Samuel Johnson, Gregory Sharpe, and the Authorship of Some Remarks on the Progress of Learning (1746)

Abstract

Abstract Samuel Johnson wrote far more than he acknowledged or than his contemporaries could identify. Modern scholars have proposed many additions to the canon. Among the most recent of these is Some Remarks on the Progress of Learning (1746), a pamphlet ostensibly written to promote a new edition of Mario di Calasio’s concordance to the Hebrew Bible, then in preparation by William Romaine. The evidence adduced for Johnson’s authorship is partly circumstantial (his connections with the book trade) and partly internal (phrases and features of style that sound Johnsonian). No external evidence connects Johnson with the pamphlet. This article questions the attribution, arguing that neither the circumstantial nor the internal evidence is convincing. Further, the substance of the pamphlet itself, its politics, its religion (especially its view of the Reformation), and most of all its enthusiastic promotion of the study of Hebrew, are quite un-Johnsonian, and indeed contradict his known views. It therefore proposes a more credible candidate, Gregory Sharpe (1713–1771), an ‘enlightened’ cleric and a known enthusiast for Hebrew, and in support, cites parallels with his writings.