THE LIF E O F SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. A BY SIR JOHN HAWKINS, KNT. LONDON: Printed for J. Buckland, J. Rivington and Sons, T. Payne and Sons, L. Davis, B. White and Son, T. Longman, B. Law, J. DodЛley, H. Baldwin, J. Robfon, J. Johnson, C. Dilly, T. Vernor, W. Nicoll, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, T. Cadell, T. Carnan, J. Nichols, J. Bew, R. Baldwin, N. Conant, P. Elmfly, W. Goldsmith, J. Knox, R. Faulder, Leigh & Sotheby, G. Nicol, J. Murray, A. Strahan, W. Lowndes, T. Evans, T.&J. Egerton, W. Fox, P. Macqueen, D. Ogilvie, B. Collins, and E. Newbery. M.DCC.LXXXVII. THE LIFE O F Dr. SAMUEL JOHNSON. HE general fense of mankind, and the practice TH of the learned in all ages, have given a sanction to biographical history, and concurred to recommend that precept of the wife fon of Sirach, in which we are exhorted to praise famous men, fuch as by their counfels and by their knowledge of learning were meet for the people,—and were wife and eloquent in their instructions,—and fuch as recited verses in writing*.'In each of these faculties did the perfon, whose history I am about to write, fo greatly excel, that, except for my prefumption in the attempt to display his worth, the undertaking may be thought to need no apology; efpecially if we contemplate, together with his mental endowments, those moral qualities which distinguished him, and reflect that, in an age when literary acquifitions and Ecclus. Chap. XLIV. Verse 1, et feqq. |