Johnson's Life and Genius.
��proprietors of Johnson's Works thought the life, which they prefixed to their former edition, too unwieldy for republication T . /The prodigious variety of foreign matter, introduced into that | performance, seemed to overload the memory of Dr. Johnson, x^and in the account of his own life to leave him hardly visible 2 . They wished to have a more concise, and, for that reason, per haps a more satisfactory account, such as may exhibit a just picture of the man, and keep him the principal figure in the fore ground of his own picture. To comply with that request is the design of this essay, which the writer undertakes with a trembling hand. He has no discoveries, no secret anecdotes, no occasional controversy, no sudden flashes of wit and humour, no private conversation, and no new facts to embellish his work. Every thing has been gleaned. Dr. Johnson said of himself, * I am not uncandid, nor severe: I sometimes say more than I mean, in jest, and people are apt to think me serious V The exercise of
��a bon-mot.' Letters of Radcliffe and James, p. 266.
Romilly wrote from London on \ Aug. 20, 1790: 'I have been sur-\ prised, and I own a little indignant, ] to observe how little impression / Adam Smith's death has made here./ Scarce any notice has been taken ofV it, while for above a year together, after the death of Dr. Johnson, no thing was to be heard of but pane gyrics of him. Lives, Letters, and Anecdotes, and even at this moment there are two more Lives of him about to start into existence.' Romilly's Memoirs, i. 404. The two Lives were Boswell's and Murphy's.
1 By Sir John Hawkins. It was prefixed to an edition of Johnson's Works in eleven volumes, published in 1787 at ^3 6s.
2 Boswell, who in his text attacks Hawkins's Life, says in a note:
Let me add, that though I doubt I should not have been very prompt K to gratify Sir John Hawkins with I ) any compliment in his life-time, I do
��how frankly acknowledge, that, in my opinion, his volume, however in adequate and improper as a life of Dr. Johnson, and however discredited by unpardonable inaccuracies in other respects, contains a collection of curious anecdotes and obser vations, which few men but its author could have brought together.' Life, i. 27.
3 ' A friend was one day, about two years before his death, struck with some instance of Dr. Johnson's great candour. "Well, Sir, (said he,) I will always say that you are a very candid man." "Will you, (replied the Doctor,) I doubt then you will be very singular. But, in deed, Sir, (continued he,) I look upon myself to be a man very much mis understood. I am not an uncandid, nor am I a severe man. I sometimes say more than I mean, in jest ; and people are apt to believe me serious : however, I am more candid than I was when I was younger." ' Life, iv. 239.
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