You may be dubious that the name of a Swedish king could make other world leaders quake in their boots; but Samuel Johnson wasn’t.

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I often go looking for quotations containing the word I’m looking into and sometimes these give a glimpse into history. Such is the case today.

Samuel Johnson the famous dictionary maker was also into poetry and within a much longer poem included these lines:

His fall was destined to a barren strand,
A petty fortress, and a dubious hand;
He left the name, at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale.

He was writing about the Swedish King Charles XII who died while trying to besiege a Norwegian fortress; that was the barren strand and petty fortress.

Based on what I see looking at the history books, the European world did go pale at the name of Charles XII.

He had quite an empire going and had a reputation for being ruthless and unemotional, happiest when at war and practically immune to pain.

At its height the Swedish Empire included parts of present day Norway, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Germany, and Poland.

Johnson wrote that poem about 30 years after the death of Charles XII so the fall of the Swedish Empire that surrounded his death was still pretty fresh in European minds.

But what about that dubious hand that brought about Charles XII’s fall?

Charles died when something flew in one side of his skull and out the other and evidently there was speculation as to whether he was shot by the enemy or due to some plot within his own ranks.

These two possibilities go well with the etymology of dubious.

Dubious means “doubtful” and came from Latin.

The thinking is that the leading du of dubious means “two” and that the uncertainty is of which choice to make between two choices.