Volume II
Includes index.
With an introduction by R. K. Mathur

Poet, dramatic, novelist, essayist, critic, biographer and lexicographer, Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-84) was the literary dictator of the 18th century. His Magnum opus, Lives of the English Poets, is such a work as posterity will not willingly let die. Though written more than 200 years ago (1777-81), the Lives has lost neither its charm for the general reader of the present age nor its relevance to modern criticism. The narratives, the biographical part of the Lives, pleasantly written in a conversational style, full of anecdotes, wise observations, and life-like portraits of characters, are a perennial source of delight to the reader. As short biographies, they are unrivalled.
If the biographical section attracts the general reader, the critical section draws the attention of the students of literary history and criticism. To the student of literary history, the Lives gives an authentic account of 18th century literature and culture, or rather of the neo-classical age, of the period of a hundred years or so that followed the restoration of Monarchy in 1660. It deals with the budding, blooming and decay of neo-classicism. It begins with the "Life of Cowly" containing Johnson's famous denunciation of metaphysical poetry which serves as a background against which he projects the achievement of the neo-classical age. It is indispensable for understanding the critical standards of the 18th century in general and Johnson in particular, for he wrote no formal critical treatise but only a few periodical essays discussing his theoretical position...