I intended to greet the New Year here last night, first thing after our private celebrations, but I didn't get to this until tonight. And now it's already late again, and I find I don't have the book I wanted to use so that I might start the year with an appropriate quote. Typical. What have I done with all of today?!
The anecdote from the biography told of how Johnson wrote this essay, amusingly enough, "hastily" at a friend's house, the boy from the press standing by, waiting for copy.
How could I not want that essay, written under those circumstances?
Well, it's not in any book I own, because I've never been able to find, or afford the kind of Samuel Johnson books I want. I've looked at the Yale edition of The Rambler online, but a full run of all nine volumes sells for, at least, seven hundred and fifty dollars! I'm about to spend eight hundred dollars repairing my car. I think that that will have to come first. (When, oh when, well I ever get an edition of the complete Rambler of my own?! I'm greedy for more of Sam J.)
It's getting later and later, so should I just put off my first blog of the year until the 2nd?
Finding Johnson's essay online, I find this in the first paragraph:
"...I grew every moment more irresolute, my ideas wandered from the first intention, and I rather wished to think, than thought upon any settled subject; till at last I was awakened from this dream of study by a summons from the press: the time was come for which I had been negligently purposing to provide, and, however dubious or sluggish, I was necessitated to write."
Comrade!!
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