severe. In the course of the eighteen months during which they have been
passing through the press, fresh reading has given fresh information,
and caused many an addition, and not a few corrections moreover to be
made, in passages which I had previously presumed to think already
complete. Had it been merely the biography of a great man of letters
that I was illustrating, such anxious care would scarcely have been
needful. But Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, as its author with just pride
boasts on its title-page, 'exhibits a view of literature and literary
men in Great Britain, for near half a century during which Johnson
flourished.' Wide, indeed, is the gulf by which this half-century is
separated from us. The reaction against the thought and style of the age
over which Pope ruled in its prime, and Johnson in its decline,--this
reaction, wise as it was in many ways and extravagant as it was perhaps
in more, is very far from having spent its force. Young men are still
far too often found in our Universities who think that one proof of
their originality is a contempt of authors whose writings they have
never read. Books which were in the hands of almost every reader of the
_Life_ when it first appeared are now read only by the curious.
Allusions and quotations which once fell upon a familiar and a friendly
ear now fall dead. Men whose names were known to every one, now often
have not even a line in a Dictionary of Biography. Over manners too a
change has come, and as Johnson justly observes, 'all works which
describe manners require notes in sixty or seventy years, or less[7].'
But it is not only Boswell's narrative that needs illustration. Johnson
in his talk ranges over a vast number of subjects. In his capacious
memory were stored up the fruits of an almost boundless curiosity, and a
wide and varied reading. I have sought to follow him wherever a remark
of his required illustration, and have read through many a book that I
might trace to its source a reference or an allusion. I have examined,
moreover, all the minor writings which are attributed to him by Boswell,