A Biographical Sketch of Dr Samuel Johnson was written by Thomas Tyers for The Gentleman's Magazine

The Gentleman's Magazine

The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" for a periodical...

s December 1784 issue. The work was written immediately after the death of Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

 and is the first postmortem biographical work on the author. The first full length biography was written by John Hawkins

John Hawkins (author)

Sir John Hawkins was an English author and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole. He was part of Johnson's various clubs but later left The Literary Club after a disagreement with some of Johnson's other friends. His friendship with Johnson continued and he was made one of the executors...

 and titled Life of Samuel Johnson

Life of Samuel Johnson (1787)

The Life of Samuel Johnson or Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D. was written by John Hawkins in 1787. It was the first full biography of Samuel Johnson with Thomas Tyers's A Biographical Sketch of Dr Samuel Johnson being the first short postmortem biography. Hawkins was friends with Johnson, but many...

.

Background

There is little known about the relationship that Johnson and Tyers shared, except that Johnson claimed that "Tyers always tells him something he did not know before" and was familiarly mentioned by Johnson to Johnson's friends. However, Johnson, in The Idler

The Idler (1758-1760)

The Idler was a series of 103 essays, all but twelve of them by Samuel Johnson, published in the London weekly the Universal Chronicle between 1758 and 1760. It is likely that the Chronicle was published for the sole purpose of including The Idler, since it had produced only one issue before the...

, described Tyers, called Tom Restless, as "a circumstance" and says:

"When Tom Restless rises he goes into a coffee-house, where he creeps so near to men whom he takes to be reasoners, as to hear their discourses and endeavours to remember something which, when it has been strained through Tom's head, is so near to nothing, that what it once was cannot be discovered. This he carries round from friend to friend through a circle of visits, till, hearing what each says upon the question, he becomes able at dinner to say a little himself; and as every great genius relaxes himself among his inferiors, meets with some who wonder how so young a man can talk so wisely."

On 13 December 1784, Samuel Johnson died. In response to his death, the Gentleman's Magazine ran A Biographical Sketch of Dr Samuel Johnson for their December issue. The work was written in the short time between the death and the printing. Although it was the first biographical work on Johnson, the first full length biography would be published by Murphy in 1787.

Biography

Tyers used his Biographical Sketch to discuss Johnson's mental state, but not everyone agreed with the way Tyers revealed Johnson's private life; Hester Thrale

Hester Thrale

Hester Lynch Thrale was a British diarist, author, and patron of the arts. Her diaries and correspondence are an important source of information about Samuel Johnson and 18th-century life.-Biography:Thrale was born at Bodvel Hall, Caernarvonshire, Wales...

 wrote, in her Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson

Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson

The Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson or the Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. During the Last Twenty Years of His Life by Hester Thrale, also known as Hester Lynch Piozzi, was first published 26 March 1786. It was based on the various notes and anecdotes of Samuel Johnson that Thrale...

, "Poor Johnson! I see they will leave nothing untold that I laboured so long to keep secret; & I was so very delicate in trying to conceal his fancied Insanity." Regardless of what Thrale may have wanted, critics focused on Johnson's mental state from then after. In particular, John Wain emphasizes Tyers's description of Johnson as "like a ghost. He never speaks unless he is spoken to",, which Wain considered a "bon mot". Likwise, Walter Jackson Bate relies on how Tyers was able to partly capture Johnson's "bisociative" ability to bring "together two different frames of experience". Tyers, when saying Johnson "said the most common things in the newest manner", describes Johnson's "unpreditability" and a

"further process of mind in which the original shuffling of perspectives, already surprising us with elements we had overlooked or forgotten, is joined by considerations drawn from other matrices of experience that can only be described as 'moral,' that is, having to do with the condition of man - with human hopes and fears; with values, purpose or aim; with the shared sense, never forgotten, of the 'doom of man'; and with an unsleeping practical urgency in considering concretely what to do and how to live."

Tyers concludes his work by saying:

"At the end of this sketch, it may be hinted (sooner might have been prepossession) that Johnson told this writer, for he saw he always had his eye and ear upon him, that at some time or other he might be called upon to assist a posthumous account of him.

A hint was given to our author, a few years ago, by this Rhapsodist, to write his own life, lest somebody should write it for him. He has reason to believe, he has left a manuscript biography behind him. His executors, all honourable men, will sit in judgment upon his papers. Thuanus, Buchanan, Huetius, and others, have been their own historians.

The memory of some people, says Mably very lately, 'is their understanding.' This may be thought, by some readers, to be the case in point. Whatever anecdotes were furnished by memory, this pen did not choose to part with to any compiler. His little bit of gold he has worked into as much gold-leaf as he could

Critical response

James Boswell

James Boswell

James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....

, in his Life of Samuel Johnson, wrote:

"[Tyers] abounded in anecdote, but was no sufficiently attentive to accuracy. I therefore cannot venture to avail myself much of a biographical sketch of Johnson which he published, being one among the various persons ambitious of appending their names to that of my illustrious friend. That sketch is, however, an entertaining little collection of fragments."