13 - “From China to Peru”

Summary

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford.” Johnson made this famous declaration in 1777, but he had already said something similar to James Boswell on 11 October 1773 whilst they were both temporarily marooned on the island of Coll in the Hebrides. Boswell had commented that until their joint expedition, “You yourself, sir, had never seen, till now, any thing but your native island,” to which Johnson replied “But, Sir, by seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can shew.” It seems clear that “life” in these pronouncements cannot mean whatever it was that Johnson had come to the Hebrides to see. London could encapsulate “life” because life everywhere – that is to say human character – is the same. London’s social and cultural diversity, the richness of its human resources, means that it is the perfect laboratory for the study of human nature. Johnson’s remarks can be read as testimony not only to his love of the city, but to his conviction that human beings are alike everywhere, the same, in fact, in London as (to use his phrase at the opening of The Vanity of Human Wishes) “from China to Peru.” What then had taken him to the highlands of Scotland?