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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.

— Walter Raleigh Six Essays on Johnson (1910)

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More quotes by Walter Raleigh

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)

Definition and division are the watchwords of science, where art is all for composition and creation.

Style (1897)

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)

The late Mr. Froude, with a poet's instinct for unity, chose to regard the whole story of the English Voyages as an aspect of the Protestant Reformation.

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