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ADVERTISEMENT.

THE 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 publick acknowledgment.

PREFATORY NOTICE

TO

THE LIVES OF THE POETS.

SUCH was the simple and unpretending advertisement that announced the Lives of the English Poets; a work that gave to the British nation a new style of biography. Johnson's decided taste for this species of writing, and his familiarity with the works of those whose lives he has recorded, peculiarly fitted him for the task; but it has been denounced by some as dogmatical, and even morose; minute critics have detected inaccuracies; the admirers of particular authors have complained of an insufficiency of praise to the objects of their fond and exclusive regard; and the political zealot has affected to decry the staunch and unbending champion of regal and ecclesiastical rights. Those, again, of high and imaginative minds, who "lift themselves up to look to the sky of poetry, and far removed from the dull-making cataract of Nilus, listen to the planet-like music of poetry;" these accuse Johnson of a heavy and insensible soul, because he avowed that nature's "world was brazen, and that the poets only delivered a goldena."

But in spite of the censures of political opponents, private friends, and angry critics, it will be acknowledged, by the impartial, and by every lover of virtue and of truth, that Johnson's honest heart, penetrating mind, and powerful intellect, has given to the world memoirs fraught with what is infinitely more valuable than mere verbal criticism, or imaginative speculation; he has presented, in his Lives of the English Poets, the fruits of his long and careful examination of men and manners, and repeated in his age, with the authoritative voice of experience, the same dignified lessons of morality, with which he had instructed his readers in his earlier years. And if these lives contained • See sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poetry.

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few merits of their own, they confessedly amended the criticism of the nation, and opened the path to a more enlarged and liberal style of biography than had, before their publication, appeared.

The bold manner in which Johnson delivered what he believed to be the truth, naturally provoked hostile attack, and we are not prepared to say, that, in many instances, the strictures passed upon him might not be just. We will call the attention of our readers to some few of the charges brought against the work now before us, and then leave it to their candid and unbiassed judgment to decide, whether the deficiencies pointed out are but as dust in the balance, when brought to weigh against the sterling excellence with which this last and greatest production of our Moralist abounds.

He has been accused of indulging a spirit of political animosity, of an illiberal and captious method of criticism, of frequent inaccuracies, and of a general haughtiness of manner, indicative of a feeling of superiority over the subjects of his memorial.

In the life of Milton his political prejudices are most apparent. It is not our duty, neither our inclination, in this place, to discuss the accuracy of Johnson's political wisdom. We cannot, however, but respect the integrity with which he clung to the instructions of his youth, amidst poverty, and all those inconveniencies which usually drive men to a discontent with things as they are.

Those who censure him without qualification or reserve, are as bad, or worse, on the opposite side.

They accuse him of narrow-minded prejudice, and of bigoted attachment to powers that be with a rancour little befitting the liberality of which they make such vaunting professions. Johnson had a really benevolent heart, but despised and detested the affectation of a sentimental and universal philanthropy, which neglects the practical charities of home and kindred, in its wild and excursive flights after distant and romantic objects. He was no tyrant, even in theory, but he dreaded, and, therefore, sought to expose, the lurking designs of those who opposed constituted authorities, because they hated subjection; and who, when they gained power themselves, proved the well-grounded nature of the fears entertained respecting their sincerity. Johnson was a firm English character, and his surly expressions were often philan thropy in disguise. They have little studied his real disposition, who impute his occasional austerity of manner to misanthropy at heart. The man who is smooth to all alike, is frequently the friend of none, and those who entertain no aversions, have, perhaps, few of the warmer emotions of friendship.

In dwelling thus long on a part of Johnson's character, on which we have elsewhere avowed that we could not speak with perfect pleasure, we are not attempting to vindicate him in all his violent reproaches of those whom he politically disliked. We would, however, wish to deprecate unmitigated condemnation, and also to ask, whether the conduct of those whom he denounced, was not, in its turn, so harsh and arbitrary, as almost to justify the utmost severity of censure. Were they not men who would "scarcely believe in the substance of their liberty, if they did not see it cast a shadow of slavery over others."

With respect to Johnson's powers as a critic, we confess that he had but little natural taste for poetry, as such; for that poetry of emotion which produces in its cultivators and admirers an intensity of excitement, to which language can scarcely afford an utterance, to which art can give no body, and which spreads a dream and a glory around us. All this Johnson felt not, and, therefore, understood not; for he wanted that deep feeling which is the only sure and unerring test of poetic excellence. He sought the didactic in poetry, and wished for reasoning in numbers. Hence his undivided admiration of Pope and the French school, who cultivated exclusively the poetry of idea, where each moral problem is worked out with detailed, and often tedious, analysis; where all intense emotion is frittered away by a ratiocinative process. Johnson, we repeat, had no natural perception nor relish for the high and excursive range of poetic fancy, and