Valete luctus;—­hinc lacrymabiles
Arcete visus:—­ibimus, ibimus
Superbienti qua theatro
Fingaliae memorantur aulae.

Illustris hospes! mox spatiabere
Qua mens ruinae ducta meatibus
Gaudebit explorare coetus,
Buccina qua cecinit triumphos;

Audin? resurgens spirat anhelitu
Dux usitato, suscitat efficax
Poeta manes, ingruitque
Vi solita redivivus horror.

Ahaena quassans tela gravi manu
Sic ibat atrox Ossiani pater: 
Quiescat urna, stet fidelis
Phersonius vigil ad favillam.

Preparing for the Press, in one Volume Quarto,

THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

BY JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

Mr. Boswell has been collecting materials for this work for more than twenty years, during which he was honoured with the intimate friendship of Dr. Johnson; to whose memory he is ambitious to erect a literary monument, worthy of so great an authour, and so excellent a man.  Dr. Johnson was well informed of his design, and obligingly communicated to him several curious particulars.  With these will be interwoven the most authentick accounts that can be obtained from those who knew him best; many sketches of his conversation on a multiplicity of subjects, with various persons, some of them the most eminent of the age; a great number of letters from him at different periods, and several original pieces dictated by him to Mr. Boswell, distinguished by that peculiar energy, which marked every emanation of his mind.

Mr. Boswell takes this opportunity of gratefully acknowledging the many valuable communications which he has received to enable him to render his Life of Dr. Johnson more complete.  His thanks are particularly due to the Rev. Dr. Adams, the Rev. Dr. Taylor, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Langton, Dr. Brocklesby, the Rev. Thomas Warton, Mr. Hector of Birmingham, Mrs. Porter, and Miss Seward.

He has already obtained a large collection of Dr. Johnson’s letters to his friends, and shall be much obliged for such others as yet remain in private hands; which he is the more desirous of collecting, as all the letters of that great man, which he has yet seen, are written with peculiar precision and elegance; and he is confident that the publication of the whole of Dr. Johnson’s epistolary correspondence will do him the highest honour.

APPENDIX A.

(Page 80.)

As no one reads Warburton now—­I bought the five volumes of his Divine Legation in excellent condition, bound in calf, for ten pence—­one or two extracts from his writing may be of interest.  His Dedication of that work to the Free-Thinkers is as vigorous as it is abusive.  It has such passages as the following:—­’Low and mean as your buffoonery is, it is yet to the level of the people:’  p. xi.  ’I have now done with your buffoonery, which, like chewed bullets, is against the law of arms; and come next to your