Close application to a new work, added to the illness of Lord Charlemont, probably interfered with the correspondence of this old friend. He died in August, 1799, in the heat of the contest about the Union. His biographer (Hardy) applied to Malone in May, 1804, for such notices or materials as might be interesting to blend with the narrative. These however for some reason now unknown, appear not to have been supplied. Had he any intention of undertaking the work himself? With his large stores of information, such a design may have been formed, though interrupted soon afterward by illness. Hardy alludes to him as a correspondent of his lordship, but says nothing of refusal of assistance.
In the spring of 1800 came out in four volumes, The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose Works of John Dryden; with an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author.
The praise of research always unwearied, as much as possible exact, and industrious almost to a fault, were given him without hesitation. His aim, he tells us, was to delineate the man, not the poet. The latter had been inimitably accomplished by the greatest critic of the age, or perhaps of any age. Nothing, in the estimate of his powers, could be added to the pages of Dr. Johnson; but there was much to fill up and rearrange in those incidents of life and character common to us all, about which the
thought, concerning the French Horn. But that and anything else which I scribbled down during my last perusal of Boswell’s life of our friend, were given more as queries than positive assertions . . . . It (a cold) prevents me from calling on you to talk over Johnsonian matters.”
