For fifty-some years I’ve been reading Dr. Johnson. His subject scarcely matters, I read the man. Nobody in my experience wrote more thoughtfully or eloquently about more varied topics. His Herculean intellect wrestled to submission whatever it tackled, binding it in witty, balanced, and euphonious prose. Others have written prose well, but none so dependably for so long. Nor does he ever lose sight of his reader by veering into abstrusity, frivolity, or irrelevancy. His discipline dazzles no less than his erudition. We know from Boswell’s famous biography that the good doctor spoke as wittily, perceptively, and agreeably as he wrote. And his output was prodigious over a long career. None but a scholar can have read him all.

I read Dr. Johnson periodically in spurts. His prose reminds me of fruitcake, too rich and sweet to be taken as a constant diet. Also, too imperious. Dr. Johnson’s pugnacious mastery discourages other aspirants in his art. I’m loath to enter the ring with him, he beats me silly, why even try?

Dr. Johnson is scarcely read these days even by those who read a lot. You reading these words are literate and smart, yet few of you, I’ll wager, have read him recently, devoting your attention to incalculably inferior prose. Why is that, I wonder. Aficionados of the visual or musical arts do not forsake old masters as they engage contemporaries. Caravaggio and Mozart are not relegated to the dustbin of “old hat.” My tastes in reading strike even close friends as esoteric, quaint, possibly pathetic. Yet I keep asking, of my skimpy allotment of earthly minutes, why not spend them on the best? Why not hone my wit on my sharpest forebears? Why drown my intellect in crud?

I hesitate even to address this topic lest you bolt; I write, after all, to amuse us both. Yet (I school myself) what matters to me might matter to you if I wrote it right. As I used to goad reporters in my newsroom days, “There are no boring stories, only boring reporters.”

Lovers of literature read for different reasons. Some for their education, to know what’s been made in the past. Others for diversion, to detach their minds from the mundane. Others for society, to amiably converse with others who read. All reasons are creditable, none more laudable.

I read for intimacy: to identify soulmates whose sympathies and smarts might strengthen and solace. I rub up against them, sweat with them, sob into their arms as they into mine. If this sounds like sex, I mean it to: intercourse – of intellects.

Writing is lovemaking. The most lasting authors are the most exciting lovemakers. Different makers appeal differently. None suits all moments, not even Shakespeare. I tug a writer from the shelf to hug me (I keep my beloveds within reach). I write to you in the same spirit.

Dr. Johnson coaches me like God Almighty. Here is the man who wrote the English Dictionary single-handed (including more than forty thousand words – how many words do you know?). Here is the polymath who read – and remembered – pretty much every book in his epoch’s library. Here is a writer whose every sentence excites with its precision and inspires with its lilt. Here is a mind whose judgments one might dispute (Dr. J loved to debate!), but whose probity, sincerity, and sense one can rely on. Here is a kindly vulnerable soul who, for all his erudition, never takes himself too seriously, and whose gaze twinkles if you dare meet it.

He is not the easiest of overseers. God shouldn’t be.