e better
known than he always found convenient. The result is that the _Lives_
are easily written, full of anecdote and incident and manners, full of
{220} easily traceable allusions to himself and his own experiences,
full of the magisterial decisions of a man whose judgments are no
longer questioned, full, even more than usual, of frank confessions,
open disregard of established opinion, the pleasant refusals of a
wilful old man to reconsider his prejudices or take any more trouble
about his work than he happens to choose. All this increases the
readableness of the book. But it does not all increase its importance,
and the fact is that not even the greatest of the _Lives_ is as fine a
piece of work as the Preface to the Shakespeare. Moreover, the work as
a whole suffers from a disadvantage from which the Shakespeare is
conspicuously exempt. It deals very largely with matters in which
scarcely any one now takes any interest. In its three volumes Johnson
gives us biographical and critical studies of fifty-two poets. Of
these only six--Milton, Dryden, Pope, Thomson, Collins and Gray--would
now be considered of first-rate poetic importance. Of the rest it is
difficult to make certain of a dozen whose place in the second class
would be unquestioned. The thirty or more that remain are mostly poets
of whom the ordinary reader of to-day has never read, and if he is wise
will never read, a single line. Great part of the book therefore is
criticism not only upon the unimportant but {221} upon what, so far as
we are now concerned, may be called the non-existent. And even in
Johnson's hands that cannot but mean barren writing and empty reading.

Yet the _Lives of the Poets_ is not only the most popular book of its
kind in the language: it is also a book of real and permanent value.
No short Lives have ever equalled them. The most insignificant of the
poets acquires an momentary interest as he passes through Johnson's
hands. The art of biography is that of giving life to the dead: and
that can only be done by the living. No one was ever more alive than
Johnson. He says himself that he wrote his _Lives_ unwillingly but
with vigour and haste. The haste is apparent in a few places: the
vigour everywhere. He had more pleasure in the biographical part of
his work than in the critical, and consequently did it better. His
strong love of life in all its manifestations prevented his ever
treating an author merely as an