This was, however, but a small recompense for such a collection of biography, and such principles and illustrations of criticism, as, if digested and arranged in one system, by some modern Aristotle or Longinus, might form a code upon that subject, such as no other nation can shew.  As he was so good as to make me a present of the greatest part of the original and indeed only[128] manuscript of this admirable work, I have an opportunity of observing with wonder, the correctness with which he rapidly struck off such glowing composition.  He may be assimilated to the Lady in Waller, who could impress with ’Love at first sight:’ 

     ’Some other nymphs with colours faint,
      And pencil slow may Cupid paint,
      And a weak heart in time destroy;
      She has a stamp, and prints the boy[129].’

That he, however, had a good deal of trouble, and some anxiety in carrying on the work[130], we see from a series of letters to Mr. Nichols the printer[131], whose variety of literary inquiry and obliging disposition, rendered him useful to Johnson.  Mr. Steevens appears, from the papers in my possession, to have supplied him with some anecdotes and quotations; and I observe the fair hand of Mrs. Thrale as one of his copyists of select passages.  But he was principally indebted to my steady friend Mr. Isaac Reed, of Staple-inn, whose extensive and accurate knowledge of English literary history I do not express with exaggeration, when I say it is wonderful; indeed his labours[132] have proved it to the world; and all who have the pleasure of his acquaintance can bear testimony to the frankness of his communications in private society.

It is not my intention to dwell upon each of Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, or attempt an analysis of their merits, which, were I able to do it, would take up too much room in this work; yet I shall make a few observations upon some of them, and insert a few various readings.

The Life of COWLEY he himself considered as the best of the whole, on account of the dissertation which it contains on the Metaphysical Poets.  Dryden, whose critical abilities were equal to his poetical, had mentioned them in his excellent Dedication of his Juvenal, but had barely mentioned them[133].  Johnson has exhibited them at large, with such happy illustration from their writings, and in so luminous a manner, that indeed he may be allowed the full merit of novelty, and to have discovered to us, as it were, a new planet in the poetical hemisphere[134].

It is remarked by Johnson, in considering the works of a poet[135], that ‘amendments are seldom made without some token of a rent;’ but I do not find that this is applicable to prose[136].  We shall see that though his amendments in this work are for the better, there is nothing of the pannus assutus[137]; the texture is uniform:  and indeed, what had been there at first, is very seldom unfit to have remained.