Note 6: — Chapter VIII
Reading edition
Mason's 'Life of Gray' is excellent, because it is interspersed with letters which show us the man. His 'Life of Whitehead' is not a life at all, because there is neither a letter nor a saying from first to last. I am absolutely certain that my mode of biography, which gives not only a history of Johnson's visible progress through the world, and of his publications, but a view of his mind in his letters and conversations, is the most perfect that can be conceived, and will be more of a Life than any work that has ever yet appeared.6