ave been unacquainted, till about twenty years ago, in a conversation
which I had with that noble wit of Scotland, Sir George Mackenzie, he
asked me why I did not imitate in my verses the turns of Mr. Waller, and
Sir John Denham. ... This hint, thus seasonably given me, first made me
sensible of my own wants, and brought me afterwards to seek for the
supply of them in other English authors. I looked over the darling of my
youth, the famous Cowley.' Dryden's _Works_, ed. 1821, xiii. III.

[134] In one of his letters to Nichols, Johnson says:--'You have now all
Cowley. I have been drawn to a great length, but Cowley or Waller never
had any critical examination before.' _Gent. Mag._ 1785, p.9.

[135] _Life of Sheffield_. BOSWELL. Johnson's _Works_, vii. 485.

[136] See, however, p.11 of this volume, where the same remark is made
and Johnson is there speaking of _prose_. MALONE.

[137]

'Purpureus, late qui splendeat unus et alter
Assuitur pannus.'

'... Shreds of purple with broad lustre shine
Sewed on your poem.'

FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet_. 15.

[138] The original reading is enclosed in crochets, and the present one
is printed in Italicks. BOSWELL.

[139] I have noticed a few words which, to our ears, are more uncommon
than at least two of the three that Boswell mentions; as, 'Languages
divaricate,' _Works_, vii. 309; 'The mellifluence of Pope's numbers,'
_ib._ 337; 'A subject flux and transitory,' _ib._ 389; 'His prose is
pure without scrupulosity,' _ib._ 472; 'He received and accommodated the
ladies' (said of one serving behind the counter), _ib._ viii. 62; 'The
prevalence of this poem was gradual,' _ib._ p. 276; 'His style is
sometimes concatenated,' _ib._ p. 458. Boswell, on the next page,
supplies one more instance--'Images such as the superficies of nature
readily supplies.'

[140] See _ante_, iii. 249.

[141] Veracious is perhaps one of the 'four or five words' which Johnson
added, or thought that he added, to the English language. _Ante_, i.
221. He gives it in his _Dictionary_, but without any authority for it.
It is however older than his time.

[142] See Johnson's _Works_, vii. 134, 212, and viii. 386.

[143] Horace Walpole (_Letters_, vii. 452) writes of Johnson's
'_Billingsgate on Milton_.' A later letter shows that, like so many of
Johnson's critics, he had not read the _Life_. _Ib_. p. 508.

[144] _Works_, vii. 108.

[145] Thirty years earlier he had written of Milt