"Homer," says a popular critic, "is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets—Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists—Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers."
"A book," observes Mr. Croker, "to which the world refers as a manual of amusement, a repository of wit, wisdom, and morals, and a lively and faithful history of the manners and literature of England, during a period hardly second in brilliancy, and superior in importance even to the Augustan age of Anne."
[489] This truly amiable and accomplished person afterwards became Sir George Throckmorton, Bart.
[490] Private correspondence.
[491] Formerly Mrs. Thrale, the well-known friend of Dr. Johnson, and resident at Streatham. Her second marriage was considered to be imprudent. She wrote Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, and was also the authoress of the beautiful tale entitled, "The Three Warnings," beginning,
"The tree of deepest root is found
Unwilling most to leave the ground," &c. &c.
[492] It cost Lord Lyttelton twenty years to write the Life and History of Henry II. The historian Gibbon was twelve years in completing his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," and Adam Smith occupied ten years in producing his "Wealth of Nations."
A stronger instance can scarcely be quoted of the mental labour employed in the composition of a work, than what is recorded of Boileau, who occupied eleven months in writing his "Equivoque," consisting only of 346 lines, and afterwards spent three years in revising it.
Cowper sometimes wrote only five or six lines in a day.
[493] Private correspondence.