Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia


Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield in Staffordshire, on
September 18, 1709, and died in London, December 13, 1784. In
Volume IX of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS appears an epitome of
Boswell's famous "Life of Johnson." "The History of Rasselas,
Prince of Abyssinia," was written by Dr. Johnson in order to
meet the expenses incurred by his mother's illness and death.
According to Boswell, the work was composed in the evenings of
one week, and the sheets sent to the printers exactly as they
left his hands, without even being read over by the author
himself. It was published during the early part of 1759,
Johnson receiving for it the sum of £100, and a further amount
of £25 when it came to a second edition. Of all Johnson's
works, "Rasselas" was apparently the most popular. By 1775 it
reached its fifth edition, and has since been translated into
many languages. The work is more of a satire on optimism and
on human life in general than a novel, and perhaps is little
more than a ponderous dissertation on Johnson's favourite
theme, the "vanity of human wishes." As to its actual merits,
Johnson's contemporaries differed widely, some proclaiming him
a pompous pedant with a passion for words of six syllables and
more, others delighting in those passages in which weighty
meaning was illustrated with splendour and vigour.


_I.--Life in the Happy Valley_