No work by Johnson — and no page of Boswell — is known to contain this sentence. The entire credit rests on a single unsourced footnote in William Seward’s Biographiana (1799), printed fifteen years after Johnson died, reading only the sentence itself followed by a dash and “Dr. Johnson.” Seward knew Johnson personally, so the report is not idle; but he gives no occasion, no date and no witness, and a near-identical phrasing had already appeared anonymously in The Scots Magazine in December 1764.
“What Is Written Without Effort Is In General Read Without Pleasure” attributed to Samuel Johnson (1709–1784). No work by Johnson or Boswell is known to contain it. The earliest source crediting him is an unsourced footnote in William Seward's Biographiana (1799), page 260, fifteen years after Johnson's death; Hill's Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), 2:309, simply reprints that footnote. A near-identical phrasing appeared anonymously in "Memoirs of Mr Charles Churchill," The Scots Magazine, December 1764. Via Quotle.info
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Provenance
The one page it actually comes from
Earliest source crediting Johnson
Biographiana
Recorded by
William Seward (1747–1799), 1799 — fifteen years after Johnson’s death
Location
An unsourced footnote on p. 260; reprinted in Hill’s Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), 2:309
Earlier phrasing
The Scots Magazine, December 1764 — anonymous, written of the poet Charles Churchill
“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”—Dr. Johnson.
Footnote, p. 260
That is the whole of it, exactly as printed: a footnote, not a reported conversation. It sits at the foot of p. 260 of Biographiana, on a page describing the Abbé de Marolles — “an enormous translator” whose Virgil and Martial were “all dully and inaccurately translated” — and Du Ryer, whose renderings “were made in such a hurry.” Seward supplies no occasion, no date and no witness.
December 1764 — the earliest known appearance of the phrasing, and Johnson’s name is nowhere near it. An anonymous “Memoirs of Mr Charles Churchill” in The Scots Magazine says the satirist’s later pieces, “being written without effort, are read without pleasure.” Located and transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗.
1779–81 — Johnson publishes Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets. On Pope’s imitations of Horace he writes the nearest thing to this sentiment that is demonstrably his: “but what is easy is seldom excellent” ↗. Different words, same instinct.
1799 — fifteen years after Johnson’s death, his acquaintance William Seward prints the sentence as a footnote in Biographiana, page 260, followed by a dash and “Dr. Johnson.” This is the first and only original link to Johnson ↗.
1897 — George Birkbeck Hill collects it in Johnsonian Miscellanies, vol. 2, p. 309, as “What is written without effort (said Dr. Johnson) is in general read without pleasure” — and cites “Ib. p. 260,” meaning Seward ↗. Every later quotation book descends from this one footnote.
✓Public domain
Public domain in the United States. The sentence’s earliest printing is William Seward’s Biographiana (1799), and the standard scholarly reprint is George Birkbeck Hill’s Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897) — both published well before 1931, as was everything Samuel Johnson (d. 1784) wrote. The text is English throughout; no translation is involved.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What people get wrong about this one
Nobody credits this line to the wrong person — it has been Johnson’s since 1799 and nobody else has ever claimed it. What gets misrepresented is the strength of the evidence, and the source usually offered for it.
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The source everyone cites“Johnsonian Miscellanies, Vol. II” Circular
Quote aggregators print this as though it were a primary record of Johnson’s talk. It is not. On page 309 of Hill’s 1897 edition ↗ the line sits in a chapter headed “Anecdotes by William Seward, F.R.S.,” followed by the citation “Ib. p. 260” — pointing straight back to Seward’s 1799 footnote. Hill is a reprint, not a second witness.
✕
The implied setting“Johnson said to Boswell…” Invented
It is routinely presented as table talk. Quote Investigator found no instance in Boswell ↗, and none in any book by Johnson. The 1799 original is a printed footnote with no scene attached to it at all.
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The earliest known wordingAn unnamed writer in The Scots Magazine, December 1764 Earlier
In “Memoirs of Mr Charles Churchill,” the anonymous author writes that the poet’s later pieces, “being written without effort, are read without pleasure” — the earliest instance QI located ↗, and decades earlier than any mention of Johnson. Charles Churchill had died that November, aged 32.
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The wording itself“What is written without effort is read without pleasure” Trimmed
The two words “in general” are frequently dropped, which quietly converts Johnson’s hedged generalisation into an absolute law. The 1799 footnote as transcribed by QI ↗ keeps them.
✓The honest position: an eighteenth-century line, credibly reported by a man who knew Johnson, first printed fifteen years after he died — and pre-dated by an anonymous 1764 use of near-identical phrasing. Quote Investigator ↗ calls the support “not very strong.” So do we.
Context
Why the credit is shaky — and why it still might be true
The sentence has a paper trail, just not the one people assume. It is not in the Dictionary, not in the Rambler, not in the Lives of the Poets, and not in Boswell. It first appears under Johnson’s name in 1799, as a footnote — a bare line of type at the bottom of a page, with a dash and the words “Dr. Johnson” after it, and nothing else. No setting, no date, no listener.
What complicates the neat debunk is where that footnote sits. Page 260 of Seward’s Biographiana is about hack translators — the Abbé de Marolles, “an enormous translator” whose Virgil and Martial came out “dully and inaccurately,” and Du Ryer, whose versions “were made in such a hurry.” The line is a gloss on speed as a literary vice, dropped in by a man who had actually sat in rooms with Johnson and belonged to the club Johnson founded. It reads like something remembered rather than something invented. It just cannot be checked.
A footnote is not a source. It is a memory with a dash in front of it.
The 1764 problem
Quote Investigator traces the phrasing back thirty-five years before Seward, to an anonymous notice in The Scots Magazine for December 1764 — a memoir of the satirist Charles Churchill, who had died that November. Writing of Churchill’s decline, the anonymous author says his later pieces, “being written without effort, are read without pleasure.”
That does not prove Johnson never said it. Aphorisms circulate, and Johnson was perfectly capable of coining a line that someone else had already stumbled into. But it does mean the wording was in the air, unattributed, decades before anybody attached his name to it — and that is exactly the condition under which famous names acquire quotations they never uttered.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1709–1784 · English lexicographer, critic & essayist
Samuel Johnson compiled A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) largely single-handed, and closed his career with Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–81), still one of the sharpest works of criticism in English. He was also the most quoted talker of his century — which is precisely the problem: because Boswell and a dozen lesser anecdotists wrote down what he said, any crisp eighteenth-century aphorism can be floated under his name and sound right. He did write something close to this line's sense in his Life of Pope: “but what is easy is seldom excellent.”
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Cite this source
Earliest documented in William Seward, Biographiana (1799), 260 — a footnote credited only to “Dr. Johnson,” fifteen years after Johnson’s death. Reprinted in George Birkbeck Hill, ed., Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), 2:309, which cites Seward’s page 260 as its sole authority. A closely similar phrasing appeared anonymously in “Memoirs of Mr Charles Churchill,” The Scots Magazine 26 (December 1764). No work by Johnson or Boswell is known to contain the sentence.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘What Is Written Without Effort Is In General Read Without Pleasure’?” Last verified 1 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/what-is-written-without-effort-is-in-general-read-without/