chaff and dross lie so open to
view, and are so easily separated from purer matter, that a hint is
sufficient to protect the most incautious from harm. Accordingly, in our
notes and prefaces we have confined ourselves to simple and succinct
histories of the respective works under consideration, and have avoided,
as much as might be, a burdensome repetition of criticisms or anecdotes,
in almost every person's possession, or an idle pointing out of beauties
which none could fail to recognise. The length of time that has elapsed
since the writings of Johnson were first published, has amply developed
their intrinsic merits, and destroyed the personal and party prejudices
which assail a living author: but the years have been too few to render
the customs and manners alluded to so obsolete as to require much
illustrative research.[a] It may be satisfactory to subjoin, that care
has been exercised in every thing that we have advanced, and that when
we have erred, it has been on the side of caution.

All the usually received works of Dr. Johnson, together with Murphy's
Essay on his Life and Genius, are comprised in this edition. In
pursuance of our plan of brevity, we shall not here give a list of his
minor and unacknowledged productions, but refer our readers to Boswell;
a new, amended, and enlarged edition of whose interesting and
picturesque Memoirs we purpose speedily to present to the public, after
the style and manner of the present work.

One very important addition, however, we conceive that we have made, in
publishing the whole of his sermons. It has been hitherto the practice
to give one or two, with a cursory notice, that Johnson's theological
knowledge was scanty, or unworthy of his general fame. We have acted
under a very different impression; for though Johnson was not, nor
pretended to be, a polemical or controversial divine, he well knew how
to apply to the right regulation of our moral conduct the lessons of
that Christianity which was not promulged for a sect, but for mankind;
which sought not a distinctive garb in the philosopher's grove, nor
secluded itself in the hermit's cell, but entered without reserve every
walk of life, and sympathized with all the instinctive feelings of our
common nature. This high privilege of our religion Johnson felt, and to
the diffusion of its practical, not of its theoretical advantages, he
applied the energies of his heart and mind; and with what success, we
leave to every c