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From the Editor<\/p>\n
Recently, in the mail\u2014the actual, material, non-electronic post\u2014I received two books about Johnson in languages I do not understand.\u00a0 Fortunately, both contain enough material in English for me to make out their subjects.\u00a0 The first is a work in Chinese by an occasional\u00a0contributor to the JNL<\/i>, Tian Ming Cai.\u00a0 An appended table of contents in English, and a note from John Byrne (who acted as intermediary in sending the book), shows that the work includes translations of the Life of Savage and the Life of Cowley with some appendices: \u201cA General View of Johnson Study Abroad\u201d and \u201cMy Trip to Johnson\u2019s Hometown: Lichfield.\u201d\u00a0 Readers of the JNL<\/i> may have seen previews of these works in recent issues (LXIV, 2 [September 2013] and LXI, 1 [March 2010]).\u00a0 \u00a0Of course, being incapable of reading this book, I have little to say, but I note the somewhat surprising choice of \u201cCowley\u201d to accompany \u201cSavage.\u201d\u00a0 I applaud the choice because the Life of Cowley is one of my favorites, and Johnson evidently thought it the best of his Lives<\/i> because of the essay on the metaphysical poets (Boswell\u2019s Life<\/i>, IV.38).\u00a0 Perhaps \u201cCowley\u201d and \u201cSavage\u201d are the best of the Lives<\/i> and that\u2019s the plain and simple answer to the question of why they were chosen.\u00a0 The book was published in 2013 in Beijing by the International Culture Publishing Company.<\/p>\n
The other book I received is in Japanese.\u00a0 This work is by Isamu Hayakawa and its title, in the translation provided, is Dr. Johnson\u2019s Dictionary i<\/i>n the Context of the Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment in England<\/i>.\u00a0 It was published in Yokahoma by Shunpu-sha Publishing also in 2013.\u00a0\u00a0 There is a brief English introduction, and many (perhaps all) of the quotations of the Dictionary<\/i>, and English commentary on the Dictionary<\/i>, are in their original language. The English introduction includes brief summaries of the eleven chapters and the appendix.\u00a0 This list shows that the book includes Japanese translations of the Plan<\/i> and Preface; separate chapters on the history of British lexicography before Johnson, \u201cA view of academies for establishing an elegant \u2018national language,\u2019\u00a0and the history of lexicography between Johnson and the\u00a0OED<\/i>.\u00a0 Several chapters treat Johnson\u2019s lexicographical principles and his practice, and one is devoted to \u201cQuotations from Johnson\u2019s\u00a0Dictionary<\/i>\u00a0as an illustration of accumulated British wisdom and knowledge.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 The appendix is a list of works quoted in Johnson\u2019s\u00a0Dictionary<\/i>\u00a0with a count of the number of times each is referenced in the first and fourth editions combined.\u00a0 This list, like the very good bibliography, is useful even for those who read English but not Japanese.\u00a0 The list clearly makes use of the Cambridge University Press CD-ROM of the Dictionary<\/i>, edited by Anne MacDermott, and probably uses studies of the quotations, such as Lewis Freed\u2019s 1939 Cornell University dissertation, which is cited in the bibliography.\u00a0 Looking it over myself, I find that the list is not absolutely complete, but it seems very good nevertheless.\u00a0 Overall, this is a vast, handsome book (566 pp.) and, as far as I can tell, a good candidate for the shortlist of important books about Johnson\u2019s Dictionary<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given China\u2019s skyrocketing economy and our nation\u2019s, as well as the world\u2019s, \u201cpivot to the Pacific,\u201d it is hard not to reflect that these books are further evidence of the growing importance of eastern Asia in all aspects of human life.\u00a0\u00a0 The cornerstone of the western literary tradition, Virgil\u2019s Aeneid,<\/i> concerns a translatio imperii<\/i>, a translation of empire westward from Troy, in Asia, to the shores of Italy.\u00a0 Later writers tracked the course of empire as it went further west to England and then to America.\u00a0 In the wake of empire\u2014or at its side\u2014went the muses. (Adam Potkay writes very engagingly about this westward movement in the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to British Literature<\/i>, volume 3).\u00a0 Americans are used to a further westering that locates the cutting edge of our culture on the shores of the Pacific, somewhere between Haight-Ashbury and Hollywood.\u00a0 Now it would appear that empire and the muses have\u00a0gone so far west that they are again in the east.\u00a0 Having visited China last summer, I can report that the cities of Beijing and Shanghai are bigger, newer, more populous, and more frenetic than London, New York, or Los Angeles. Our hero once remarked that \u201cthe full tide of human life is at Charing Cross.\u201d\u00a0 In later times Americans may justly have located that tide in Times Square, but now we have to confess that the full tide of human life is on the Bund in Shanghai.\u00a0 Looking across the Huang-po River to the impossible verticalities of Pudang, one can at least be happy that Johnson has a foothold there\u2014a good old-fashioned, paper-and-ink foothold.<\/p>\n
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From the Editor Recently, in the mail\u2014the actual, material, non-electronic post\u2014I received two books about Johnson in languages I do not understand.\u00a0 Fortunately, both contain enough material in English for me to make out their subjects.\u00a0 The first is a work in Chinese by an occasional\u00a0contributor to the JNL, Tian Ming Cai.\u00a0 An appended table […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1803,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/johnsonian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/johnsonian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/johnsonian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/johnsonian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1803"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/johnsonian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/johnsonian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/johnsonian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions\/58"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/johnsonian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/johnsonian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/johnsonian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}