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MACAULAY'S

LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON

EDITED WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION

BY

WILLIAM SCHUYLER, A.M.

ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL OF THE ST. LOUIS HIGH SCHOOL

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

1903

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1903,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up, electrotyped, and published September, 1903.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

9-3-43

PREFATORY NOTE

IT has been my purpose to make this edition of Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson as interesting as possible to the class of pupils who will study it. The notes are unusually full of explanatory and illustrative matter. It is useless to expect secondary school pupils to pursue independent investigations, and, even if the desire were present, the necessary books are generally lacking. The only book of reference one can count on is Webster's International Dictionary, and there are no notes on points where the definitions of that work are adequate.

Next to the study of Macaulay, the study of Johnson's remarkable life and commanding position in the history of English literature is of great importance. For this purpose, in addition to much matter in the notes taken from Johnson's Works and Boswell's Life, there has been added an appendix containing selections from the more interesting parts of Macaulay's Essay on Croker's Boswell (1831) and Carlyle's Essay

on Boswell's Johnson (1832), together with an extract from Leslie Stephen's History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. References are also made in the notes to some excellent historical novels, which may interest the pupils and bring them into closer contact with the men and times referred to. For further historical references, Green's Short History of the English People (Revised Edition) has been used, as it is generally accessible and is written in a most interesting style.

The text followed is that of the Encyclopædia Britannica, edition of 1856. The proofs of the Life in this edition were corrected by Macaulay himself. The only changes made are the italicizing of the titles of poems, books, and periodicals (which is the custom in the later editions of the Encyclopædia), the placing of a period after "Mrs," and the insertion in the dates of commas between the month and year.

My thanks are due to Miss Jennie M. A. Jones and Mr. Philo M. Buck, teachers of English in the St. Louis High School, for many practical suggestions and valuable criticisms and for aid in revising the text and notes.

ST. LOUIS HIGH SCHOOL,
May, 1903.

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