Samuel Johnson's "Love of Truth" and Literary Fraud

Abstract

In James Boswell's Life of Johnson, for May 1776, the following exchange appears, important for the light it sheds on Johnson's attitude toward literary deception: We spoke of Chatterton. BOSWELL. 'Has not, Sir, his poetry a claim on our esteem for its poetical spark?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; such claim as he had on our esteem he has forfeited through his imposture, and his poetical spark is extinguished by his disregard for truth. Chatterton's poetry can no more be beautiful than Ossian's; both are calculated to deceive credulity. There is no pleasing deception, for no man will willingly be deceived. No, Sir; his productions merit no commendation.' This passage is illuminating for several reasons: first, it suggests that Johnson thought of Thomas Chatterton and James Macpherson as engaged in the same fraudulent enterprise; second, it shows the degree to which Johnson's aesthetics are bound up in his epistemology. But the most noteworthy thing about the passage is that Johnson never said it, nor did Boswell ever record it-I created it out of whole cloth for this essay. Mine is, I think, a reasonable counterfeit. The diction and the syntax are not a bad approximation of Johnsonese, or at least Boswell's version of it. Its success, however, depends not on any intrinsic merits it may have, but on the presumption of honesty and integrity that readers of scholarly essays implicitly extend to their authors. Readers appreciate the chance to verify the au-