Samuel Johnson and Good Hating

AbstractThis article proposes a definition of Johnson’s popular term, the ‘good hater’, in order to explore his ideas about malicious conversation and criticism. Good hating was a conversational and critical ideal for Johnson, in contrast to ‘bad hating’ – hatred motivated by malice or malignity – which threatened civil discourse. Johnson’s own malice and ‘roughness’ are a vexed question in biographies by James Boswell, John Hawkins and Hester Lynch Piozzi. In spite of the efforts of Boswell, who has largely influenced the popular image of Johnson, I argue that Johnson fails to meet his own standards of good hating.