DR. JOHNSON'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO BARETTI'S INTRODUCTION.
Boswell notices Dr. Johnson having in 1775 written the preface to Baretti's Easy Lessons in Italian and English; but neither he nor his editors appear to have been aware of the preface which Dr. Johnson contributed to an earlier work by Baretti, his Introduction to the Italian Language, London, 1775, 8vo. It is accompanied by an Italian translation, and is written with all his usual vigour, and commences:
"Unjust objections commonly proceed from unreasonable expectation; writers are often censured for omitting what they never intended to perform."
The note, p 48:
"Though the design of these notes is rather to teach grammar than morality, yet, as I think nothing a deviation that can serve the cause of virtue," &c.,
and the excellent remarks, p. 198., on Machiavel's Life of Castruccio Castracani, have every internal evidence of Johnson's style, and were no doubt dictated by him to Baretti, for whom Johnson in the same year, 1755, endeavours to obtain the loan of Crescimbeni from Thomas Warton (Croker's Boswell, edit. 1848, p. 91.).
Nothing is more wanted than a good and complete edition of Johnson's Works, in which omissions similar to the above, of which I have a long list when required, may be supplied. His prefaces and dedications to the works of other writers are all models in their way, and not one of them ought to be lost.
JAS. CROSSLEY.