…or perhaps “for Samites,” with a nod to the self-designation of Jane Austen’s most passionate fans (“Janeites”). Here is Theodore Dalrymple at the top of his form, writing about the Great Cham.

Thirty-five years ago, preparing for my first trip to the Far East, I cast around for a book to take on the 18-hour plane journey. I was still at the age when I could read for duty (as opposed to pleasure or money, my only motivations for reading nowadays), and I got the idea that I ought, for self-improvement, read Boswell’s Life of Johnson. I bought a paperback edition and threw it in my hand luggage. I have never since been out of reach of a Boswell; and I have a shelf full of Johnson books–by or about him. Of those places still extant where Johnson lived or worked, I believe I have visited every one. People tell me I quote him too readily, but actually I try to restrain myself. You can never have too much Johnson. One index of his greatness is that the French detest him. (He wasn’t crazy about them, either.) We French, they sniff, have REAL intellectuals. The English have—who? Doctor Johnson? Ha ha ha ha! As Dalrymple shows by a deft comparison with Voltaire, Johnson’s was far the greater mind.

Dalrymple is probably right that very few people nowadays read Johnson’s actual writings for pleasure. We are a select few, though, a happy few. I have done some Johnson readings here (verse) and here (prose). I keep meaning to have a go at recording ”The Vanity of Human Wishes”–a wonderful poem, from which I have taken much solace.