| The present study is new in the sense that it is the first attempt to determine the influence of the various sciences on Johnson's life and writings. Chapter two expounds an entirely new thesis concerning his activities in the years 1730-32,--a thesis supported by both documentary and circumstantial evidence. The remaining chapters point out the sources, validity, extent, and literary uses of Johnson's knowledge of the eighteenth-century sciences, with a comprehensiveness hiterto unattempted. Among the sources, the importance of the natural theological works as teachers of science has not, I think, been pointed out before. My conclusion that Johnson's knowledge of individual sciences ranged from ignorance to professional competence is at variance with the commonly accepted idea that his grasp of scientific subjects was, for his period, well-nigh universal. The explanation of the various possible levels of literary reference to science, and the placing of Johnson's on the middle level is, I think, new. Johnson's extreme interest in technology rather than theoretical science is to be expected from a person of his practicality, but it is here proved beyond doubt. His connection with the Society of Arts, and the influence of his economic writings on the great agricultural developments of the eighteenth century, are for the first time extensively investigated.;Moreover, new materials for the biography of Johnson are to be found, such as the evidence concerning his qualities as a scientist, and his attitude toward study and experiment in the physical sciences. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI.;Among the new notes on specific passages in the Life which are not to be found in the Hill-Powell edition, may be mentioned those on "making aether", the insanity of Zachariah Williams, terrestrial magnetism, electrotherapy, and the interesting fate of Johnson's barometer, which was thrown from a balloon into the Bristol Channel. The probable source of the insistence on accuracy that is so characteristic of the Johnson circle, and the scientific works in which the ideas behind many of Johnson's similes in the Rambler are to be found, are also pointed out. The allusions to the Hereford Infirmary, and to the madness of Williams, which are to be found in the Rambler, have not been noticed before. |
