Boswell persuaded Johnson, almost age 64, to visit the highlands of Scotland with him in August, 1773. Both Boswell and Johnson wrote small books about it. Johnson's view, both in his letters to Hester Thrale and in this book, was as a social scientist cum historian, taking a clinical examination of the changes that were occurring in Scotland after the Union. Where Boswell's volume (sometimes paired with Johnson's) tends to focus on dialogs with Johnson, Johnson discusses the decaying of the clan structure, emigration, assimilation into the Union... Johnson is very careful as he describes what he sees, carefully measuring distances and relating his observations to historical context.

This review may appear with other editions, but the Oxford edition, edited by Fleeman, is a very thorough and detailed edition for the specialist. For the specialist, it's worth the relatively high price. Fleeman provides detailed notes, and appendices on the the various early editions, cancelled sheets, clans structures, etc. If you are a serious reader of Johnson, as I am, this is the edition to have.

If you are -not- a serious reader, then you would do well to buy the penguin paperback, which combines Johnson's and Boswell's volumes. The two books are fascinating to read in tandem, and it's revealing about Boswell that Johnson doesn't even mention conversations which meant so much to Boswell. In addition, the notes in the Penguin edition (by Peter Levi) are also very helpful.

The -third- part of the story, however -- Johnson's letters to Hester Thrale while J & B were traveling -- are not included in any current edition that I know of. I suspect we will have to wait for an electronic version in order to be able to compare all three resources at once.

This book was my companion on my first trip to Norway, the origin in viking times of the settlement of much of Northern Scotland and the Hebrides. I was curious to know how the region looked in earlier times and, is always the case with the writing of Johnson and Boswell, was happily entertained. If one reads only one travel book then maybe this one is the right one--maybe Lawrence's 'Travels in Italy' is second on my list.

Quite a while back I posted a review of the Oxford edition of Samuel Johnson's writings in which I included a short review of the Penguin edition of the Sctoland journey/journal. Reposting that review to the newest edition of the Oxford book, it occurred to me I ought to place this review where it belongs.

There is little with which one might compare these two wonderful pieces of writing today -- and yet to some extent they are, each in its own way, foundations upon which much of modern writing has been built. Johnson is here, if not at his finest, still nearing an apogee of clarity, lucidity and intellectual rigor. Boswell is making his initial foray into the published first-hand journal, written only half-a-thought out of the public eye, that would eventually lead him to write his enormous and enormously popular Life of Johnson.

Reading the two interlaced is an utter delight -- moving from the formality, grace and power of Johnson to the smaller, more intimate pleasures of Boswell gives one the feeling of having captured, in the adventurous peregrinations of these two inimitable characters, the very breadth and depth of eighteenth century English writing. (I must point out that the Penguin book does not print the two Journals in interlaced fashion, but with a little effort the reader can move between the two so as to get the efect of Johnson and Boswell speaking in turns on the same topology, if not always the same topic...)

To love and admire Johnson, but not appreciate the brilliant, even if much different, stylistic inventions of Boswell seems to me somewhat perverse. Certainly Boswell had his shortcomings, but half the joy of reading and 'knowing' Johnson and his circle comes from appreciating the little peccadilloes and foibles that each displayed in his turn--not the least the Great Cham, Johnson, himself. Having said that I hope I may be allowed one short comment on Frank Lynch's review below. While meaning no disrespect to Frank it seems odd to me that he would note that Johnson does not comment on conversations that Boswell took as very important. Johnson knew of Boswell's journals as they were being written and encouraged Boswell to publish them. Moreover, Johnson was writing a topographical piece and not the more intimate "Travels with the Great Cham" journal that Boswell was writing.

In the long run, that Boswell found these conversations important is what delights us -- his ability to possess and bring weight to the smallness of life contrasts wonderfully with Johnson's ability to enlarge and ennoble life -- and the reflection is an interesting one when we find some of the Great Cham's noble thoughts somewhat bitterly missing the mark while Boswell's little thoughts can roll about one's mind for a very long time.

I cannot think of either of these two men that I don't see Thomas Rowlandson's wonderful caricature of the two walking arm in arm -- the older man a head taller, wagging his finger and pontificating casually and brilliantly on some weighty matter, and the other rolling along beside him smiling with sweet admiration and pride of association. To read Johnson and bypass Boswell, is to find one great treasure and forsake another.

If I must add one small quibble it is that the notes to the Penguin edition seem rather eccentric -- more the product of a dyspeptic travel writer than a Johnsonian scholar.

One poet reviewed in this book is Savage. He was a contemporary of Johnson. His career went from bad to worse. He spent too much time in coffee shops and not enough time writing. His friends supported him financially. It is an interesting story; it rings true; you could imagine someone nowadays writing a similiar life of say Jimi Hendrix.

Samuel Johnson finished an illustrious literary career with a series of biographies of the major English poets up until his time. The series was initiated by bookpublishers, who were interested in preserving their copyrights by publishing new editions of each poet's works, with Johnson's prefaces. Eventually, the prefaces themselves were collected and printed separately from the poems.

Johnson's effort was an attempt at establishing a canon for his day, and he hoped forever. Nowadays, we do not read all of these poets with the same enthusiasm that Johnson did, but his analyses of Milton, Pope, Dryden et al are frequently read to this day. His criticism is outstanding, and the attention which he brings to each poet will make you think twice before disregarding poets we have now forgotten.

This specific edition is a reprint of the 1905 Oxford edition, edited by George Birkbeck Hill. Hill's editorial work on Boswell's Life Of Johnson is the edition typically cited in later works (any footnote citing a six volume Boswell is referring to Hill's effort) and his Johnson Miscellanies is a favorite collection of contemporaneous recollections of Johnson. He brings similar value to this edition of "The Lives Of The Poets." At least until such time as the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson publishes The Lives Of The Poets, this will *remain* the standard edition.

...that captures the essence of human experience. Urgent - natural - inevitable. A good variety of forms - entertaining for the minimalists in particular.

I've been quoting her story "Spring Spleen" to people (in its two-sentence entirety) because it's so delightfully short and it conveys its meaning perfectly. I appreciate quirky and inventive writers very much and found SJII to be an enjoyable read. She's up there with Russell Edson and Padgett Powell as a master of the short form.

I love this book and also felt the need to counter the 2 star reviewer who quoted a one line story from the book without including the story title or the italics. Both are essential to taking in the story because Lydia Davis does not waste a word, even on the title. Most of the stories leave the reader with something universal, even when the "univeral thing" goes unsaid. Some of the stories were so close to the bone that I feel I could've written them if I could pare off words as well as she does. I found the book thought provoking and highly entertaining.

This author of this book is twice guilty. First he is guilty of the all too common academic act of reducing a fascinating subject to a dry and lifeless pseudo-rigorous study. Second he, while attempting impartiality, refuses to opine on what the reader really wants to know.

The characters involved, the location (a combination bar/whorehouse), the actual fight and the defense all could make for some seriously juicy reading. Richard Holmes has succeeded in completely boring the event down. Also he is too timid to really let us know what he thinks of Savage's parentage or Savages culpability in the murder. I suppose he is just trying to present the facts and let the reader draw his or her own conclusion. Holmes: these guys have been dead for centuries. You can go out on a limb and hazard some hard guesses!

The only thing this book really succeeds in doing is whetting my appetite for a good book on the subject.

I'm writing these words under the assumption that anyone who has found himself looking at this review knows a pretty good bit about Samuel Johnson, English Literature in general and at least a little about Mr. Savage (if only from his rather appropriate surname.) It's interesting how literary fads come and go; how a prominent poet or author of one era would find himself outcast in another, and, vice-versa; how an unknown of one era would find himself the talk of the town in another....Imagine Jack Kerouac in the days of Matthew Arnold! But I digress. I think I am one of the few people (the only person that I know of, in fact, Mr. Holmes included) who regards Mr. Savage as a great poet, greater than almost any writing during his lifetime: Thomas Grey and Cowper might be exceptions. He is an early, nearly forgotten path-setting pilgrim in the Romantic tradition, the Visionary Company (a phrase coined by Yeats and picked up as a title for his groundbreaking critical study of the Romantics by Harold Bloom). He is a Shelley, a Rimbaud, a Hart Crane before his time. Dr. Johnson is an anonymous, erudite scholar before his time. There just happened to be no satisfactory English dictionary before he came along, so he became famous for writing the (endearingly quirky) first of its kind. And there you have it. This book is to be commended for revealing what we know of Johnson before he became the old curmudgeon we love to ridicule. Like we all were at one time (Well, the better lot of us anyway.): Johnson was impressionable, naive and idealistic when he met the older Savage, and Savage was almost undoubtedly the subject Johnson had in mind when he penned "Slow rises worth, by Poverty oppressed." in The Vanity of Human Wishes. As Holmes makes clear, Johnson idolized Savage for some time, and with good reason. Savage was what we would call "the real thing," even though the book makes clear that he was a notorious liar, particularly about his birth. What I mean is that he was truly a man possessed by his poetic daemon. As Johnson himself put it, "...what was Nature in Savage would in another be Affectation." Besides Johnson's biography, The Wanderer (subtitled "A Vision") is Savage's (just) claim to fame. This review is no place to give the poem its full treatment. But a few lines Holmes quotes from Canto V will suffice to make my point:"Fishers, who yonder Brink by Torches gain,/ With teethful Tridents strike the scaly Train./ Like Snakes in Eagles claws, in vain they strive,/ When heav'd aloft, and quiv'ring yet-alive." As Holmes astutely points out, "There are moments when Savage's whole universe seems to be convulsed in pain like this, as if agony were the condition or proof of existence, 'quiv'ring yet alive.'...Mother Nature seems to be persecuting an orphaned Earth. This is the central vision of The Wanderer." You have to remember that this was the age in which Pope's pompous and didactic Essay on Man was the norm to gain a full appreciation of how original (and therefore unacceptable) such poetry was at the time. Compare this to Shelley's fragment on the moon (metaphor for himself of course): "Art thou pale from weariness, of climbing Heaven and gazing on Earth, wandering compaionless?" or Rimbaud's Le Bateau Ivre and his comment that "Everything is spiritual. Those things that are called material are merely what is evil in the spiritual realm." Or Hart Crane's "Bequeathe us to no Earthly shore until is answered in the vortex of our grave the seal's wild spendrift gaze toward Paradise." These are the words of the lost and dispossessed, those whose visions of other worlds cause them to despair of this one. But, let's not get too gloomy. The book is a rollicking good read for all that, and even readers not too keen on Savage will find it a page turner....Thank you Mr. Holmes for resurrecting a forgotten genius.

Richard Savage's sole claim to fame is that Johnson wrote a book about him. At the time it was written, however, Johnson wasn't very well known himself and was only marginally more respectable than Savage. Holmes does an excellent job of describing their relationship and showing us how Johnson lived before he bacame a tory sage. He provides an excellent counterweight to Boswell, who tended to play down Johnson's awkwardness and barely concealed rage. At the same time, Holmes never forgets that Johnson was a great writer and man.

I read this book because I wanted to learn the art of fine letter writing of olden times that is spoken of so often. Unfortunately, there was nothing of this nature in this book. However there were a couple dozen letters that were absolutely delightful to read. It was interesting to see not only how people expressed themselves, but to see what went on during their lives and what they put to paper whereas today we might use another medium. It's a very quick read and a great deal of fun.

I read this book because I wanted to learn the art of fine letter writing of olden times that is spoken of so often. Unfortunately, there was nothing of this nature in this book. However there were a couple dozen letters that were absolutely delightful to read. It was interesting to see not only how people expressed themselves, but to see what went on during their lives and what they put to paper whereas today we might use another medium. It's a very quick read and a great deal of fun.

In recent years there has been an extended debate about Enlightenment thought. Though many scholars have concluded that there were several "Enlightenments," some continue to make generalizations about the Enlightenment and some speak about "the Enlightenment agenda." After discussing the cult of the deathbed scene in eighteenth?century Britain and France, the author looks at three currents of Enlightenment thought implicit in the deathbed "projects" of David Hume, Samuel Johnson, and Jean Paul Marat. Although Hume and Johnson hold profoundly different views of religion, their political thinking has much in common. Their reformist thought differs radically from what might be called the transformist thought of Marat, who hoped the French would become disinterested citizens whose civil religion was patriotism.
The book also looks at the response of James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, and Edward Gibbon to the deathbed projects of Hume and Johnson, and it discusses how their political thought differs from Johnson's and Hume's. It also considers the complex relations between reformist and transformist thought in Britain during the last three decades of the century, showing how the views of the two reformist groups and of such transformist writers as Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, and Thomas Paine were affected by a number of political events, from the Wilkes crisis to the French Revolution. Though the book focuses on AngloScottish Enlightenment thought, it often refers to the French Enlightenment, and the chapter on Marat looks at the connection between transformist thought in Britain and France.
The author argues that Enlightenment thought was more varied and?in its reformist currents?less hostile to tradition than many observers have allowed. Enlightenment thought was less a cluster of ideas than a debate about a number of questions, especially the following: how to contain religious and secular fanaticism (or what was called enthusiasm); what are the effects of luxury; and what is the nature of the passions. There was, as J. G. A. Pocock says, "a family of Enlightenments," and "there is room for the recognition of family quarrels..."
Why look at deathbed scenes to chart the currents of Enlightenment thought? Because an interest in deathbed scenes was widespread in eighteenth?century Britain and France. The final days of Hume stirred up a controversy that lasted for at least a decade and the final days of Johnson also attracted a great deal of attention, but Marat's death had the greatest impact of the three. His assassination gave impetus to the Jacobins' attempt to eliminate the influence of the church and greatly expand the influence of the state. Marat's project to transform France failed, but so did the projects of Hume and Johnson. Hume argued that religious belief was based on the foolish fear of death, yet religion remained a strong force in Britain. Johnson hoped for a return to God-fearing religion, yet the educated classes continued to prefer a more benign brand of Christianity in which God's benevolence was stressed far more than his judgment.

Though The Title is a bit stodgy, the read is excellent. It is filled with precise history ,concise observation, and thoughtful analysis.The subject of the "heroic" deathbed scene,on canvas,on stage,in poetry and literature is both enthralling and thought provoking. The treatment of the Age of Enlightenment, when viewed through the prism of the deaths/ deathbed scenes of Hume , Johnson and Marat, is wonderful. Brain Candy!

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Very glad to see an inexpensive edition of Hester Thrale Piozzi's Anecdotes in print. While Boswell's "Life of Johnson" is certainly an engaging read, Boswell's and Piozzi's experieices don't overlap that much, so Piozzi captures a different side of Johnson. Hester Thrale and her husband Henry rescued Johnson from a period of depression by getting him out of London proper and into their family life, and Johnson thrived. Boswell didn't see that much of this side, and their accounts are complementary (though hints of the rivalry often come through). There are also some great lines in here, some of which are my favorites: " Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding;" "The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public;" "we must either outlive our friends you know, or our friends must outlive us; and I see no man that would hesitate about the choice." Well worth your time and money!

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Danckert has developed a nice, portable collection of Johnson quotes, drawing on a variety of his writings, including some sadly neglected ones (the Sermons). The collection provides a very good picture of Johnson's thoughts as a moral instructor, and this is one of the best selection of Johnson's quotes in print. The thoughts here are considerably fuller than what you'll see in a volume like Bartlett's, which tends to go for the quick witticisms. For that alone, it's worth buying. But, I wish it were more: because of the focus, there is a lot of Johnson we don't get. We don't see enough of the political arguments or the literary criticism, we don't get the chestnuts that have often been handed down, but are still new to the newcomer. For instance, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" is not to be found, nor any of his famous comments on Scotland. In my view, this book is incomplete. Even among "incomplete" Johnson collections, I feel there are better ones to be had (Henry Darcy Curwen's "A Johnson Sampler" [Harvard, 1963] has just been re-issued). (You could also look on the Internet.)

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This book is a treasure trove of arcana for the serious reader of Samuel Johnson. McGuffie sat down with the newspapers and monthly magazines of London and Edinburgh (plus some provincial publications here and there), and catalogued every instance in which Johnson, or a work of his, or an announcement of a work of his, r something in response to him (or announcements of publications in repsone to him...) and so on (you get the picture) came up. It's basically a "Readers Guide to Periodical Literature", but the only subject covered is Samuel Johnson.

By year and month, McGuffie lists the publication, the date, the author, a description of the content, and occasionally provides actual verbiage. As such, it's a barometer of Johnson's fame prior to Boswell.

There are some very rich details here, such as the responses to the Rambler and Rasselas. You get a feeling for the popular interest in Rasselas by the number of newspapers which printed extracts from it. There are also is an instance where the French version of a Rambler essay was unwittingly translated back into English, under the mistaken impression that the French translation was an original work worth English readership! There is notice of a letter to an editor where the writer speculates that John Wilkes was *really* upset about Johnson accepting his pension because Wilke's father was a distiller and Wilkes was offended by Johnson's definiton of distiller in his Dictionary ("one who makes and sells pernicious and inflammatory spirits").

McGuffie has delivered something enormously valuable here, even in its present shape. I wish, however, that there were tallies by year/month and type of listing. Someone, someday, will classify these listings and give the future biographers a little better resource.

If you can find this book, my hat's off to you: last I heard it was only in about a dozen libraries in the US, and it never seems to be avaialable in any used bookstores. (I am looking at a copy obtained though an interlibrary loan, and regrettably must return it in two weeks. Sniff, sniff.) So expect to pay dearly for it.

I agree completely with the reader from Ithaca. The last time
I used it for something important, there was a serious typo in a
formula, and much time was wasted.

I have mixed feelings about this book.

On the positive side, it contains a wealth of useful information about a large number of continuous probability distribution functions. I use it all the time as a reference in my work. The book contains a extensive bibliography which has been useful time and time again when I need to look up things in the literature.

My first complaint is there are a number of mistakes. I realize this is a huge mass of information and mistakes are inevitable, but I found it quite unacceptable that the probability density function for the Normal distribution was incorrect. Equation 13.1 is missing a factor of sigma in the denominator. This one was quite obvious, but there have been several more subtle errors, which have caused me to waste a large amount of time searching my own work for mathematical errors, until I finally realized the source of the error was the book!

My second complaint is consistency (or lack thereof). The symbols and notation used for one distribution are not necessarily used in the same way for another distribution. This can be quite frustrating! Also, the organization from chapter to chapter (each chapter corresponds to one distribution or one distribution family) is not consistent. For example, for the Lognormal distribution, there is one section (called "Introduction") which gives the pdf of the distribution and a second section (called "Moments and Other Properties") where the moments of the distribution are listed. For the Weibull distribution, both the pdf and the moments are in one section (labeled "Definition"). This sounds like a minor point, until it comes time for you to look one of these things up!

In summary, I need this book to do my job. But I keep wishing there was another book that had the same information, but with better accuracy and organization.

Johnson and Kotz in particular continue their series of ongoing descriptions and analyses of probability/statistics distributions which is an ingenious production. They have the Creative Genius talents of summarizing, organizing, emphasizing open questions, and open mindedness to new ideas (although I have not quite tested them on some very ideas of my own). These qualities in various combinations can also be found in Allday's 1998 book in physics (which I reviewed)and Weinberg's 1974 and later books in physics (some of which I reviewed). Johnson et al. have some Creative Genius categories which are rarely found. For one thing, they cross-categorize distributions ("graphs" for the non-specialist)by their applications to real world problems, which is usually notoriously lacking in math and physics publications (beyond one or two problems). Secondly, they CHARACTERIZE distributions by various properties such as heredity (the same distribution holds for a sum of variables as for one variable, etc.), exponential derivation from other distributions, conditional expectations (I would prefer logic-based probability (LBP) expectations, but it's better than nothing), etc. In other words, their very categorization of distributions is by critical research categories and fundamental logical-factual categories, at least as far as they know them. I recommend this book and the whole series from the same authors (or at least most of them) without reservations except the ones mentioned for LBP, and I urge specialists in these fields to recommend that their students and even "laymen" (non-academic people)purchase this volume and hire a consultant or tutor to translate them or explain them in closer to ordinary English if their probability/statistical background is lacking or deficient.