November 28, 1832

Leslie Stephen (November 28,  1832 to February 22, 1904) once said that his work would live on only in a footnote. This English author contributed to many periodicals and himself edited, Cornhill Magazine and The Dictionary of National Biography. His own writing reflects his interest in biography and philosophy. Below are just a few of his titles.


Essays on Free Thinking and Plain Speaking (1873).
Hours in a Library (1874–79).
The History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876).
Samuel Johnson (1879).
Swift (1882).
Studies of a Biographer (4 volumes, 1898–1902).
An Agnostic's Apology and Other Essays (1893).
The English Utilitarians (1900).
Hobbes (1904).


Samuel Johnson's cat was made famous by his first biographer, James Boswell, and in his book on Johnson, cited above, Leslie Stephen includes that story. What others cat references did Stephen put in HIS book on Johnson? We found some:

...Boswell's adoration of his hero ....never hindered accuracy of portraiture. "I will not make my tiger a cat to please anybody," was his answer to well meaning entreaties of Hannah More to soften his accounts of Johnson's asperities. He saw instinctively that a man who is worth anything loses far more than he gains by such posthumous flattery. ... The truth is that it is unscientific to consider a man as a bundle of separate good and bad qualities, of which one half may be concealed without injury to the rest. Johnson's fits of bad temper, like Goldsmith's blundering, must be unsparingly revealed by a biographer, because they are in fact expressions of the whole character.....


...[F]or some inexplicable reason, Johnson burst into a sudden fury against the American rebels, whom he described as "rascals, robbers, pirates," and roared out a tremendous volley, which might almost have been audible across the Atlantic. Boswell sat and trembled, but gradually diverted the sage to less exciting topics. The name of Jonathan Edwards suggested a discussion upon free will and necessity, upon which poor Boswell was much given to worry himself. Some time afterwards Johnson wrote to him, in answer to one of his lamentations: "I hoped you had got rid of all this hypocrisy of misery. What have you to do with liberty and necessity? Or what more than to hold your tongue about it." Boswell could never take this sensible advice; but he got little comfort from his oracle. "We know that we are all free, and there's an end on't," was ...[Johnson's] statement on one occasion, and now he could only say, "All theory is against the freedom of the will, and all experience for it."

Okay, that last was not about cats. There is this later:

....Boswell's reports....[include]  the favourite topics of the sentimentalists of the day [:]... the denunciation of "luxury," and of civilized life in general. There was a disposition to find in the South Sea savages or American Indians an embodiment of the fancied state of nature. Johnson heartily despised the affectation. He was told of an American woman who had to be bound in order to keep her from savage life. "She must have been an animal, a beast," said Boswell. "Sir," said Johnson, "she was a speaking cat." ...

....He told Langton [another friend] once of a young gentleman who, when last heard of, was "running about town shooting cats; but," he murmured in a kindly reverie, "Hodge shan't be shot; no, no, Hodge shall not be shot!" 

And I thank Stephen for including this story, though not really about cats:

Once, when Johnson was staying at a house in Wales, the gardener brought in a hare which had been caught in the potatoes. The order was given to take it to the cook. Johnson asked to have it placed in his arms. He took it to the window and let it go, shouting to increase its speed. When his host complained that he had perhaps spoilt the dinner, Johnson replied by insisting that the rights of hospitality included an animal which had thus placed itself under the protection of the master of the garden.

A lovely footnote.