Note 123 — Front matter (continued 3)

Swift has had many biographers; his life has been told by the kindest and most good-natured of men, Scott, who admired but could not bring himself to love him; and by stout old Johnson, who, forced to admit him into the company of poets, receives the famous Irishman, and takes off his hat to him with a bow of surly recognition, scans him from head to foot, and passes over to the other side of the street.—Thackeray.