Lives of the English Poets

Project Gutenberg's Lives of the English Poets, by Henry Francis Cary
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Title: Lives of the English Poets
From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of Johnson's Lives
Author: Henry Francis Cary
Release Date: January 9, 2004 [EBook #10660]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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By the same Author,
THE
EARLY FRENCH POETS,
A SERIES OF NOTICES AND TRANSLATIONS:
WITH AN
Introductory Sketch of the History of French Poetry.
BY THE REV. HENRY CARY, M.A.
MDCCCXLVI.

Shortly will be published,
THE ODES OF PINDAR,
IN ENGLISH VERSE.
SECOND EDITION, WITH NOTES,
EDITED BY THE REV. HENRY CARY, M.A.

Preparing for the Press,
THE
LITERARY JOURNAL AND LETTERS
OF THE
REV. HENRY FRANCIS CARY.
WITH A MEMOIR.
BY HIS SON, THE REV. HENRY CARY, M.A.

LIVES
OF
ENGLISH POETS,
FROM
JOHNSON TO KIRKE WHITE,
DESIGNED AS A CONTINUATION OF JOHNSON'S LIVES.
BY THE LATE
REV. HENRY FRANCIS CARY, M.A.
TRANSLATOR OF DANTE.
MDCCCXLVI.

EDITOR'S PREFACE.
The papers of which this volume is composed originally appeared in the London Magazine, between the years 1821 and 1824. It was the author's intention to continue the series of Lives to a later period, but a change in the proprietorship of the Magazine prevented the completion of his plan. They are now for the first time published in a separate form, and under their author's name.
In seeing the work through the press, the Editor has had occasion only to alter one or two particulars in the Life of Goldsmith, which the labours of that Poet's more recent biographer, Mr. Prior, have subsequently elucidated.
HENRY CARY.
WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD. Dec. 1, 1845.
CONTENTS.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
JOHN ARMSTRONG
RICHARD JAGO
RICHARD OWEN CAMBRIDGE
TOBIAS SMOLLETT
THOMAS WARTON
JOSEPH WARTON
CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY
WILLIAM MASON
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
ERASMUS DARWIN
WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE
JAMES BEATTIE
WILLIAM HAYLEY
SIR WILLIAM JONES
THOMAS CHATTERTON
HENRY KIRKE WHITE
LIVES OF ENGLISH POETS.

SAMUEL JOHNSON.
There is, perhaps, no one among our English writers, who for so great a part of his life has been an object of curiosity to his contemporaries as Johnson. Almost every thing he said or did was thought worthy of being recorded by some one or other of his associates; and the public were for a time willing to listen to all they had to say of him. A mass of information has thus been accumulated, from which it will be my task to select such a portion as shall seem sufficient to give a faithful representation of his fortunes and character, without wearying the attention of the reader. That any important addition should be made to what has been already told of him, will scarcely be expected.
Samuel Johnson, the elder of two sons of Michael Johnson, who was of an obscure family, and kept a bookseller's shop at Lichfield, was born in that city on the 18th of September, 1709. His mother, Sarah Ford, was sprung of a respectable race of yeomanry in Worcestershire; and, being a woman of great piety, early instilled into the mind of her son those principles of devotion for which he was afterwards so eminently distinguished. At the end of ten months from his birth, he was taken from his nurse, according to his own account of himself, a poor diseased infant, almost blind; and, when two years and a half old, was carried to London to be touched by Queen Anne for the evil. Being asked many years after if he had any remembrance of the Queen, he said that he had a confused but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds and a long black hood. So predominant was this superstition relating to the king's evil, that there was a form of service for the occasion inserted in the Book of Common Prayer, and Bishop Bull,[1] in one of his Sermons, calls it a relique and remainder of the primitive gift of healing. The morbidness of constitution natural to him, and the defect in his eye-sight, hindered him from partaking in the sports of other children, and probably induced him to seek for distinction in intellectual superiority. Dame Oliver, who kept a school for little children, in Lichfield, first taught him to read; and, as he delighted to tell, when he was going to the University, brought him a present of gingerbread, in token of his being the best scholar her academy had ever produced. His next instructor in his own language was a man whom he used to call Tom Browne; and who, he said,