Oddlet: Samuel Johnson · 1 min read
Oct 2, 2026
The Man Who Counted the Posts
The man who single-handedly disciplined the English language could not walk past a post without touching it.
Samuel Johnson disciplined the English language almost by himself. Between 1746 and 1755, working with six clerks in a Gough Square garret, he produced A Dictionary of the English Language: 42,773 words, roughly 114,000 illustrative quotations, two folio volumes. The Académie française had fielded forty scholars for fifty-five years and produced less. Johnson did the arithmetic himself and concluded that the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman was three to sixteen hundred.
The same mind could not walk down a street.
Boswell watched him at doorways, counting paces with what he called "a deep earnestness," halting, backing up, restarting so his correct foot crossed the threshold first. On walks the ritual moved outdoors. He laid his hand on every post he passed along the pavement, deliberately, the way another man might tip his hat. This was not a flourish. It was arithmetic of a different kind, and it had to balance.
Samuel Whyte watched him miss a post. Johnson walked on for some distance. Then he stopped, turned around, went back, laid his hand on the neglected post, and continued.
A child once asked him why he did any of it. He said: from bad habit.
The man who fixed the meaning of forty thousand words could not leave a single post unaccounted for.
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- Wikipedia — A Dictionary of the English Language — Publication details, word count (42,773), quotation count (~114,000), 1,500 guineas fee, physical format, seven-year compilation, single-authored with only clerical assistants.
- Wikipedia — Health of Samuel Johnson — Detailed eyewitness accounts by Boswell, Frances Reynolds, and Hester Thrale of Johnson's tics, vocalisations, doorway rituals, and post-touching; Pearce's 1994 Tourette syndrome analysis.
- Britannica — Samuel Johnson: The Dictionary — Compares Johnson's solo effort to the 40-member Académie française; contains his famous 'three to sixteen hundred' proportion joke.
- OCD-UK — Dr Samuel Johnson — First-hand account by 'Mr Whyte' of Johnson touching every post on a walk and returning if he missed one; description of threshold rituals.
- Wikipedia — Hodge (cat) — Boswell's account of Johnson personally buying oysters for Hodge, the 'very fine cat indeed' quotation, and the Gough Square statue.
- Wikipedia — Samuel Johnson
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