Keeping In With Hodge
Dr Johnson’s cat left James Boswell cold, but the great man himself would do anything to avoid hurting the little fellow’s feelings.
1760s
King George III 1760-1820
Dr Johnson’s cat left James Boswell cold, but the great man himself would do anything to avoid hurting the little fellow’s feelings.
1760s
King George III 1760-1820
Dr Samuel Johnson has a reputation today as a master of put-downs and unkind cracks, but his private prayers and various passages from James Boswell’s biography show another, much gentler side. Here, we meet Hodge, the distinguished lexicographer’s cat in the 1760s.
I NEVER shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat; for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature.
I am unluckily one of those who have an antipathy to a cat, so that I am uneasy when in the room with one; and I own I frequently suffered a good deal from the presence of the same Hodge. I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr Johnson’s breast apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend, smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, ‘Why yes, sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this’; and then, as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, ‘but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.’
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did John think Hodge might have been offended by his conversation with Boswell?
Johnson admitted Hodge was not his favourite.