For what it is worth, Johnson's biography is worth reading - though I think one should read some of Johnson's writing first (don't start with his English language dictionary, regardless of how much you want to). It will give you more of a reason to care about Johnson as a person - which, given the length of the biography, might be needed.
"He was a perpetual drunk, a degenerate gambler, a sex addict, whoremonger, exhibitionist, and rapist. He gave his wife an STD he caught from a prostitute.
Selfish, servile and self-indulgent, lazy and lecherous, vain, proud, obsessed with his aristocratic status, yet with no sense of propriety whatsoever, he frequently fantasized about the feudal affection of serfs for their lords. He loved to watch executions and was a proud supporter of slavery...
Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to eminence as writers, Boswell had absolutely none. There is not in all his books a single remark of his own on literature, politics, religion, or society, which is not either commonplace or absurd. [...] Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those things which are generally considered as making a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but, because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him immortal."
That's Macaulay? Macaulay keeps a pretty firm thumb on the scales. Marvin Mudrick remarked that Boswell's Tour of Corsica was very good--I wouldn't know, for I haven't read it. And Tour of the Hebrides is very good.
Johnson's Lives of the Poets is a good place to start with him, I think.
For what it is worth, Johnson's biography is worth reading - though I think one should read some of Johnson's writing first (don't start with his English language dictionary, regardless of how much you want to). It will give you more of a reason to care about Johnson as a person - which, given the length of the biography, might be needed.
"He was a perpetual drunk, a degenerate gambler, a sex addict, whoremonger, exhibitionist, and rapist. He gave his wife an STD he caught from a prostitute.
Selfish, servile and self-indulgent, lazy and lecherous, vain, proud, obsessed with his aristocratic status, yet with no sense of propriety whatsoever, he frequently fantasized about the feudal affection of serfs for their lords. He loved to watch executions and was a proud supporter of slavery...
Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to eminence as writers, Boswell had absolutely none. There is not in all his books a single remark of his own on literature, politics, religion, or society, which is not either commonplace or absurd. [...] Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those things which are generally considered as making a book valuable, were utterly wanting to him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but, because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him immortal."