English literature the book is designed to acquaint students with the main outlines

Johnson’s friends (The Johnson circle) were the most important writers of the late 1700s. They included Oliver Goldsmith; Edmund Burke, who stood high in the councils of the nation. Burke’s main work is to be found in a series of political pamphlets, mainly delivered in the form of speeches. Burke in his prose a ways has the spoken word in mind, and, though he argues closely, he has the audience in view. This contact with the audience gave him the eloquence and the passion which entered into some of his best- known passages (“On American Taxation”, 1774, “On Conciliation with the Colonies”, 1775), Burke’s oratoiy became a part of English history. Special tribute should be given to Johnson’s biographer, James Boswell (1740-1795), whose “Life of Johnson” was published in 1791. The publication in the middle ofthe twentieth century of Boswell’s own journals and diaries has established him

as a major writer, independently of the ‘Life”. It was the Jonson of the later years that he recorded, working from minute records of his sayings, and his mannerism, and with a realistic art that has no parallel. The capacity, the wit, and the downrightness of Johnson, along with his often kindly and always devout approach to life, are the elements ofthe portrait which Boswell has created, and without his biographer Johnson would be a lesser man. The list should also include an outstanding playwright of the time, Richard Brinsley Sheridan.