Today is Samuel Johnson's 298th birthday. On the subject of aging, of another year passing, Johnson was characteristically philosophical. In a Sept. 21, 1773, letter to Hester Thrale he wrote:
"Boswell, with some of his troublesome kindness, has informed this family, and reminded me that the eighteenth of September is my birthday. The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape. I can now look back upon threescore and four years, in which little has been done, and little has been enjoyed, a life diversified by misery, spent part in the sluggishness of penury, and part under the violence of pain, in gloomy discontent, or importunate distress. But perhaps I am better than I should have been, if I had been less afflicted. With this I will try to be content."
Jerome Weeks at Critical Mass today has a fine appreciation of Johnson; his great biographer, W. Jackson Bate; and even the other Samuel, Beckett.
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