Samuel Johnson is Chinese Su Tungpo (蘇東坡)

I am reading Lin Yutang’s The Gay Genius: The Life and Times of Su Tungpo (蘇東坡); the following is how Lin compared Su Tungpo to Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Lin Yutang

“It is natural, therefore, that the life of this man should be the center of literary gossip and honored with profound reverence, especially after his death.  For Western  analogies, Li Po may be compared to Shelley or Byron, a literary meteor that burned itself out in a short spectacular display. To Fu was like Milton, a devout philosopher and a good old man, writing in a profusion of apt, learned, and archaic metaphors. Su Tungpo (蘇東坡) was forever young,  He was a character more like Victor Hugo, and he had something of the exciting quality of Dr. Johnson.  Somehow Dr. John's gout is exciting to us even today, while Milton's blindness is not.  If Johnson were a Gainsborough at the same time, and also a Pope making criticism of current politics in verse, and if he had suffered like Swift, without the growing acidity of Swift, we would have an English parallel.  The human spirit in Su Tungpo was mellowed, not soured, by his many troubles, and we love him today because he suffered so much.”

When I read Lin’s comparing Li Po (李白) to Shelley or Byron and To Fu (or Du Fu 杜甫) to Milton, I knew Su Tungpo got to be Samuel Johnson and more, according to Lin.  Su was also a painter and calligraphist.

If you like Su Tungpo, you should fall in love with Samuel Johnson.  I checked out Johnson’s dictionary (published in 1755) from Carnegie Library many times. Johnson said “to make dictionary is dull work”; but reading his dictionary is never a dull moment.

I never got a chance to see/read Lin Yutang’s Chinese dictionary.