The New Criterion
America’s leading review of the arts and intellectual life
- Harry Mount, the London Telegraph
FeaturesJune 2009 Cheerfulness breaks in by Pat Rogers On two new biographies of the incomparable Dr. Johnson. As time goes by, it generally softens asperities in the character of men and women from the past. We have quite a cuddly image of Ben Franklin, but to those who met him he could seem truculent and abrasive. Something rather different has happened in the case of Samuel Johnson. He used to be presented as a formidable figure—an overbearing literary potentate, if not a clubroom bore whose table you would avoid in the dining room. People thought him domineering and arrogant, qualities reflected in his nickname “the Great Cham.” Oldstyle British actors gave him a plummy upper-class bark, even though the evidence showed that he spoke with a strong Midlands accent, not too far from the nasal intonation you can hear on the streets of Birmingham today. It has all changed dramatically in the last half-century. In fact, the shift has its roots even further back, in an essay by an outstanding sc ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 27 June 2009, on page 17 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Cheerfulness-breaks-in-4098
rate this article for your user profile
E-mail to friend
|
by Pat Rogers On The Letters of Laurence Sterne, edited by Melvyn New and Peter de Voogd. Christopher, for better & for worse On the critic, polemicist & raconteur Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011).
Webcasts
Anthony Daniels on the Euro Crisis
Andrew C. McCarthy: The Muslim Threat
Roger Kimball: The Grim Future of Statism Weblog 
|
add a comment
you must have an account to post a comment. {register now}