...neglect. He wrote his celebrated letter to Lord Chesterfield, and renounced a patron who ' could look with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he had reached ground, encumbered him with help.' Warburton, who was personally unknown to Johnson, sent...

...out Johnson's experience of the noble lord's own politeness, which had taught him that a patron was "one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling...when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help" (Boswell 1906 [1791]: I 156-9). As this example perhaps reminds us, the less edifying operations of...

...that final and irreparable loss, to agree with Samuel Johnson when he said: "The shepherd in Vergil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks." You say in one of your letters that you never knew a soul with whom you felt that you were in such...

...'one Act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour'. Hence the barbed put-down: The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with...when he has reached ground encumbers him with help. 74 - and the significant substitution when Johnson revised The Vanity of Human Wishes in 1749: There...

...'one Act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour'. Hence the barbed put-down: The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with...and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help.74 - and the significant substitution when Johnson revised The Vanity of Human Wishes in 1749:...

...encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before. The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with...struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached the ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had...

...and the literary marketplace complemented each other as sources of sustenance for aspiring authors. "Is not a Patron, My Lord, one who looks with unconcern...when he has reached ground encumbers him with help?" writes Samuel Johnson in his famous letter to Lord Chesterfield, dated 7 February 1755. "The notice...

...Samuel Johnson expressed his disdain for private patrons in 1754, when he bitterly defined a patron as "one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling...and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help."17 Thus the ideal of independence and autonomy became increasingly central to authorial identity...

...verse (eg, The Vanity of Human Wishes, 1:105). At the famous line in the Letter to Lord Chesterfield, "The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks," he responds with vexation, "What does this mean? that Ld. Ch's heart was a Rock? — if so, to me it...

...didn't like the book, but were forced to sanction it owing to the persistent demands of the laity? ('Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern...he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?') [Original draft: 'I could say much more about this, but I don't think I will.'] From this point of...