"He sent his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superior beings, to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven."
Life of Milton [from Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets, familiarly known as The Lives of the Poets]
At least 3 entries in ESTC (1779, 1781, 1790). [vols. 1 to 5 dates 1779, vols. 5 to 10, 1781)<br>
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Samuel Johnson, <u>Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets</u>, vol. 2 (London: Bathurst et al., 1779). &lt;<a href="http://estc.bl.uk/T44190">Link to ESTC</a>&gt;&lt;<a href="http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/infomark.do?&contentSet=ECCOArticles&type=multipage&tabID=T001&prodId=ECCO&docId=CW3310180104&source=gale&userGroupName=viva_uva&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMILE">Link to ECCO</a>&gt;<br> 
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Text from Jack Lynch's online edition, based on G. B. Hill's  <U>Lives of the English Poets</U>, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905). &lt;<a href="http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/milton.html">Link</a>&gt;