MEN OF LETTERS 



OF THE 



TIME OF GEORGE III. 



JOHNSON. 



X 



THE materials for writing the Life of Dr. Johnson are 

 certainly more abundant than for the biography of any 

 other distinguished person : not even excepting him whose 

 Confessions reveal all that he himself could recollect, and 

 chose to record of his own history ; or him whose incessant 

 activity and multiplicity of connexions, left fourscore 

 volumes of his published works, and twenty of his private 

 correspondence. We owe the great riches of the English 

 Author's remains to the curiosity excited by his lively 

 and pointed conversation, and the happy accident of his 

 living for the latter part of his life in the society of a 

 person eminently qualified, both by his tastes and his 

 habits, to afford that curiosity an almost unlimited grati- 

 fication. In the grateful remembrance of all who relish 

 the pleasures of refined social intercourse, with the name 

 Johnson is associated that of Boswell, as indissolubly as 

 are those of Plato and Xenophon with the more remark- 

 able name of Socrates in the minds of all who love 

 philosophy ; and there is perhaps added a zest to the 

 collections of the English writer which the Athenian 

 records possess not ; we see the amiable and lively his- 



B 



