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Samuel Johnson lived during the European Enlightenment and therefore believed that ideas should be expressed freely. He once said, “The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.”

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Transcript

Lead: Samuel Johnson lived during the European Enlightenment and therefore believed that ideas should be expressed freely. He once said, “The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.”

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: With roots in the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, Enlightenment thinking advocated the use of reason to challenge existing doctrines and traditions. The result: significant reforms in government, religion, economics, philosophy and education and important advances in humanist principles--freedom, individual rights, liberty and equality.

In Samuel Johnson’s London, Enlightenment concepts from Europe and Scotland were spread like intellectual viruses through the thousands of coffee houses and taverns where people gathered for alcoholic, caffeinated and intellectual stimulation. These ideas were also spread through leading pamphlets and periodicals of the time such as Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s "The Spectator" (1711), which introduced the stylistic innovation known as the periodic essay. Samuel Johnson, nurtured on "The Spectator," used that format in his own periodicals, "The Rambler" and "The Idler."

A century before Johnson’s rise, poet John Milton, during England’s Civil War, advocated individual liberty, political and religious freedoms, including freedom of the press--ideas that would become part of Enlightenment dogma. Although Johnson respected John Milton as a poet and quoted him many times in his "Dictionary of the English Language," Johnson was not personally fond of Milton and less fond of his epic poem "Paradise Lost" which he thought was stylistically flawed. He once said, “'Paradise Lost' is a book that, once put down, is very difficult to pick up again.”

Research by Ann Johnson, at the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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