“Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson, A“

   Short story (2,060 words); probably written in the summer or fall of 1917. First published in the United Amateur(September 1917) as by “Humphry Littlewit, Esq.” First collected in Writings in the United Amateur(1976); corrected text in MW

   The narrator, Littlewit, is entering his 228th year, having been born on August 20, 1690. He provides some familiar and not-so-familiar “reminiscences” of Johnson and of his literary circle—Boswell, Goldsmith, Gibbon, and others—all written in a meticulous re-creation of eighteenth-century English. Littlewit is the author of a periodical paper, The Londoner,like Johnson’s Rambler, Idler,and Adventurer,and—like HPL—he has a reputation for revising the poetry of others. He undertakes a revision of a poetic lampoon that Boswell directs toward him (this lampoon is actually found in the Life of Johnson). Much of the other information in the sketch is derived from Boswell’s biography or from Johnson’s own works.