PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
IT will be expected, that the Editor of the following curious and interesting pages should give an account of the manner in which the original MSS. came into his possession.
Mr. Boswell, in his admirable Life of Dr. Johnson x , thus observes :
' The consideration of numerous papers of which he was possessed seems to have struck Johnson's mind with a sudden anxiety ; and, as they were in great confusion, it is much to be lamented that he had not intrusted some faithful and discreet person with the care and selection of them ; instead of which, he, in a precipitate manner, burnt large masses of them, with
little regard, as I apprehend, to discrimination Two very
valuable articles, I am sure, we have lost ; which were two quarto volumes, containing a full, fair, and most particular account of his own life, from his earliest recollection.'
It does not appear, that the MS. from which the following short account of Dr. Johnson's early life is copied, was one of the two volumes to which Boswell alludes ; although it is evident, from his enumeration of particular dates in the blank pages of the book, that he intended to have finished these Annals, according to this plan, with the same minuteness of description, in every circumstance and event.
This Volume was among that mass of papers which were ordered to be committed to the flames a few days before his death, thirty-two pages of which were torn out by himself, and destroyed ; the contents of those which remain are here given with fidelity and exactness. Francis Barber, his black servant, unwilling that all the MSS. of his illustrious master should
1 iv. 403.
be
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