The most obvious feature of Johnson’s The Lives of the Poets is the equipoise between :

Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets (1779-81) joins in each essay an account of the poet's life with a critical judgement of his works. This balance between biography and criticism is its most obvious feature; the Life of Cowley, for instance, includes Johnson's famous account of the metaphysical poets. Style and content, or language and form, are matters Johnson discusses within the criticism, not the overall design of the work.