Lives of the English Poets From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of Johnson's Lives

About this time, there was a project for enabling him to take a more distinguished part in politics. The proposition for bringing him into the House of Commons came from Strahan...

Once, indeed, (but it is not till he has reached the third and last division of the essay) he screws up his courage so high as to question it concerning its name; and the result...

He was buried in the parish church of Walcot, in the city of Bath, in the same vault with his fourth daughter the wife of Rear-Admiral Sotheby, and her two infant children.

William Julius Mickle was born on the 29th of September, 1734, at Longholm, in the county of Dumfries, of which place his father, Alexander Meikle, or Mickle, a minister of the...

At the time of writing the Dictionary, he had a notion that our language "for almost a century had been departing from its original Teutonic character, and deviating towards a G...

At the beginning of October, 1768, the new bridge at Bristol was completed; and about the same time there appeared in the Bristol Journal a paper, purporting to be a description...

In 1756, appeared the first volume of his Essay on the genius and writings of Pope, dedicated to Young. The name of the author was to have been concealed, but he does not seem t...

He received the first rudiments of learning from a school-master who taught in the village where his parents resided, and who had served as a quarter-master during the war of th...

Yet he still continued to secure to himself some share of attention by several works in prose. In the Essay on Old Maids, published in 1785, there is an agreeable combination of...

[Transcriber's Note: Printers' errors have been marked with the notation ** . There are a few special characters in the section on Erasmus Darwin; macrons (a straight line over...

At Aberdeen, his heart seems to have taken up its rest; for no temptations could afterwards seduce him for any length of time to quit it. The professorship of Natural Philosophy...

"As to the defects of the character of Hayley, perhaps the most prominent feature was a pertinacity of determination with regard to his modes of action, which has been seldom ex...

On the eighth and ninth of December, he made his will, by which he bequeathed the chief of his property to Francis Barber, his negro servant. The value of this legacy is estimat...

He had bemoaned his distresses as an author; but was now to feel calamity of a different kind. This only daughter was taken from him by death, in her fifteenth year. Henceforwar...

The year after his entrance at college, he accepted a proposal that was made him to undertake the education of Lord Althorpe, then a child about seven years old; and for that pu...

His death, which was at last sudden, was caused by a hurt on his shin, that happened when he was stepping out of his carriage. On the Sunday (two days after) he felt so little i...

In his preface to the Scribleriad, which betrays great solicitude to explain and vindicate the plan of the poem, he declares that his intention is "to shew the vanity and useles...

The poem of The Deserted Village took its origin from the circumstance of General Robert Napper (the grandfather of the gentleman who now lives in the house within half a mile o...

A resolution, which had passed the Board of the Executive Government of Bengal, for altering the mode of paying the salaries of the judges, produced from him a very spirited rem...

Quippe sub immensis terrae penetralibus altae Hiscunt in vastum tenebrae: magnarum ibi princeps labitur undarum Oceanus, quo patre liquoris Omnigeni latices et mollis lentor aqu...

In 1758, he made a selection of Latin inscriptions in verse; and printed it, together with notes, under the title of Inscriptionum Romanarum Metricarum Delectus; and then first...

At the beginning of 1766, his faithful biographer, James Boswell, who had known him for three years, found him in a good house in Johnson's court, Fleet-street, to which he had...

His next publication (in 1745) was a pamphlet, called "Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with Remarks on Sir T.H. (Sir Thomas Hanmer's) Edition of Shakspeare...

I know not whether it be worth relating, that when sent for to a nobleman, at Buxton, who conceived his health to have suffered by the use of tea, to which he was immoderately a...

When golden Autumn, wreath'd in ripen'd corn, From purple clusters pour'd the foamy wine, Thy genius did his sallow brows adorn, And made the beauties of the season thine. With...