Lives of the English Poets

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Title: Lives of the English Poets
From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of Johnson's
Lives
Author: Henry Francis Cary
Release Date: January 9, 2004 [EBook #10660]
Language: English
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By the same Author,
THE
EARLY FRENCH POETS,
A SERIES OF NOTICES AND TRANSLATIONS:

WITH AN
Introductory Sketch of the History of French Poetry.
BY THE REV. HENRY CARY, M.A.
MDCCCXLVI.

Shortly will be published,
THE ODES OF PINDAR,
IN ENGLISH VERSE.
SECOND EDITION, WITH NOTES,
EDITED BY THE REV. HENRY CARY, M.A.

Preparing for the Press,
THE
LITERARY JOURNAL AND LETTERS
OF THE
REV. HENRY FRANCIS CARY.
WITH A MEMOIR.
BY HIS SON, THE REV. HENRY CARY, M.A.

LIVES
OF

ENGLISH POETS,
FROM
JOHNSON TO KIRKE WHITE,
DESIGNED AS A CONTINUATION OF JOHNSON'S LIVES.
BY THE LATE
REV. HENRY FRANCIS CARY, M.A.
TRANSLATOR OF DANTE.
MDCCCXLVI.

EDITOR'S PREFACE.
The papers of which this volume is composed originally appeared in
the London Magazine, between the years 1821 and 1824. It was the
author's intention to continue the series of Lives to a later period, but a
change in the proprietorship of the Magazine prevented the completion
of his plan. They are now for the first time published in a separate form,
and under their author's name.
In seeing the work through the press, the Editor has had occasion only
to alter one or two particulars in the Life of Goldsmith, which the
labours of that Poet's more recent biographer, Mr. Prior, have
subsequently elucidated.
HENRY CARY.
WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD. Dec. 1, 1845.
CONTENTS.
SAMUEL JOHNSON

JOHN ARMSTRONG
RICHARD JAGO
RICHARD OWEN CAMBRIDGE
TOBIAS SMOLLETT
THOMAS WARTON
JOSEPH WARTON
CHRISTOPHER ANSTEY
WILLIAM MASON
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
ERASMUS DARWIN
WILLIAM JULIUS MICKLE
JAMES BEATTIE
WILLIAM HAYLEY
SIR WILLIAM JONES
THOMAS CHATTERTON
HENRY KIRKE WHITE
LIVES OF ENGLISH POETS.

SAMUEL JOHNSON.
There is, perhaps, no one among our English writers, who for so great a
part of his life has been an object of curiosity to his contemporaries as

Johnson. Almost every thing he said or did was thought worthy of
being recorded by some one or other of his associates; and the public
were for a time willing to listen to all they had to say of him. A mass of
information has thus been accumulated, from which it will be my task
to select such a portion as shall seem sufficient to give a faithful
representation of his fortunes and character, without wearying the
attention of the reader. That any important addition should be made to
what has been already told of him, will scarcely be expected.
Samuel Johnson, the elder of two sons of Michael Johnson, who was of
an obscure family, and kept a bookseller's shop at Lichfield, was born
in that city on the 18th of September, 1709. His mother, Sarah Ford,
was sprung of a respectable race of yeomanry in Worcestershire; and,
being a woman of great piety, early instilled into the mind of her son
those principles of devotion for which he was afterwards so eminently
distinguished. At the end of ten months from his birth, he was taken
from his nurse, according to his own account of himself, a poor
diseased infant, almost blind; and, when two years and a half old, was
carried to London to be touched by Queen Anne for the evil. Being
asked many years after if he had any remembrance of the Queen, he
said that he had a confused but somehow a sort of solemn recollection
of a lady in diamonds and a long black hood. So predominant was this
superstition relating to the king's evil, that there was a form of service
for the occasion inserted in the Book of Common Prayer, and Bishop
Bull,[1] in one of his Sermons, calls it a relique and remainder of the
primitive gift of healing. The morbidness of constitution natural to him,
and the defect in his eye-sight, hindered him from partaking in the
sports of other children, and probably induced him to seek for
distinction in intellectual superiority.