with a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Edited by G. B. Hill, and revised by L. F. Powell. 6 vols. Oxford, 1934-64. Lives Lives of the English Poets, by Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Edited by G. B. Hill. 3 vols. Oxford, 1905. MW Samuel Johnson: The Major Works. Edited by Donald Greene. Oxford, 2000. Plan Samuel Johnson. The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language; Addressed to the Right Honourable Philip Dormer, Earl of Chesterfield. London, 1747. Yale The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. General Editor, John H. Middendorf. New Haven, Connecticut, 1958-. Works by or about Browne CM Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, The Second Edition with the Life of the Author by Samuel Johnson, LL.D.. Edited by S. C. Roberts. Cambridge, 1927. K The Works of Sir Thomas Browne. Edited by Geoffrey Keynes. 4 vols. London, 1964. PE Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica. Edited by Robin Robbins. 2 vols. Oxford, 1981. RM Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici. Edited by Jean-Jacques Denonain. Cambridge, 1953. Wilkin Sir Thomas Browne's Works including his Life and Correspondence. Edited by Simon Wilkin. 4 vols. London, 1835-6. Periodicals ECS Eighteenth-Century Studies MP Modern Philology N &Q Notes and Queries PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America PQ Philological Quarterly RES Review of English Studies TLS Times Literary Supplement YES The Yearbook of English Studies Introduction The most conspicuous link between Samuel Johnson and Sir Thomas Browne is Johnson’s Life o f Browne, which appeared in the second edition of Browne’s Christian Morals, published in 1756. Of all the biographies Johnson wrote prior to the Lives o f the Poets, it is his most sustained and interesting, with the exception of the implicitly autobiographical Life of Savage} The Life o f Browne was Johnson’s first significant publication following the completion the previous year of his Dictionary, which itself testifies to his reading in Browne, since Johnson selected from Browne’s works a very large number of its illustrative quotations. As I shall show, this body of quotations has a distinctive place in the Dictionary. In addition to these two compelling but almost entirely unexplored links - and perhaps explaining them - there is a kind of intellectual kinship between the two men. Both are Christian moralists, and they share many attitudes regarding matters of truth and religion. Both men’s works display a keen attention to moral and scientific details, and both are profoundly concerned with medicine and with the collection of arcane and interesting information. What is more, there is a perceptible stylistic link between the two men’s writings, which was noted by several of Johnson’s contemporary critics. My thesis therefore is an account of affinities as well as of influences. ' The Johnson scholar Sydney Roberts, in his introduction to the only authoritative modem edition of Christian Morals, suggests that Johnson’s edition was ‘part o f ... [his] work in Grub Street’, but that ‘it was a task to which he must have turnedcon amore' (CM, xii). My purpose is to suggest that the connection between Johnson and Browne is an important one, and that it is unfortunate it has usually been overlooked. The scholar of Johnson may profit from taking more account of Johnson’s interest in Browne, and the scholar of Browne may profit from understanding the contribution of Johnson to the development of Brovme’s posthumous reputation. My approach to this project commenced from a position as a student of Johnson, rather than from that of a student of Browne. The idea of examining Johnson’s relationship with Browne was initiated by my observing, in the course of work on the Dictionary, that it contained what seemed to be a very large - and to me surprisingly large - number of quotations from Browne. I was conscious of having seen very little reference to this in scholarly publications on Johnson. Indeed, further research confirmed that critical accounts of Johnson’s work almost invariably made no mention of Sir Thomas Browne. The biographical essay that precedes Johnson’s edition of Christian Morals has merited only the occasional passing comment. For the most part it is merely included in a list of the biographies written by Johnson, the implication being that it is just another piece of hack work of the kind critics can afford to overlook. Johnson’s minor writings are usually dismissed, and the Life o f Browne is unjustly bundled in among them. Yet recent scholarship has suggested that Johnson’s less clearly canonical works offer essential insights into his thinking.^ ^ One recent example is Philip Smallwood (ed.),Johnson Re-visioned: Looking Before and After (London, 2001). The considerable volume of quotations from Browne in the Dictionary is sometimes briefly noted by critics.^ Equally, there is, on occasion, a throwaway