Samuel Johnson and Good Hating

Abstract Samuel Johnson famously said of his dear friend Richard Bathurst: ‘he hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a whig; he was a very good hater’. ‘Good hater’ soon became a proverbial term, and many people now enjoy reputations as good haters, Johnson included. But what does it mean, and how can hatred be ‘good’? This chapter explores the meanings of good hating by considering Johnson’s friendship with Bathurst, his periodical and biographical writing, and his moral character as portrayed in major eighteenth-century biographies by Boswell and Piozzi. How to hate well, without malice and malignity, proved to be a vexing problem for Johnson as well as his biographers and critics.