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1864, Mar. 30
Gift. ofth

Richard Green Parker,

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BOUND JUL 8 1913

ADVERTISEMENT.

TWENTY years have elapsed since the death of Dr. Johnson, during which his character and talents have been scrutinized with a severity unprecedented in literary biography. There never, indeed, was a human being of whom more may be known by those who have had no opportunity of personal acquaintance, and perhaps never a man whose failings, after having been exposed by imprudence or exaggerated by malice,were 'sooner forgotten in the esteem excited by his superior talents, and steady virtues. Besides many impressions of his individual pieces, three large editions of his collected works have been bought up by the public, and a fourth, which has been loudly called for, is now completed. What Lord Chesterfield said of Swift, may be as truly applied to this author, "Whoever in the three kingdoms has any books at all, has Johnson."

In this edition, I have taken the liberty to omit " Cebes Table, or the Picture of Human Life." By what

means it came to be printed among Dr. Johnson's productions, I know not, except that there was once a traditionary report that he translated it for Dodsley's Preceptor. But internal evidence may be more safely relied on in the case of Dr. Johnson than of almost any other writer, and in this article it is impossible to discover the most distant resemblance to his style, nor has any of his biographers attributed it to him. The truth is, it was translated by Mr. Spence, first published in the third volume of Dodsley's Museum, in 1747, and copied into the Preceptor the following year.

To fill up the space occupied by this article, I have supplied five papers of the ADVENTURER, hitherto omitted by the mistake of Sir John Hawkins, the first collector of Dr. Johnson's works. I have also added such of Dr. Johnson's DEDICATIONS as have been yet discovered, one or two of which Mr. Boswell overlooked or rejected. Among these is the dedication to the Parliament, of a book entitled, "The Evangelical History of Jesus Christ." Mr. Boswell cannot allow that Dr. Johnson wrote this, because "he was no croaker, no declaimer against the times." This, however, is contradicted by the tenor of some of Dr. Johnson's writings before the present reign, and even by some of those conversations which Mr. Boswell has collected. The arti

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