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Johnson's Lives of Sarpi, Blake, and Drake

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

E. L. McAdam Jr.
E. L. McAdam Jr.*
Affiliation:
New York University
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Extract

In no other field of writing save poetry did Johnson spend so much of his career as in biography—from the Life of Sarpi in 1738 to the Lives of the Poets in 1781. And in few of his undertakings was he so successful. Most of his biographical writing was done to order, and it frequently suffers from haste, but from first to last it shows his characteristic excellences, his eagerness and facility in generalization, his piercing analysis of character.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , June 1943 , pp. 466 - 476
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1943

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References

1 RES, x, 310.

2 viii, 581–583.

3 Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. Hill-Powell, i, 135.

4 Ed. 1694, p. 44.

5 Miscellanea, iii, 250.

6 Ed. 1705, pp. 495–498.

7 x, 301–307.

8 Serially in the London Chronicle, 16–20 Aug., 1757, marking the centenary of Blake's death, and appended to Johnson's Life of Savage in 1767, 1769, 1777.

8a Works, 1825, vi, 293. This edition has been used for convenience in quoting from the Uves of Blake and Drake. There are a few textual differences, all due, I think, to the printer or to editors after Johnson's death.

9 Ibid., p. 294.

10 Idem.

11 Ibid., p. 296.

12 1676, pp. 317–318.

13 Oxford, 1853, iii, 456.

14 This detail is given in Samuel Coluber's account of the war in Columna Rostrata, 1727, p. 95.

14a Gent. Mag.: “generally the.”

15 Loc. cit., pp. 299–300.

16 1656, pp, 124–125.

17 Gent. Mag.: “elogies.”

18 Loc. cit., pp. 301–302.

19 Op. cit., p. 115.

20 Op. cit., pp. 125–127.

21 Loc. cit., p. 308.

22 x, 389–396, 443–447, 509–515, 600–603; xi, 38–44. Like the Blake, it was appended to Johnson's Savage in 1767, 1769, 1777.

23 This, the most popular life of Drake, went into at least sixteen editions. Johnson's biography is not related to that of Samuel Clark, 1671, or the anonymous Life and dangerous voyages of Sir Francis Drake, printed for H. Dean, c. 1722, except that all have similar sources.

24 Loc. cit., p. 311.

25 E.g., Johnson gives the Marigold 30 tons instead of 80.

26 The anonymous life spells these Rawse and Cimerons.

27 Cf. Annales. 1630, Book iv, 76.

28 Loc. cit., p. 375.