Lives of the poets

What Hacker News says

1. billfruitSep 2021
   I would recommend Samuel Johnson's "Lives of the Poets", a similar collection of biographies of English poets. Johnson points out good stuff from each of these poets works as well. His vigorous style of writing packed with wit as usual.

   He mentions that reading Paradise Lost, is "more of a duty than a pleasure", for example.

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2. cafardOct 2020
   That's Macaulay? Macaulay keeps a pretty firm thumb on the scales. Marvin Mudrick remarked that Boswell's Tour of Corsica was very good--I wouldn't know, for I haven't read it. And Tour of the Hebrides is very good.

   Johnson's Lives of the Poets is a good place to start with him, I think.

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3. billfruitMar 2019
   I would have included more of the English greats in essay writing: Charles Lamb (Whose 'Essays of Elia' might perhaps be be the finest collection of essays in the English language, Macaulay( whose essay on Warren Hastings is a masterpiece of English prose), William Hazlitt, even Dr Johnson (His 'Lives of the poets' is essentially a large collection of brilliant essays) and Joseph Addison.
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