The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young,
and Others, by Samuel Johnson

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others

Author: Samuel Johnson

Commentator: Henry Morley

Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4678]
Posting Date: January 8, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIVES OF THE POETS ***

Produced by Les Bowler

LIVES OF THE POETS: GAY, THOMSON, YOUNG, and OTHERS

By Samuel Johnson

Contents.

Introduction by Henry Morley.

William King.
Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax.
Dr. Thomas Parnell.
Samuel Garth.
Nicholas Rowe.
John Gay.
Thomas Tickell.
William Somervil[l]e.
James Thomson.
Dr. Isaac Watts.
Ambrose Philips.
Gilbert West.
William Collins.
John Dyer.
William Shenstone.
Edward Young.
David Mallet.
Mark Akenside.
Thomas Gray.
George Lyttelton.

INTRODUCTION.

This volume contains a record of twenty lives, of which only one--that
of Edward Young--is treated at length. It completes our edition of
Johnson's Lives of the Poets, from which a few only of the briefest and
least important have been omitted.

The eldest of the Poets here discussed were Samuel Garth, Charles
Montague (Lord Halifax), and William King, who were born within the
years 1660-63. Next in age were Addison's friend Ambrose Philips,
and Nicholas Rowe the dramatist, who was also the first editor of
Shakespeare's plays after the four folios had appeared. Ambrose Philips
and Rowe were born in 1671 and 1673, and Isaac Watts in 1674. Thomas
Parnell, born in 1679, would follow next, nearly of like age with Young,
whose birth-year was 1681. Pope's friend John Gay was of Pope's age,
born in 1688, two years later than Addison's friend Thomas Tickell, who
was born in 1686. Next in the course of years came, in 1692, William
Somerville, the author of "The Chace." John Dyer, who wrote "Grongar
Hill," and James Thomson, who wrote the "Seasons," were both born in the
year 1700. They were two of three poets--Allan Ramsay, the third--who,
almost