ENGLISH POETS

BY SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

EDITED BY

GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, D.C.L.

SOMETIME HONORARY FELLOW OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD

WITH BRIEF MEMOIR OF DR. BIRKB CK HILL, BY HIS NEPHEW

HAROLD SPENCER SCOTT, M.A., NE V COLLEGE, OXFORD

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. III

SWIFT-LYTTELTON

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

MDCCCC V

HENRY FROWDE, M.A. PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON, EDINBURGH

NEW YORK AND TORONTO

.

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ADDITIONAL APPENDICES

MS. of Pope's Iliad

459

Thomson and the Surveyor-Generalship of the Leeward

Islands

459-461

INDEX

wordshire.'

's account of

g plundered

barbarity of

see Works,

TITLES OF WORKS QUOTED IN THE NOTES

LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS

IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

.

SWIFT:

AN

Account of Dr. Swift has been already collected, with great 1

diligence and acuteness, by Dr. Hawkesworth, according to a scheme which I laid before him in the intimacy of our friendship. I cannot, therefore, be expected to say much of a life concerning which I had long since communicated my thoughts to a man capable of dignifying his narration with so much elegance of language and force of sentiment ?

JONATHAN SWIFT was, according to an account said to 2 be written by himself), the son of Jonathan Swift, an attorney", and was born at Dublin on St. Andrew's day, 1667 5: according to his own report, as delivered by Pope to Spence, he was born at Leicester, the son of a clergyman, who was minister of a parish in Herefordshire 6. During his life the place of his birth was undetermined. He was contented to be called an Irishman by the Irish, but would occasionally call himself an Englishman?.

1

6

* Johnson recorded on his birthday, drew's Day, 1667, at his uncle, CounSept. 18, 1780 :- I have not at ali sellor Godwin Swift's house in Hoey'sstudied, nor written diligently. I have alley, which was the general residence Swift and Pope yet to write, Swift is of the chief lawyers."' The Rev. just begun.' John. Misc. i. 94. W. G. Carroll, whose Succession of * See Appendix A.

Clergy, &c., p. 55, I am quoting, thinks 3 "The original MS., under the it probable that it was at Godwin Doctor's own hand, which I received Swift's house in Bull Alley, off Bride from his cousin, Mrs. Whiteway, I Street, that he was born. It was have lodged in the University Library close to the Deanery. of Dublin.' Deane Swift's Essay Spence's Anec. p. 161. Probably upon the Life, &c., of Dr. Swift, Pope's memory was at fault; though App. p. 2:

Swift's cousin writes :—Sometimes His father, he wrote,'had some he would declare that he was not employments and agencies.' Craik's born in Ireland at all. . . . He could Life of Swift, p. 513. Forster says never endure to be called an Irishhe was an attorney of Dublin. Life man.' Deane Swift, pp. 26, 28. of Swift, p. 18. He described him- It was his grandfather who was

a younger son of younger Vicar of Goodrich in Herefordshire.' sons, although he had no brother. Craik, p. 510. For Swift's account of He had a sister. Works, xvii. 260. the old gentleman's being plundered

s. Faulkner's Dublin Journal, two and Kfty times by the barbarity of Oct. 27, 1745, in recording his death, Cromwell's hellish crew'see Works, says he was "born in the parish of xix. 195. St. Werburgh's, Dublin, on St. An- Orrery's Remarks, p. 7. "As to

B

self as

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LIVES OF POETS, III