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.

While the world in general was filled with admiration of Johnson's
Lives of the Poets, there were narrow circles in which prejudice and
resentment were fostered, and from which attacks of different sorts
issued against him. By some violent Whigs he was arraigned of injustice
to Milton; by some Cambridge men of depreciating Gray; and his
expressing with a dignified freedom what he really thought of George,
Lord Lyttelton, gave offence to some of the friends of that nobleman,
and particularly produced a declaration of war against him from Mrs.
Montagu, the ingenious Essayist on Shakspeare, between whom and his
Lordship a commerce of reciprocal compliments had long been carried on.
In this war the smaller powers in alliance with him were of course led
to engage, at least on the defensive, and thus I for one was excluded
from the enjoyment of 'A Feast of Reason,' such as Mr. Cumberland has
described, with a keen, yet just and delicate pen, in his Observer.
These minute inconveniences gave not the least disturbance to Johnson.
He nobly said, when I talked to him of the feeble, though shrill outcry
which had been raised, 'Sir, I considered myself as entrusted with a
certain portion of truth. I have given my opinion sincerely; let them
shew where they think me wrong.'

I wrote to him in February, complaining of having been troubled by a
recurrence of the perplexing question of Liberty and Necessity;--and
mentioning that I hoped soon to meet him again in London.

'TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

'DEAR SIR,--I hoped you had got rid of all this hypocr