L

I F E

OF

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

COMPREHENDING

AN ACCOUNT OF HIS STUDIES

AND NUMEROUS WORK S,

IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER;

A SERIES OF HIS EPISTOLARY CORRESPONDENCE
AND CONVERSATIONS WITH MANY EMINENT PERSONS;

AND

VARIOUS ORIGINAL PIECES OF HIS COMPOSITION,

NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED.

THE WHOLE EXHIBITING A VIEW OF LITERATURE AND LITERARY MEN
IN GREAT-BRITAIN, FOR NEAR HALF A CENTURY,
DURING WHICH HE FLOURISHED.

:

ADVERTISEMENT.

I At last deliver to the world a Work which I have long promised, and of which, I am afraid, too high expectations have been raised. The delay of its publication must be imputed, in a confiderable degree, to the extraordinary zeal which has been shewn by diftinguished persons in all quarters to fupply me with additional information concerning its illustrious Subject; resembling in this the grateful tribes of ancient nations, of which every individual was eager to throw a stone upon the grave of a departed Hero, and thus to share in the pious office of erecting an bonourable monument to his memory.

The labour and anxious attention with which I have collected and arranged the materials of which these volumes are compofed, will hardly be conceived by those who read them with careless facility. The stretch of mind and prompt affiduity by which so many conversations were preferved, I myself, at some distance of time, contemplate with wonder ; and I must be allowed to fuggeft, that the nature of the work in other respects, as it consists of innumerable detached particulars, all which, even the most minute, I have spared no pains to afcertain with a fcrupulous

I