...Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic 44 VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and sorrow, and...

...it was written with 'little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the...inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.' Shortly after Johnson's death, John Courtney wrote as part of a long panegyric: By grateful bards his...

...it "was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the...inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow."17 Despite — or perhaps because of— the conditions under which he wrote it, Johnson's dictionary,...