I shall preserve a literary curiosity, which perhaps is the only one of
its kind. It is an original memorandum of Dr. Johnson's, of hints for
the Life of Pope, written down, as they were suggested to his mind, in
the course of his researches. The lines in Italics Johnson had scratched
with red ink, probably after having made use of them. These notes should
be compared with the Life itself. The youthful student will find some
use, and the curious be gratified, in discovering the gradual labours of
research and observation, and that art of seizing on those general
conceptions which afterwards are developed by meditation and illustrated
by genius. I once thought of accompanying these _hints_ by the amplified
and finished passages derived from them; but this is an amusement which
the reader can contrive for himself. I have extracted the most material
notes.
This fragment is a companion-piece to the engraved fac-simile of a page
of Pope's Homer, in this volume.
That fac-simile, a minutely perfect copy of the manuscript, was not
given to show the autograph of Pope,--a practice which has since so
generally prevailed,--but to exhibit to the eye of the student the
fervour and the diligence required in every work of genius. This could
only be done by showing the state of the manuscript itself, with all its
erasures, and even its half-formed lines; nor could this effect be
produced by giving only some of the corrections, which Johnson had
already, in printed characters. My notion has been approved of, because
it was comprehended by writers of genius: yet this fac-simile has been
considered as nothing more than an autograph by those literary
blockheads, who, without taste and imagination, intruding into the
province of literature, find themselves as awkward as a once popular
divine, in his "Christian Life," assures us certain sinners would in
paradise,--like "pigs in a drawing-room."