Books Should Be Free Loyal Books Free Public Domain Audiobooks & eBook Downloads |
|
Lives of the English Poets : Waller, Milton, Cowley By: Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) |
---|
![]()
LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS: WALLER, MILTON, COWLEY
Contents:
Introduction
Waller
Milton
Cowley INTRODUCTION. Samuel Johnson, born at Lichfield in the year 1709, on the 7th of
September Old Style, 18th New Style, was sixty eight years old when
he agreed with the booksellers to write his "Lives of the English
Poets." "I am engaged," he said, "to write little Lives, and little
Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets." His conscience
was also a little hurt by the fact that the bargain was made on
Easter Eve. In 1777 his memorandum, set down among prayers and
meditations, was "29 March, Easter Eve, I treated with booksellers
on a bargain, but the time was not long." The history of the book as told to Boswell by Edward Dilly, one of
the contracting booksellers, was this. An edition of Poets printed
by the Martins in Edinburgh, and sold by Bell in London, was
regarded by the London publishers as an interference with the
honorary copyright which booksellers then respected among
themselves. They said also that it was inaccurately printed and its
type was small. A few booksellers agreed, therefore, among
themselves to call a meeting of proprietors of honorary or actual
copyright in the various Poets. In Poets who had died before 1660
they had no trade interest at all. About forty of the most
respectable booksellers in London accepted the invitation to this
meeting. They determined to proceed immediately with an elegant and
uniform edition of Poets in whose works they were interested, and
they deputed three of their number, William Strahan, Thomas Davies,
and Cadell, to wait on Johnson, asking him to write the series of
prefatory Lives, and name his own terms. Johnson agreed at once,
and suggested as his price two hundred guineas, when, as Malone
says, the booksellers would readily have given him a thousand. He
then contemplated only "little Lives." His energetic pleasure in
the work expanded his Preface beyond the limits of the first design;
but when it was observed to Johnson that he was underpaid by the
booksellers, his reply was, "No, sir; it was not that they gave me
too little, but that I gave them too much." He gave them, in fact,
his masterpiece. His keen interest in Literature as the soul of
life, his sympathetic insight into human nature, enabled him to put
all that was best in himself into these studies of the lives of men
for whom he cared, and of the books that he was glad to speak his
mind about in his own shrewd independent way. Boswell was somewhat
disappointed at finding that the selection of the Poets in this
series would not be Johnson's, but that he was to furnish a Preface
and Life to any Poet the booksellers pleased. "I asked him," writes
Boswell, "if he would do this to any dunce's works, if they should
ask him. JOHNSON. "Yes, sir; and SAY he was a dunce." The meeting of booksellers, happy in the support of Johnson's
intellectual power, appointed also a committee to engage the best
engravers, and another committee to give directions about paper and
printing. They made out at once a list of the Poets they meant to
give, "many of which," said Dilly, "are within the time of the Act
of Queen Anne, which Martin and Bell cannot give, as they have no
property in them. The proprietors are almost all the booksellers in
London, of consequence." In 1780 the booksellers published, in separate form, four volumes of
Johnson's "Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the most Eminent
of the English Poets." The completion followed in 1781. "Sometime
in March," Johnson writes in that year, "I finished the Lives of the
Poets." The series of books to which they actually served as
prefaces extended to sixty volumes. When his work was done, Johnson
then being in his seventy second year, the booksellers added 100
pounds to the price first asked. Johnson's own life was then near
its close... Continue reading book >>
|
Genres for this book |
---|
History |
Literature |
eBook links |
---|
Wikipedia – Samuel Johnson |
Wikipedia – Lives of the English Poets : Waller, Milton, Cowley |
eBook Downloads | |
---|---|
ePUB eBook • iBooks for iPhone and iPad • Nook • Sony Reader |
Kindle eBook • Mobi file format for Kindle |
Read eBook • Load eBook in browser |
Text File eBook • Computers • Windows • Mac |
Review this book |
---|