every work regard the
writer's end." Johnson went to see men and manners, modes of life, and
the progress of civilization. His remarks are so artfully blended with
the rapidity and elegance of his narrative, that the reader is inclined
to wish, as Johnson did, with regard to Gray, that "to travel, and to
tell his travels, had been more of his employment."

As to Johnson's Parliamentary Debates, nothing, with propriety, can be
said in this place. They are collected, in two volumes, by Mr.
Stockdale, and the flow of eloquence which runs through the several
speeches, is sufficiently known.

It will not be useless to mention two more volumes, which may form a
proper supplement to this edition. They contain a set of sermons, left
for publication by John Taylor, LL.D. The reverend Mr. Hayes, who
ushered these discourses into the world, has not given them, as the
composition of Dr. Taylor. All he could say for his departed friend was,
that he left them, in silence, among his papers. Mr. Hayes knew them to
be the production of a superior mind; and the writer of these memoirs
owes it to the candour of that elegant scholar, that he is now warranted
to give an additional proof of Johnson's ardour in the cause of piety,
and every moral duty. The last discourse in the collection was intended
to be delivered by Dr. Taylor, at the funeral of Johnson's wife; but
that reverend gentleman declined the office, because, as he told Mr.
Hayes, the praise of the deceased was too much amplified. He, who reads
the piece, will find it a beautiful moral lesson, written with temper,
and nowhere overcharged with ambitious ornaments. The rest of the
discourses were the fund, which Dr. Taylor, from time to time, carried
with him to his pulpit. He had the _largest bull_[dd] in England, and
some of the best sermons.

We come now to the Lives of the Poets, a work undertaken at the age of
seventy, yet, the most brilliant, and, certainly, the most popular, of
all our author's writings. For this performance he needed little
preparation. Attentive always to the history of letters, and, by his own
natural bias, fond of biography, he was the more willing to embrace the
proposition of the booksellers. He was versed in the whole body of
English poetry, and his rules of criticism were settled with precision.
The dissertation, in the life of Cowley, on the metaphysical poets of
the last century, has the attraction of novelty, as well as sound
observation. The