'
1781: AETAT. 72.]--In 1781 Johnson at last completed his Lives of the
Poets, of which he gives this account: 'Some time in March I finished
the Lives of the Poets, which I wrote in my usual way, dilatorily and
hastily, unwilling to work, and working with vigour and haste.' In a
memorandum previous to this, he says of them: 'Written, I hope, in such
a manner as may tend to the promotion of piety.'
The booksellers, justly sensible of the great additional value of the
copy-right, presented him with another hundred pounds, over and above
two hundred, for which his agreement was to furnish such prefaces as he
thought fit.
As he was so good as to make me a present of the greatest part of the
original and indeed only manuscript of this admirable work, I have an
opportunity of observing with wonder, the correctness with which he
rapidly struck off such glowing composition.
The Life of COWLEY he himself considered as the best of the whole, on
account of the dissertation which it contains on the Metaphysical Poets.
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