First published in 1958, this book contains four essays on various aspects of Johnson's personality and achievement as well as a survey of the work of Thomas Fuller; a comparison of Pepys and Boswell as diarists; a study of Thomas Gray's life in Cambridge; an essay on James Beresford, author of The Miseries of Human Life, a best-seller of 200 years ago; a brief account, based upon an unpublished diary, of B. W. Beatson, an early nineteenth-century don; and, finally, an essay on the 'inimitable' Max Beerbohm, whom Sir Sydney once dared to imitate.