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This is the 200th anniversary of Samuel Johnson's death. No other English author has written so perceptively about the life of writing and scholarship. Numerous passages come to mind, but perhaps his comments in Adventurer no. 85, written in late August 1753 in the midst of compiling his Dictionary, are most appropriate to our en­ deavors. As a starting point for the description of a scholar's activi­ ties, he borrows a passage from Bacon's essay "Of Study" that "read­ ing makes a full man, conversation a ready man, and writing an exact man." "To read, write, and converse in due proportions," is the ideal, Johnson observes, but he realizes that "for all of these there is not equal opportunity." Nevertheless, it is "reasonable to have perfection in our eye; that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached." The danger of wearing out our days and nights in "perpetual research and solitary meditation" among our books and manuscripts is that whatever we gain in wisdom is likely to be lost by our inability to communicate our ideas. Happily for the members of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies there are ample opportunities at the national and regional meetings to take the knowledge collected in solitude and learn its application by mix­ ing with other scholars. But more important than the free exchange of ideas in conversation and discussion, is writing, for only by writ­ ing do we subject our ideas to careful examination and review and fix our thoughts. From among those scholars who filled their minds with ideas, readied themselves for discussion, and fixed their thoughts in writing, we have chosen the best. O M Brack, Jr. Arizona State University December 13, 1984 xi ...

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