...that Milton's " vein never happily flowed but from the Autumnal Equinox to the Vernal," and that " a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it." 6 Similarly, the positive dicta in Rasselas on the choice of life are mildly reflected in Reynolds's...

...has written — of all novelists my favorite. Trollope proved the correctness of Johnson's remark, "A man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly at it." This we know Trollope did, we have his word for it. His personality was too sane, too matter...

...woodcarving or blacksmithing. If anybody ever knew how to write it was Samuel Johnson, and he said, "A man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it." There are thousands of young people in this country who want to become authors. It is an ambition laudable...

...March, 1752, on which day it closed. This is a strong confirmation of the truth of a remark of his, that "a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it" ; for, notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits, and his labour in carrying...

...attending upon him. Somebody talked of happy moments for composition ; and how a man can write at one time, and not at another. — ' Nay (said Dr. Johnson) a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly1 to it.' I here began to indulge old Scottish sentiments, and to express a warm regret, that,...

...which computation Johnson's essays would be but farthing pieces) we can put the great man's own dictum: 'A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.' Thirdly, it is a popular fallacy — and branded as such by Lamb himself — that enough is as good...

...type locked up while waiting for the author's corrections. But while Johnson may have bragged that "a man may write at any time if he will set himself doggedly to it," accepting writing as labor, rather than the more noble activity Arendt calls "work," he always had...

...speaking his own sentiments' (Life, p. 353).2 The real man of letters can perform on any subject, and 'a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it' (Life, p. 144). The consciousness of universal literary ability went with an eye for fame and the ways...

...uncomfortable allusion to Johnson's remark that no moments of composition were 'happier' than others and that 'a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.'25 'I beg of you to comfort me', Boswell appeals, 'instead of scolding me.' 'I have always found...

...In August 1773, when Boswell took Johnson to visit the Parliament House in Edinburgh, he expressed "a warm regret, that, by our Union with England, we...were no more; — our independent Kingdom was lost". James Kerr, the Keeper of the Records, added, "Half our nation was bribed by English money." "Sir,"...