[ n ] 



The p'an laid down by the piiblifliers of the colledlion of 

 Englifli Poetry to which Johnfon's Hves are prefixed has left 

 fome authors of acknowledged merit unnoticed by the ci-itic. 

 But the life of Savage, which exhibits inceffant efforts in the 

 biographer to palliate grofs violations of morals and decorum, 

 and the remarks on Gray, in which their author feems to be 

 ■wholly infenfible to poetical merit of the higheft clafs, leave us 

 little reafon to regret that Johnfon was not employed to write 

 the lives or criticife the works of all his poetical contemporaries. 

 Among the authors thus left to the animadverfion of humbler 

 critics our countryman GOLDSMITH ftands confpicuous. 

 His poetical works altogether do not amount to eighteen hun- 

 dred lines, and yet fuch is the tranfcendent merit of his two 

 principal poems, that as a poet Goldfmith is more generally 

 known and celebrated than many of thofe who have compofed 

 ■whole volumes. Criticifm cannot be more agreeably or more 

 ufefully employed than in tracing out the fources of his excel- 

 lence and analyzing its modes, in exhibiting the negligences 

 for which they often compenfate and the culpable excefs to 

 which they fometimes run, and in contemplating by detail 

 the l.terary character of an author of whom it is pronounced 

 from high authority * that " be pojf.jfed the art of being minute 

 " without tcdiouftiefs, and general without confujion, and that his 



" language 



* Johnfon in his Life of Parnell. 



