LIVES 9009 07931 OF THE MOST EMINENT ENGLISH POETS: WITH CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THEIR WORKS. BY SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. CAREFULLY COLLATED WITH THE BEST EDITIONS. KONINKLIJKE LONDON: ALFRED THOMAS CROCKER, 303 & 304, STRAND. 1868. HE Booksellers having determined to publish a body of English Poetry, I was persuaded to promise them a preface to the works of each author; an undertaking, as it was then presented to my mind, not very extensive or difficult. My purpose was only to have allotted to every poet an advertisement, like those which we find in the French Miscellanies, containing a few dates and a general character; but I have been led beyond my intention, I hope by the honest desire of giving useful pleasure. In this minute kind of history the succession of facts is not easily discovered; and I am not without suspicion that some of Dryden's works are placed in wrong years. I have followed Langbaine, as the best authority for plays and if I shall hereafter obtain a more correct chronology, will publish it; but I do not yet know that my account is erroneous. Dryden's remarks on Rymer have been somewhere printed before. The former edition I have not seen. This was transcribed for the press from his own manuscript. As this undertaking was occasional and unforeseen, I must be supposed to have engaged in it with less provision of materials than might have been accumulated by longer premeditation. Of the later writers at least I might, by attention and inquiry, have gleaned many particulars which would have diversified and enlivened my biography. These omissions, which it is now useless to lament, have been often supplied by the kindness of Mr. Steevens and other friends; and great assistance has been given me by Mr. Spence's Collections, of which I consider the communication as a favour worthy of public acknowledgment. [The "advertisement" to the First Edition is dated March 15, 1779, and contains 'he following paragraph, which was afterwards omitted.] "I had been told that in the College of Physicians there is some mémoria of Dryden's funeral, but my intelligence was not true; the story therefore wants the credit which such a testimony would have given it. There is in Farquhar's Letters an indistinct mention of it as irregular and disorderly, and of the oration which was then spoken. More than this I have not discovered."] |