The Life of Samuel Johnson Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. with Additions and Notes, by J.W. Croker (Volume 3) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1831 Excerpt: ... No. V. note on Cibber's Lives of the Poets, --referred to in page 395. In the Monthly Review for May, 1792, there is such a correction of the above passage, as I should think myself very culpable not to subjoin. "This account is very inaccurate. The following statement of facts we know to be true, in every material circumstance: Shiels was the principal collector and digester of the materials for the work; but as he was very raw in authourship, an indifferent writer in prose, and his language full of Scotticisms, QTheoph. Gibber, who v/as a clever, lively fellow, and then soliciting employment among the booksellers, was engaged to correct the style and diction of the whole work, then intended to make only four volumes, with power to alter, expunge, or add, as he liked. He was also to supply notes occasionally, especially concerning those dramatick poets with whom he had been chiefly conversant. He also engaged to write several of the Lives; which (as we are told) he accordingly performed. He was farther useful in striking out the jacobitical and tory sentiments, which Shiels had industriously interspersed wherever he could bring them in; and as the success of the work appeared, after all, very doubtful, he was content with twenty-one pounds for his labour, besides a few sets of the books to disperse among his friends. Shit'ls had nearly seventy pounds, beside the advantage of many of the best Lives in the work being communicated by friends to the undertaking; and for which Air. Shiels had the same consideration as for the rest, being paid by the sheet for the whole. He was, however, so angry with his whiggish supervisor (tiik. like his father, being a violent stickler for the political principles which prevailed in the reign of George the Second) for so unme...