The recorded talk is extraordinarily varied and entertaining.

It is a mistake to conceive Johnson as a monster of bear-like rudeness, shouting down opposition, hectoring his companions, and habitually a blustering verbal bully.

We are too easily hypnotized by Macaulay's flashy caricature.

He could be merciless in argument and often wrongheaded and he was always acute, uncomfortably acute, in his perception of a fallacy, and a little disconcerting in his unmasking of pretence.

But he could be gay and tender too and in his heart he was a shrinking and sensitive man.
As a critic (his criticism is the only side of his literary work that need be considered), Johnson must be allowed a high place.