The World’s Greatest Outlaw

The life of Samuel Johnson, would-be attorney-at-law

“The Third Otani Hiroemon as an Outlaw Standing Near a Willow Tree” by Katsukawa Shunsho, 1777, via the Metropolitan Museum of Art, purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1918

By Richard Cohen

Toward the end of his life, Samuel Johnson drew up a list of subjects that he would like to research. He projected forty-nine works in all; none was on any aspect of the law. According to James Boswell, Johnson’s celebrated biographer, almost the only subjects sure to dis­tress Johnson when raised were mortality, par­ticularly his own, and what might have trans­pired had he become a lawyer. Even when nearing seventy, he rounded on his friend William Scott, who had innocently commented, “What a pity it is, sir, that you did not follow the profession of the law. You might have been lord chancellor of Great Britain and attained to the dignity of the peerage.” According to Boswell, “Johnson, upon this, seemed much agitated; and in an angry tone exclaimed, ‘Why will you vex me by suggesting this, when it is too late?’ ” For here lay a curious paradox: of all great writers, in any language, Johnson was the one most consumed by the law, yet he never practiced it, and being relegated to the position of an outside observer brought him profound misery — even as he acknowledged his career could not have been otherwise.

For the young Johnson, actually studying the law in any formal way had proved im­possible. After leaving Oxford without a degree (he was too poor to continue beyond a bare thirteen months there), he cast around for suit­­able em­ployment, taking up a succession of me­nial teaching posts and then, in 1738, regular hack work for the London-based Gentleman’s Magazine. He would sign letters “Impransus” — the supperless one. About that time, he inquired of a legal friend “whether a person might be permitted to practice as an advocate” in the House of Commons without a degree in civil law. The authority he consulted, an Oxford contemporary, was confident that Johnson “would have attained to great eminence.” Johnson himself believed that he would have been a successful law­yer, one reason being his lightning ability to understand both (or many) sides of an argument. Boswell affectionately reports that there were times when the “Why, sir…” of later John­sonian replies was designed to give him a cru­cial extra second to decide which side of an ar­gu­ment to take that day. Hardly an unprejudiced observer, Boswell adds: