THE

LIFE

1

OF

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

BY

SIR JOHN HAWKINS, KNT.

Gaac Preston

LONDON:

STOR LIBRARY

VEW-YORK.

Printed for J. Buckland, J. Rivington and Sons, T. Payne and Sons,
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ל

THE

LIFE

OF

Dr. SAMUEL JOHNSON.

T

HE general sense of mankind, and the practice 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, such as by their counsels 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 person, whose history I am about to write, so greatly excel, that, except for my presumption in the attempt to display his worth, the undertaking may be thought to need no apology; especially if we contemplate, together with his mental endowments, those moral qualities which distinguished him, and reflect that, in an age when literary acquisitions and

* Ecclus, Chap. XLIV. Verse 1, et feqq.