Lives of the English Poets | Page 6

and rapidity with which it was thrown off the mind of the
writer, exhibits rather the fervour of an eloquent advocate, than the
laboriousness of a minute biographer. The forty-eight octavo pages, as
he told Mr. Nichols [4], were written in one day and night. At its first
appearance it was warmly praised, in the Champion, probably either by
Fielding, or by Ralph, who succeeded to him in a share of that paper;
and Sir Joshua Reynolds, when it came into his hand, found his
attention so powerfully arrested, that he read it through without
changing his posture, as he perceived by the torpidness of one of his
arms that had rested on a chimney-piece by which he was standing. For
the Life of Savage [5], he received fifteen guineas from Cave. About
this time he fell into the company of Collins, with whom, as he tells us
in his life of that poet, he delighted to converse.
His next publication (in 1745) was a pamphlet, called "Miscellaneous
Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with Remarks on Sir T.H.
(Sir Thomas Hanmer's) Edition of Shakspeare," to which were
subjoined, proposals for a new edition of his plays. These observations

were favourably mentioned by Warburton, in the preface to his edition;
and Johnson's gratitude for praise bestowed at a time when praise was
of value to him, was fervent and lasting. Yet Warburton, with his usual
intolerance of any dissent from his opinions, afterwards complained in
a private letter [6] to Hurd, that Johnson's remarks on his commentaries
were full of insolence and malignant reflections, which, had they not in
them "as much folly as malignity," he should have had reason to be
offended with.
In 1747, he furnished Garrick, who had become joint-patentee and
manager of Drury Lane, with a Prologue on the opening of the house.
This address has been commended quite as much as it deserves. The
characters of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson are, indeed, discriminated
with much skill; but surely something might have been said, if not of
Massinger and Beaumont and Fletcher, yet at least of Congreve and
Otway, who are involved in the sweeping censure passed on "the wits
of Charles."
Of all his various literary undertakings, that in which he now engaged
was the most arduous, a Dictionary of the English language. His plan of
this work was, at the desire of Dodsley, inscribed to the Earl of
Chesterfield, then one of the Secretaries of State; Dodsley, in
conjunction with six other book-sellers, stipulated fifteen hundred and
seventy-five pounds as the price of his labour; a sum, from which,
when the expenses of paper and transcription were deducted, a small
portion only remained for the compiler. In other countries, this national
desideratum has been supplied by the united exertions of the learned.
Had the project for such a combination in Queen Anne's reign been
carried into execution, the result might have been fewer defects and
less excellence: the explanation of technical terms would probably have
been more exact, the derivations more copious, and a greater number of
significant words now omitted [7], have been collected from our
earliest writers; but the citations would often have been made with less
judgment, and the definitions laid down with less acuteness of
discrimination.
From his new patron, whom he courted without the aid of those graces

so devoutly worshipped by that nobleman, he reaped but small
advantage; and, being much exasperated at his neglect, Johnson
addressed to him a very cutting, but, it must be owned, an intemperate
letter, renouncing his protection, though, when the Dictionary was
completed, Chesterfield had ushered its appearance before the public in
two complimentary papers in the World; but the homage of the client
was not to be recalled, or even his resentment to be appeased. His great
work is thus spoken of at its first appearance, in a letter from Thomas
Warton to his brother [8]. "The Dictionary is arrived; the preface is
noble. There is a grammar prefixed, and the history of the language is
pretty full; but you may plainly perceive strokes of laxity and indolence.
They are two most unwieldy volumes. I have written to him an
invitation. I fear his preface will disgust, by the expressions of his
consciousness of superiority, and of his contempt of patronage." In
1773, when he gave a second edition, with additions and corrections, he
announced in a few prefatory lines that he had expunged some
superfluities, and corrected some faults, and here and there had
scattered a remark; but that the main fabric continued the same. "I have
looked into it," he observes, in a letter to Boswell, "very little since I
wrote it, and, I think, I found it full as often better as worse than I
expected."
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