HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL
HEN Dr. JOHNSON undertook to write
this justly celebrated paper, he had many difficulties to encounter. If, lamenting that during the long period which had elapsed since the conclusion of the writings of ADDISON, vice and folly had begun to recover from depression and contempt, he wished again to rectify publick taste and manners, to " give confidence to virtue and ardour to truth," he knew that the popularity of those writings had constituted them a precedent, which his genius was incapable of following, and from which it would be dangerous to depart. In the character of an ESSAYIST he was hitherto unknown to the publick. He had written nothing by which a favourable judgment could be formed of his success in a species of composition, which seemed to require the ease, and vivacity and humour of polished life; and he had probably often heard it repeated that ADDISON and his