wish and diligent endeavour to give as accurate a text as possible, to
which we have subjoined notes, where elucidation seemed to be required.
They have been collected with care, and will prove our impartiality by
their occasional censures of the faults and failings of the writer whose
works it is our office to illustrate, and our more common and more
grateful task to praise. Though, being diffused over a wide space, they
appear less numerous than they really are, it has been our incessant
care to abstain from that method of redundant annotation, which tends to
display the ingenuity or mental resources of an editor, much more than
to illustrate the original writer. Notes have been chiefly introduced
for the purpose of guarding our readers against some political sophisms,
or to correct some hasty error. But happily, in the writings to which we
have devoted our time and attention, the 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