Johnson has also not escaped animadversion for entitling his collection
The Lives of the English Poets, when he has taken so confined a range.
It must be remembered, that he only professed, in the first instance,
to prefix lives to the works which the booksellers chose to publish; he
was, therefore, confined to a task, at which he more than once expressed
his repugnance to Boswell. It should also, in fairness to his memory,
be borne in mind, that he wrote, as he confesses in his preface, from
scanty materials, and on various authors. It was very easy, therefore,
for each successive biographer, who devoted his time to the collection
of memoirs for some single individual, to point out inaccuracies in
Johnson's general statements; and very natural, also for one who had
contracted an affection for the subject of his labours, by continually
having him present in his thoughts, to carp at all those who were not as
alive to the merits, and as blind to the defects of his idol as himself.
But Johnson, feeling a manly consciousness of ability, which he affected
not to hide, was not dazzled by the lustre of brilliant talents, and was
far too honest to veil from public view the faults and failings of the
sons of genius. This he did not from a sour delight in detecting and
exposing the frailties of his fellow men, but from a belief that, in so
doing, he was promoting the good of mankind. "It is particularly the
duty," says he, "of those who consign illustrious names to posterity,
to take care lest their readers be misled by ambiguous examples. That
writer may justly be condemned as an enemy to goodness, who suffers
fondness or interest to confound right with wrong, or to shelter the
faults, which even the wisest and the best have committed, from that
ignominy which guilt ought always to suffer, and with which it should be
more deeply stigmatized, when dignified by its neighbourhood to uncommon
worth: since we shall be in danger of beholding it without abhorrence,
unless its turpitude be laid open, and the eye secured from the