Johnson; to whose memory he is ambitious to erect a literary
monument, worthy of so great an authour, and so excellent a man. Dr.
Johnson was well informed of his design, and obligingly communicated to
him several curious particulars. With these will be interwoven the most
authentick accounts that can be obtained from those who knew him best;
many sketches of his conversation on a multiplicity of subjects, with
various persons, some of them the most eminent of the age; a great
number of letters from him at different periods, and several original
pieces dictated by him to Mr. Boswell, distinguished by that peculiar
energy, which marked every emanation of his mind.

Mr. Boswell takes this opportunity of gratefully acknowledging the many
valuable communications which he has received to enable him to render
his _Life of Dr. Johnson_ more complete. His thanks are particularly due
to the Rev. Dr. Adams, the Rev. Dr. Taylor, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr.
Langton, Dr. Brocklesby, the Rev. Thomas Warton, Mr. Hector of
Birmingham, Mrs. Porter, and Miss Seward.

He has already obtained a large collection of Dr. Johnson's letters to
his friends, and shall be much obliged for such others as yet remain in
private hands; which he is the more desirous of collecting, as all the
letters of that great man, which he has yet seen, are written with
peculiar precision and elegance; and he is confident that the
publication of the whole of Dr. Johnson's epistolary correspondence
will do him the highest honour.

APPENDIX A.

(_Page_ 80.)

As no one reads Warburton now--I bought the five volumes of his
_Divine Legation_ in excellent condition, bound in calf, for ten pence--one
or two extracts from his writing may be of interest. His Dedication
of that work to the Free-Thinkers is as vigorous as it is abusive. It has
such passages as the following:--'Low and mean as your buffoonery is,
it is yet to the level of the people:' p. xi. 'I have now done with
your buffoonery, which, like chewed bullets, is against the law of arms;
and come next to your scurrilities, those stink-pots of your offensive
war.' _Ib. p. xxii_. On page xl. he returns again to their '_cold_
buffoonery.' In the Appendix to vol. v, p. 414, he thus wittily replies
to Lowth, who had maintained that 'idolatry was punished under the
DOMINION of Melchisedec'(p. 409):--'Melchisedec's story is a short
one; he is just brought into the scene to _bless_ Abraham in his return
from co