My Sam Johnson

Wayne discusses Sam Johnson's writing style and his plans to try to encourage more reading of Johnson in the biography that he's writing.

Examples of a couple of Sam's prayers and how they illustrate his character and mindset.

Sam gets married in 1735 to a widow named Elizabeth ("Tetty") Jervis, and for a year or so they try to get him set up as a teacher.

Wayne consults Sam Johnson's dictionary, published in 1755, to see if it contains a definition or a use of the phrase "in terms of" as we use it today – and ends with a brief summary of the state of digitization of this dictionary.

Sam defends himself against a fraud poet who claimed that he (the poet) had translated the poems of a 3rd-century poet named Ossian. Sam said they were fakes – and they did turn out to be so.