Sunday, August 15, 2021

Three things worth going to see in Lichfield: the Birthplace Museum of Johnson, the statue of biographer Boswell, the Darwin museum - and three spires cathedral





Samuel Johnson.

What an extraordinary life he led. He was in and out of debt all his life. He married an older woman who was widowed, a wealthy woman. (Like Disraeli did later.) He loved Lichfield but left for London and travelled.He was not the first or the only person to compile a dictionary.

he famously said:

He who is tired of London is tired of life.

  • The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.
    • Review of Soame Jenyns' A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, published in the first volume of Miscellaneous and Fugitive Pieces (London, 1774), p. 23
  • He who praises everybody praises nobody.
    • Johnson's Works (1787), vol. XI, p. 216; This set included the Life of Samuel Johnson by Sir John Hawkins
  • I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
    • Quoted in the "Apophthegms, Sentiments, Opinions and Occasional Reflections" of Sir John Hawkins (1787-1789) in Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), vol. II, p. 6, edited by George Birkbeck Hill
  • A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
    • Quoted in the "Apophthegms, Sentiments, Opinions and Occasional Reflections" of Sir John Hawkins (1787-1789) in Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), vol. II, p. 11, edited by George Birkbeck Hill
    • Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
  • Nothing ... will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.
    • Chapter 6
    • To a poet nothing can be useless.
      • Chapter 10
      • No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
        • March 1759, p. 97
      • It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. 
    • Hell is paved with good intentions.
      • April 14, 1775
      • I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
      • It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.
        • May 1, 1783, p. 513

      Attributed to him after he died:




      What are the landmarks and places to visit in Lichfield? 

      1 The highest is the triple spires of the Cathedral. 

      2 The first landmark find and see is the statue of Boswell.

      3 My top attraction is the museum of Samuel Johnson who compiled the dictionary in 1755. Johnson is also famous for two quotations.

      He who is tired of London is tired of life.

      Worth seeing, but not worth going to see.

      But there is a fourth must see museum. Darwin, grandfather of Charles

      Just 6 miles outside the city is the National Arboretum, but full of statues and memorials to people and places from various wars.


       Useful Websites

      https://www.visitlichfield.co.uk/attractions/samuel-johnson-birthplace-museum

      Virtual tour of the Museum

      https://www.samueljohnsonbirthplace.org.uk/Virtual_Tour_6133.aspx

      https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson

      National Memorial Arboretum

      https://www.thenma.org.uk/visit-us/what's-here/the-memorials/list-of-memorials

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