Category: Biographies
WHEN, at the age of sixty-eight, Johnson was writing these “Lives of the English Poets,” he had caused omissions to be made from the poems of Rochester, and was asked whether he would allow the printers to give all the verse of Prior. Boswell quoted a censure by Lord Hailes of...
Pope had sought for images and sentiments in a region not known to have been explored by many other of the English writers. He had consulted the modern writers of Latin poetry,...
14. Chapter 14The train of my disquisition has now conducted me to that poetical wonder, the translation of the “Iliad,” a performance which no age or nation can pretend to equal. To the Gree...
6. Chapter 6Walsh, a name yet preserved among the minor poets, was one of his first encouragers. His regard was gained by the pastorals, and from him Pope received the counsel from which he...
9. Chapter 9Voltaire, who was then in England, sent him a letter of consolation. He had been entertained by Pope at his table, where he talked with so much grossness that Mrs. Pope was driv...
4. Chapter 4SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE is one of those men whose writings have attracted much notice, but of whose life and manners very little has been communicated, and whose lot it has been t...
5. Chapter 5Contempt is a kind of gangrene, which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees. Blackmore being despised as a poet, was in time neglected as a phy...
12. Chapter 12He was fretful and easily displeased, and allowed himself to be capriciously resentful. He would sometimes leave Lord Oxford silently, no one could tell why, and was to be court...
8. Chapter 8The “Iliad” was published volume by volume, as the translation proceeded. The four first books appeared in 1713. The expectation of this work was undoubtedly high, and every man...
13. Chapter 13Pope was not content to satisfy; he desired to excel, and therefore always endeavoured to do his best; he did not court the candour, but dared the judgment of his reader, and, e...
10. Chapter 10The second and third epistles were published, and Pope was, I believe, more and more suspected of writing them. At last, in 1734, he avowed the fourth, and claimed the honour of...
15. Chapter 15“The great beauty of Homer’s language, as I take it, consists in that noble simplicity which runs through all his works (and yet his diction, contrary to what one would imagine...
3. Chapter 3Wherever Congreve was born, he was educated first at Kilkenny, and afterwards at Dublin, his father having some military employment that stationed him in Ireland; but after havi...
7. Chapter 7Lintot printed two hundred and fifty on royal paper in folio for two guineas a volume; of the small folio, having printed seventeen hundred and fifty copies of the first volume,...
2. Chapter 2Sui Temporis Historiam meditanti, Paulatim obrepens Febris Operi simul et Vitæ filum abrupit, Sept. 18. An. Dom. 1721. Ætat. 57. H.S.E. Vir Eximius Serenissimis Regi GULIELMO Re...
1. Chapter 1WHEN, at the age of sixty-eight, Johnson was writing these “Lives of the English Poets,” he had caused omissions to be made from the poems of Rochester, and was asked whether he...
16. Chapter 16If modest youth, with cool reflection crowned, And every opening virtue blooming round, Could save a parent’s justest pride from fate, Or add one patriot to a sinking state; Thi...