SOURCE: "A Candle-Light Picture: Anecdotes of Johnson," in Hester Thrale Piozzi: Portrait of a Literary Woman, University of North Carolina Press, 1985, pp. 97-132.

In the following excerpt, McCarthy discusses Piozzi's Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. and compares the book with James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.

A transition from an author's books to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples, and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendor, grandeur, and magnificence; but, when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions,and clouded with smoke.

Most of the very very great Men are odious!¹

The canonical Johnson friendship is the one with Boswell. It has the force of a myth. Like Sherlock Holmes and...