LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS: WALLER, MILTON, COWLEY




Contents:
Introduction
Waller
Milton
Cowley



INTRODUCTION.



Samuel Johnson, born at Lichfield in the year 1709, on the 7th of
September Old Style, 18th New Style, was sixty-eight years old when
he agreed with the booksellers to write his "Lives of the English
Poets." "I am engaged," he said, "to write little Lives, and little
Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets." His conscience
was also a little hurt by the fact that the bargain was made on
Easter Eve. In 1777 his memorandum, set down among prayers and
meditations, was "29 March, Easter Eve, I treated with booksellers
on a bargain, but the time was not long."

The history of the book as told to Boswell by Edward Dilly, one of
the contracting booksellers, was this. An edition of Poets printed
by the Martins in Edinburgh, and sold by Bell in London, was