Freedom of Speech Anecdote

When Dr Samuel Johnson had finished his great lexicography, the first real English dictionary, he was visited by various delegations of people to congratulate him including a delegation of London’s respectable womanhood who came to his parlour in Fleet Street and said ‘Doctor, we congratulate you on your decision to exclude all indecent words from your dictionary.’ Whereupon he said ‘Ladies, I congratulate you on your persistence in  looking them up.’

Anecdote: Dr Johnson

Dr Johnson once boasted that he could recite from memory whole chapters from Horrebow’s Natural History of Iceland, for example Chapter LXXII. The title and text of the chapter simply reads:

Concerning Snakes.

There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.