The Life of Samuel Johnson
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
British (General) British (Received Pronunciation - RP, BBC)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
I at last delivered to the world of work which I have long promised and of which I am afraid to High expectations have been raised. The delay of its publication must be imputed in a considerable degree to the extraordinary zeal which has been shown by distinguished persons in all quarters to supply me with additional information concerning its illustrious subject resembling in this the grateful tribes of ancient nations, of which every individual was eager to throw a stone upon the grave of a departed hero and thus to share in the pious office of erecting an honourable monument to his memory. The labour and anxious attention with which I have collected and arranged the materials of which these volumes are composed will hardly be conceived by those who read them with careless facility, the stretch of mind and prompt assiduously by which so many conversations were preserved. I, myself, at some distance of time, contemplate with wonder, and I must be allowed to suggest that the nature of the work in other respects as it consists of innumerable detached particulars, all which even the most minute I have spared no pains to ascertain with a scrupulous authenticity has occasioned a degree of trouble far beyond that of any other species of composition. Were I to detail the books which I have consulted, and the inquiries which I have found it necessary to make by various channels, I should probably be thought ridiculously ostentatious. Let me only observe as a specimen of my trouble that I have sometimes been obliged to run half over London in order to fix a date correctly, which when I had accomplished, I well knew would obtain me no praise. There were failure would have been to my discredit. And after all, perhaps hard as it may be, I shall not be surprised if omissions or mistakes be pointed out with invidious severity. I have also been extremely careful as to the exactness of my quotations holding that there is a respect to you to the public, which would oblige every author to attend to this and never to presume to introduce them with. I think I have read, or if I remember right when the originals may be examined