ne or two particulars in the Life of Goldsmith, which the
labours of that Poet's more recent biographer, Mr. Prior, have
subsequently elucidated.

HENRY CARY.

WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD. _Dec_. 1, 1845.

CONTENTS.

SAMUEL JOHNSON

JOHN ARMSTRONG

RICHARD JAGO

RICHARD OWEN CAMBRIDGE

TOBIAS SMOLLETT

THOMAS WARTON

JOSEPH WARTON

CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY

WILLIAM MASON

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

ERASMUS DARWIN

WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE

JAMES BEATTIE

WILLIAM HAYLEY

SIR WILLIAM JONES

THOMAS CHATTERTON

HENRY KIRKE WHITE

LIVES OF ENGLISH POETS.

* * * * *

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

There is, perhaps, no one among our English writers, who for so great a
part of his life has been an object of curiosity to his contemporaries
as Johnson. Almost every thing he said or did was thought worthy of
being recorded by some one or other of his associates; and the public
were for a time willing to listen to all they had to say of him. A mass
of information has thus been accumulated, from which it will be my task
to select such a portion as shall seem sufficient to give a faithful
representation of his fortunes and character, without wearying the
attention of the reader. That any important addition should be made to
what has been already told of him, will scarcely be expected.

Samuel Johnson, the elder of two sons of Michael Johnson, who was of an
obscure family, and kept a bookseller's shop at Lichfield, was born in
that city on the 18th of September, 1709. His mother, Sarah Ford, was
sprung of a respectable race of yeomanry in Worcestershire; and, being a
woman of great piety, early instilled into the mind of her son those
principles of devotion for which he was afterwards so eminently
distinguished. At the end of ten months from his birth, he was taken
from his nurse, according to his own account of himself, a poor diseased
infant, almost blind; and, when two years and a half old, was carried to
London to be touched by Queen Anne for the evil. Being asked many years
after if he had any remembrance of the Queen, he said that he had a
confused but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds
and a long black hood. So predominant was this superstition relating to
the king's evil, that there was a form of service for the occasion
inserted in the Book of Common Prayer, and Bishop Bull,[1] in one of his
Sermons, calls it a relique and remainder of the primitive gift