7 quotes
The Dictionary, great work though it be, might have been successfully carried through by a merely mechanical genius.
Six Essays on Johnson (1910)
These Lives are the maturest and strongest of Johnson's work. It ought be a comfort to men past middle life to find Johnson, like Dryden, wrote his best prose in his latest years.
Six Essays on Johnson (1910)
The measure of an author's power would be best found in the book which he should sit down to write the day after his library was burnt to the ground.
Six Essays on Johnson (1910)
Because he had seen much of life, his last and greatest work, The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, is more than a collection of facts: it is a book of wisdom and experience, a treatise on the conduct of life, a commentary on human destiny.
Six Essays on Johnson (1910)
For some years after his death, his writings were held in huge esteem, and shaped the prose of England. That time has passed. New models have captured the public ear; and at this day Johnson's noble prose is perhaps studied chiefly by his parodists.
Six Essays on Johnson (1910)
The topics of The Rambler are many, but the great majority of them are drawn from the graver aspects of life, and it is when he treats of fundamental duties and inevitable sorrows, bereavement, and disease, and death, that Johnson rises to his full stature.
Six Essays on Johnson (1910)
It is one of Boswell's greatest merits that he is careful of his background; wherever it is possible he gives us a full and true account of the persons present, and the incidents and remarks that prompted Johnson's speech.
Six Essays on Johnson (1910)