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TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



repere. To get these rightly chosen and thor- 

 oughly known is the great matter. For my part, 

 in thinking of this or that line of study which 

 human minds follow, I feel always prompted to 

 seek, first and foremost, the leading points tie 

 repere in it. 



In editing, for the use of the young, the group 

 of chapters which are now commonly distin- 

 guished as those of the Babylonian Isaiah, I drew 

 attention to their remarkable fitness for serving 

 as a point of this kind to the student of universal 

 history. But a work which by many is regarded 

 as simply and solely a document of religion, there 

 is difficulty, perhaps, in employing for historical 

 and literary purposes. With works of a secular 

 character one is on safer ground. And for years 

 past, whenever I have had occasion to use John- 

 son's "Lives of the Poets," the thought has 

 struck me how admirable a point de repere, or 

 fixed centre of the sort described above, these 

 lives might be made to furnish for the student of 

 English literature. If we could but take, I have 

 said to myself, the most important of the lives in 

 Johnson's volumes, and leave out all the rest, 

 what a text-book we should have ! The volumes 

 at present are a work to stand in a library, " a 

 work which no gentleman's library should be 

 without." But we want to get from them a text- 

 book, to be in the hands of every one who de- 

 sires even so much as a general acquaintance 

 with English literature — and so much acquaint- 

 ance as this who does not desire ? The work as 

 Johnson published it is not fitted to serve as such 

 a text-book ; it is too extensive, and contains the 

 lives of many poets quite insignificant. Johnson 

 supplied lives of all whom the booksellers pro- 

 posed to include in their collection of British 

 poets ; he did not choose the poets himself, al- 

 though he added two or three to those chosen by 

 the booksellers. Whatever Johnson did in the 

 department of literary biography and criticism 

 possesses interest and deserves our attention. 

 But in his " Lives of the Poets " there are six of 

 preeminent interest ; the lives of six men who, 

 while the rest in the collection are of inferior 

 rank, stand out as names of the first class in 

 English literature — Milton, Dryden, Swift, Addi- 

 son, Pope, Gray. These six writers differ among 

 themselves, of course, in power and importance, 

 and every one can see that, if we were following 

 certain mode9 of literary classification, Milton 

 would have to be placed on a solitary eminence 

 far above any of them. But if, without seeking a 

 close view of individual differences, we form a 

 large and liberal first class among English writers, 



all these six personages — Milton, Dryden, Swift, 

 Addison, Pope, Gray — must, I think, be placed in 

 it.- Their lives cover a space of more than a 

 century and a half, from 1608, the year of 

 Milton's birth, down to 1771, the date of the 

 death of Gray. Through this space of more 

 than a century and a half the six lives con- 

 duct us. We follow the course of what War- 

 burton well calls " the most agreeable subject in 

 the world, which is literary history," and follow 

 it in the lives of men of letters of the first class. 

 And the writer of their lives is himself, too, a man 

 of letters of the first class. Malone calls John- 

 son "the brightest ornament of the eighteenth 

 century." He is justly to be called, at any rate, 

 a man of letters of the first class, and the greatest 

 power in English letters during the eighteenth 

 century. And in these characteristic lives, not 

 finished until 1781, and "which I wrote," as he 

 himself tells us, " in my usual way, dilatorily and 

 hastily, unwilling to work and working with vigor 

 and haste," we have Johnson mellowed by years, 

 Johnson in his ripeness and plenitude, treating 

 the subject which he loved best and knew best. 

 Much of it he could treat with the knowledge and 

 sure tact of a contemporary; even from Milton 

 and Dryden he was scarcely further separated 

 than our generation is from Burns and Scott. 

 Having all these recommendations, his "Lives 

 of the Poets" do indeed truly stand for what 

 Boswell calls them, " the work which of all Dr. 

 Johnson's writings will perhaps be read most gen- 

 erally and with most pleasure." And in the lives 

 of the six chief personages of the work, the lives 

 of Milton, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Pope, and 

 Gray, we have its very kernel and quintessence ; 

 we have the work relieved of whatever is less 

 significant, retaining nothing which is not highly 

 significant, brought within easy and convenient 

 compass, and admirably fitted to serve as & point 

 de repere, a fixed and thoroughly known centre 

 of departure and return, to the student of English 

 literature. 



I know of no such first-rate piece of litera- 

 ture, for supplying in this way the wants of the 

 literary student, existing at all in any other lan- 

 guage ; or existing in our own language, for any 

 period except the period which Johnson's six 

 lives cover. A student cannot read them with- 

 out gaining from them, consciously or uncon- 

 sciously, an insight into the history of English 

 literature and life. He would find great benefit, 

 let me add, from reading in connection with each 

 biography something of the author with whom it 

 deals ; the first two books, say, of " Paradise 



