WEEKEND COLUMNISTS My way back to Dr Johnson, whom I studied at university but misreckoned an old bore, led through southern Spain. Taking part in a conference devoted to the great Hispanist (and Slow Lane patron saint) Gerald Brenan, held in the Alpujarra region south of Granada where Brenan lived for many years, I bumped into the indefatigable Spanish translator and writer Miguel Martínez Lage.
Martínez Lage is one of those people who burn at a preternaturally bright intellectual wattage; you wonder how he ever sleeps. He is an enthusiast – this side of idolatry, but barely – of the Scottish and English Enlightenment, a devoted admirer of Adam Smith, David Garrick, Samuel Johnson and, above all, David Hume. One of the fruits of that enthusiasm and energy is his translation (the first full one into Spanish) of Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
