In the first place, the facts are related upon the best intelligence, and the best vouchers that could be gleaned, after a great lapse of time'. Probability was to be inferred from such materials as could be procured, and no man better understood the nature of historical evidence than Dr. Johnson; no man was more religiously an observer of truth. If his History is any where defective, it must be imputed to the want of better information, and the errors of uncertain tradition.

Ad nos vix tenuis famæ perlabitur aura 2.

If the strictures on the works of the various authors are not always satisfactory, and if erroneous criticism may sometimes be suspected, who can hope that in matters of taste all shall agree? The instances in which the public mind has differed from the positions advanced by the author, are few in number. It has been said, that justice has not been done to Swift; that Gay and Prior are undervalued; and that Gray has been harshly treated3. This charge, perhaps, ought not to be disputed. Johnson, it is well known, had conceived a prejudice against Swift. His friends trembled for him when he was writing that life, but were pleased, at last, to see it executed with temper and moderation. As to Prior, it is probable that he gave his real opinion, but an opinion that will not be adopted by men of lively fancy 5. With regard

to Gray, when he condemns the apostrophe, in which Father Thames is desired to tell who drives the hoop, or tosses the ball, and then adds, that Father Thames had no better means of knowing than himself; when he compares the abrupt beginning of the first stanza of the bard to the ballad of JOHNNY ARMSTRONG, 'Is there ever a man in all Scotland';' there are, perhaps, few friends of Johnson, who would not wish to blot out both the passages. It may be questioned whether the remarks on Pope's Essay on Man can be received without great caution. It has been already mentioned, that Crousaz, a professor in Switzerland, eminent for his Treatise of Logic, started up a professed enemy to that poem. Johnson says, 'his mind was one of those, in which philosophy and piety are happily united. He looked with distrust upon all metaphysical systems of theology, and was persuaded, that the positions of Pope were intended to draw mankind away from Revelation, and to represent the whole course of things as a necessary concatenation of indissoluble fatality. This is not the place for a controversy about the Leibnitzian system. Warburton, with all the powers of his large and comprehensive mind, published a Vindication of Pope; and yet Johnson says, that 'in many passages a religious eye may easily discover expressions not very favourable to morals, or to liberty".' This sentence is severe, and, perhaps, dogmatical. Crousaz wrote an Examen of THE ESSAY ON MAN, and afterwards a Commentary on every remarkable passage; and though it now appears that Mrs. Elizabeth Carter translated the foreign Critic3, yet it is certain that Johnson encouraged the work, and, perhaps, imbibed those early prejudices which adhered to him to the end of his life. He shuddered at the idea of irreligion. Hence we are told in the Life of Pope, 'Never were penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment so happily

is not soft. His verses always roll but they seldom flow.' Works, viii.

22.

I

is abridged and altered.

* Ib. p. 288.

5 Ante, p. 374. Dryden spells the

1 Life, i. 403; Works, viii. 483, 486. word critick; Addison, critique;

Pope, critique and critick. John

2

Ante, p. 374.

3

Works, viii. 287. The quotation son's Dictionary.

disguised

disguised; Pope, in the chair of wisdom, tells much that every
man knows, and much that he did not know himself; and
gives us comfort in the position, that though man's a fool, yet
God is wise; that human advantages are unstable; that our
true honour is, not to have a great part, but to act it well;
that virtue only is our own, and that happiness is always in
our power.
The reader, when he meets all this in its new
array, no longer knows the talk of his mother and his nurse "."
But may it not be said, that every system of ethics must or
ought to terminate in plain and general maxims for the use
of life? and, though in such axioms no discovery is made, does
not the beauty of the moral theory consist in the premises,
and the chain of reasoning that leads to the conclusion?
May not truth, as Johnson himself says, be conveyed to the
mind by a new train of intermediate images? Pope's doc-
trine about the ruling passion does not seem to be refuted,
though it is called, in harsh terms, pernicious as well as
false, tending to establish a kind of moral predestination, or
over-ruling principle, which cannot be resisted 3. But Johnson
was too easily alarmed in the cause of religion. Organized
as the human race is, individuals have different inlets of
perception, different powers of mind, and different sensations
of pleasure and pain.

All spread their charms, but charm not all alike,
On different senses different objects strike;
Hence different passions more or less inflame,
As strong or weak the organs of the frame;
And hence one master-passion in the breast,
Like Aaron's serpent swallows up the rest*.

Brumoy says, Pascal from his infancy felt himself a geometrician; and Vandyke, in like manner, was a painter. Shakspeare, who of all poets had the deepest insight into human nature, was aware of a prevailing bias in the operations

of every mind. By him we are told, 'Masterless passion sways us to the mood of what it likes or loaths1?

It remains to enquire, whether in the lives before us the characters are partial, and too often drawn with malignity of misrepresentation. To prove this it is alleged, that Johnson has misrepresented the circumstances relative to the translation of the first Iliad, and maliciously ascribed that performance to Addison, instead of Tickell, with too much reliance on the testimony of Pope, taken from the account in the papers left by Mr. Spence2. For a refutation of the fallacy imputed to Addison, we are referred 3 to a note in the Biographia Britannica, written by the late Judge Blackstone, who, it is said, examined the whole matter with accuracy, and found that the first regular statement of the accusation against Addison was published by Ruff head in his Life of Pope, from the materials which he received from Dr. Warburton. But, with all due deference to the learned Judge, whose talents deserve all praise, this account is by no means accurate.

3

Sir Richard Steele, in a dedication of the Comedy of the Drummer to Mr. Congreve, gave the first insight into that business. He says, in a style of anger and resentment, ‘If

that gentleman (Mr. Tickell) thinks himself injured', I will allow I have wronged him upon this issue, that (if the reputed translator of the first book of Homer shall please to give us another book) there shall appear another good judge in poetry, besides Mr. Alexander Pope, who shall like it.' The authority of Steele outweighs all opinions founded on vain conjecture, and, indeed, seems to be decisive, since we do not find that Tickell, though warmly pressed, thought proper to vindicate himself.

But the grand proof of Johnson's malignity, is the manner in which he has treated the character and conduct of Milton 2. To enforce this charge, has wearied sophistry, and exhausted the invention of a party 3. What they cannot deny, they palliate; what they cannot prove, they say is probable. But why all this rage against Dr. Johnson? Addison, before him, had said of Milton;

Oh! had the Poet ne'er prophan'd his pen,

To varnish o'er the guilt of faithless men*!

And had not Johnson an equal right to avow his sentiments? Do his enemies claim a privilege to abuse whatever is valuable to Englishmen, either in Church or State, and must the liberty of UNLICENSED PRINTING 5 be denied to the friends of the British constitution?

It is unnecessary to pursue the argument through all its artifices, since, dismantled of ornament and seducing language,

''If a certain gentleman is injured by it,' &c. Addison's Works, ed. 1856, v. 153.

2 Malone wrote to Lord Charlemont on April 5, 1779:-‘Johnson's political principles break out in all his compositions. In his life of Waller having occasion to mention Hampden, his uncle, he has no other epithet for him than "the zealot of rebellion." I have not seen his Milton, but he told me, "we have had too many honey-suckle lives of Milton, and that his should be in