Life is never perfectly happy for the hero of a Collected Letters. One of the things that letters rather than biographies display is how much incidental illness human beings tend to undergo, even those of reasonable health who are destined to make old bones. Johnson has all the 18th-century's bluntness on matters of health. 'The old flatulence distressed me again last night,' he tells Hester Thrale in 1775, adding with comic intent: 'The world is full of ups and downs, as I think I once told you before.' In the next month he is still describing his problem: 'I cannot get free from this vexatious flatulence, and therefore have troublesome nights.' Johnson had his fair share of self-pity, though more on matters mental than physical. Self-pity has had a bad press lately, but someone who has no sorrow for themselves will hardly have pity on others. Johnson's capacity to feel for himself can readily be related to his strong capacity to feel for others, especially the ill, the helpless and the poor.

LRB 5 November 1992 | PDF Download