LIVES OF THE POETS

JOHNSON (Dr SAMUEL, 1709-1784, critic, poet, conversationalist, lexicographer) AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT OF TWO SENTENCES FROM THE LIFE OF EDMUND WALLER IN LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS, comprising forty-one words reading: 'They proceeded with great [printed word 'Lord'] caution. Three only met in one place, and no man was allowed to impart the plot to more than two others, so that if any should be suspected or seized, more than three could not be endangered [three words deleted]', with a note in another hand, probably that of John Nichols (1745-1826), printer of Lives of the Poets ('Cut from Vol 1. of Johnson's Lives of the Poets -- from the Life of Waller by J Nichols'), on paper, laid down, c. 1¾ x 5 inches

Even portions of Johnson's prose literary manuscripts are of considerable rarity ('Johnson's writings in prose are rather scantily represented by extant manuscripts' -- Index of Literary Manuscripts); and none, as a whole or in part, has been sold at auction in at least the last twenty years. Of the two works for which substantial portions survive, one is Lives of the Poets, although even with this much of what remains is in the form of corrected proofsheets.

The present manuscript appears in the edition by G. Birkbeck Hill (O.U.P., 3 volumes, 1905 based on the 1783 edition, the last published in Johnson's lifetime) on page 260 in volume one, lines 36-39.

It has some real claim to stand somewhat in its own right as a separate entity since it did not appear in the first edition of the work, where the paragraph ended with the 'peace', the last word in the sentence preceding those in this manuscript. These sentences were, therefore, either cut from the manuscript before the printing of the first edition, as the Nichols note states (and the top edge is trimmed), or they were added separately for the later editions. The presence of the printed word 'Lord' towards the end of the first line suggests that Johnson was utilising printer's waste.

The context of the passage in Waller's life is the plot he was involved in to secure London for the King in 1642.

£3,500