Wal Kirsop, Academic Responsibilities, and the Liberality of Communication

In July 2010, Wal Kirsop gave a talk at the annual seminar of the Johnson Society of Australia on "Boulard the Bibliomaniac and Johnson's Rambler." I didn't hear the talk, but Wal gave me a copy of the printed version of his paper. When I was re-reading it today, I was struck by this peroration:

If a summary conclusion is needed, it is that, far from being a sad victim of an overwhelming mania, Boulard was a misunderstood prophet of intellectual entrepreneurship and even liberation. His is not perhaps a voice for our own dreary and boring managerial time, but I like to think that some day it will [be] heard again. In the meantime his affinity with Johnson—whose definition of academic duties and responsibilities is still posted on my office door—should reassure us that we are somewhere on the right path.

Note that Wal doesn't quote Johnson's definition of academic duties and responsibilities. Perhaps, if he used slides during his lecture, he may have shown it at this point, but I doubt he did that. Instead, in a footnote to his paper, the reader is directed to David Fairer's "J. D. Fleeman: A Memoir" (Studies in Bibliography, Vol. 48 (1995): 23–24). Fairer, in turn, provides the reference for the original publication of Johnson's definition, which was as an appendix to John Moir, Hospitality. A Discourse Occasioned by Reading His Majesty’s Letter in Behalf of the Emigrant French Clergy, in St. Dionis Back Church, May 26, 1793 (London: Rivington and Owen, 1793): 42–43 (ESTC T219725).

Presumably, Wal thought everyone should read the Fairer's memoir as well as Johnson's definition. Those who wish to read Fairer's memoir and Johnson's entire "Fragment" will find it reprinted here. Johnson's definition is quoted in a few places online (as here), but Moir's Hospitality is not available, so I have illustrated this post with images of the title-page and the final page of text from the Bodleian Library copy on ECCO.)

Having chased Wal's allusion back to Fairer's Memoir, I could offer the complete text of Johnson's definition to my readers, but I will, instead, just quote the parts of it that I think Wal had in mind (the rest is available via the link above):

An academick is a man supported at the public cost, and dignified with public honours, that he may attain and impart wisdom. He is maintained by the public, that he may study at leisure; he is dignified with honours, that he may teach with weight. The great duty therefore of an academick is diligence of inquiry, and liberality of communication. Of him that is appointed to teach, the first business is to learn, an unintermitted attendance to reading must qualify him to be heard with profit. … For such service he can be fitted only by laborious study, and study therefore is the business of his life; the business which he cannot neglect without breaking a virtual contract with the community. Ignorance in other men may be censured as idleness, in an academick it must be abhorred as treachery.

"Diligence of inquiry, and liberality of communication" captures nicely Wal's own "unintermitted" activities. In addition to what might be considered his formal scholarly publications—book-length studies, essays published in scholarly journals etc.—Wal's "liberality of communication" extended to scores of pamphlet publications, under the imprints of the Ancora and Chaskett Press, for Louis Green and Foxcroft lectures, among others. One indicator of the present managerial malaise that Wal identifies is that—regardless of the eminence of many of the authors of these Ancora and Chaskett Press publications, and the quality of their writing—none of them would be considered "Quality publications" by Monash, based on their flawed model of bibliometrics.

Although I hadn't read Johnson's definition of academic duties and responsibilities when I started this blog in June of 2009, it has long been a part of my own attempt to fulfil Johnson's ideal. Being a generation younger that Wal, my "liberality of communication" has taken the form of a blog, rather than printed pamphlets. It is likely that Wal's Ancora and Chaskett Press publications will long outlive any of my blog posts, but they are treated with equal contempt indifference by Monash. Nevertheless, like Wal, I will continue to be liberal in my communications.

(Given the long gap in my blog posts between mid-2023 and the start of 2026, close readers of this blog may wonder at this declaration. Close personal acquaintances, will not. All I will say here is that I was obliged to take a lot of leave to care for someone close to me who barely survived a series of traumatic brain injuries. I have struggled to regain both my scholarly and blog-posting momentum since then, and have not wanted to say even this much about my hiatus until I managed to make some progress. My immediate goal was to submit for publication at least two fresh articles (which I have now done) and to publish more than 27 posts in a year, which I succeeded in doing with my last post (28 being now my highest number of posts in a year, since 2011). Hopefully, I have not jinxed myself by offering this explanation, and that scholarly publishing and my blog-posting will continue to be regular in future!)