but his element is the great. He can occasionally invest himself with grace; but his natural port is gigantic loftiness. He can please when pleasure is required; but it is his peculiar power to astonish."

He adds; "He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon others; the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful; he therefore chose a subject on which too much could not be said; on which he might tire his fancy without the censure of extravagance...... He sent his faculties out upon discovery into worlds where only imagination could travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superiour beings; to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven."

And afterwards; "Of his moral sentiments, it is hardly praise to affirm that they excel those of all other poets; for this superiority he was indebted to his acquaintance with the sacred writings. . . . . . Every line breathes sanctity of thought, and purity of manners, except when the train of the narrative requires the introduction of rebellious spirits; and even they are compelled to acknowledge their subjection to God in such a manner as excites reverence, and confirms piety."

Having caught the critic in a good-humoured frame, we will indulge ourselves with one more specimen. It relates to Milton's feelings and anticipations with respect to the success of his great work; and is conceived and expressed in Johnson's best manner. "Fancy can hardly forbear," says he, "to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked its reputation stealing its way in a kind of subterraneous current through fear and silence. I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and waiting, without impatience, the vicissitudes of opinion, and the impartiality of a future generation."

The Life of DRYDEN is written with Johnson's usual sagacity, and with something more than his usual care and labour. He does justice to the poet's uncommon powers, and treats his eccentricities and faults with as much lenity VOL. V.

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as could be desired. Respecting his conversion to popery soon after the accession of King James, Johnson remarks; "It is natural to hope that a comprehensive is likewise an elevated soul, and that whoever is wise, is also honest. I am willing to believe that Dryden, having employed his mind, active as it was, upon different studies, and filled it, capacions as it was, with other materials, came unprovided to the controversy, and wanted rather skill to discover the right, than virtue to maintain it. But inquiries into the heart are not for man; we must leave him to his judge."

Of the writings of Dryden, Johnson remarks, with too much justice, that they " exhibit many passages which, with all the allowances that can be made for characters and occasions, are such as piety would not have admitted, and such as may vitiate light and unprincipled minds."

Dryden's impurities are noted and reproved in a style not unworthy of the great English moralist. "Of the mind," says he, "that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately pollute itself with ideal wickedness, for the sake of spreading the contagion in society, I wish not to conceal or excuse the depravity. Such degradation of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot be contemplated but with grief and indignation."

Johnson's general estimate of Dryden's powers and acquisitions, may be collected from the following remarks; "His works abound with knowledge, and sparkle with illustration. There is scarcely any science or faculty that does not supply him with occasional images and lucky similitudes; every page discovers a mind very widely acquainted both with art and nature, and in full possession of great stores of intellectual wealth. Yet I rather believe that the knowledge of Dryden was gleaned from accidental intelligence and various conversation, by a quick apprehension, a judicious selection, and a happy memory, a keen appetite of knowledge, and a powerful digestion; by vigilance that permitted nothing to pass without notice, and a habit of reflection that suffered nothing useful to be lost."

.....

Dryden was one of the most admired poets of his time. He wrote much; yet as the interest of most of his poetry was altogether local and temporary, his writings are now generally forgotten, or neglected. Nor would any friend of virtue wish to see them again brought into notice and use. Yet amidst the corruption and rubbish of his writings,

there is a description of human life, which has rarely been exceeded, or even equalled, by any other poet. It is as graphic as it is just :

"When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat;

Yet, fool'd by hope, men favour the deceit,
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay;
To-morrow's falser than the former day;
Lies more; and while it says we shall be blest
With some new joy, cuts off what we possest.

Strange cozenage! None would live past years again;

Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain,

And from the dregs of life think to receive

What the first sprightly running could not give.

I'm tired of waiting for this chymic gold,

Which fools us young, and beggars us when old."

Johnson's Life of SAVAGE must be ranked among the curiosities of English literature. That the biography of a man so dissipated and licentious; a man convicted of murder, though pardoned, should occupy so ample a spacemore than six times as large as is occupied by the Life of Thompson-appears at first view surprising. The circumstance is explained by the fact that it was composed by Johnson early in life, as a separate work, and inserted in the present work as originally written. Still the affair is not wholly divested of its mystery. That Savage was of noble, though illegitimate birth, is confessed. This fact has, indeed, been brought into question. Still, when it is considered that, during the life of his reputed mother, there were published three different accounts of Savage, in all of which her impurity, and her cruelty to her son, were exposed to the world, and this, without contradiction or animadversion, the question would seem to be set at rest. That Savage had a portion of genius, is likewise admitted. But his life was at war with every principle of regularity and virtue. He was the slave of appetite and passion. Johnson himself admits that he was a pensioner on the bounty of his friends, without either humility or gratitude; that he expended in taverns, sums which he received as subscriptions for works which he never prepared; that he alternately praised and lampooned the same characters; and that when provoked, even by small offences, he would prosecute his revenge with the utmost acrimony, till his passion had subsided. How so severe a moralist as Johnson has been viewed, should think time and labour well bestowed in giv

ing celebrity, or at least notoriety, to a character of this cast, is a problem not easily solved. There is a circumstance, indeed, which throws some light on the subject. Johnson and Savage were, for a time, on terms of mutual intimacy. Boswell states that there were occasions on which they wandered together, whole nights, through the streets of London. With all his extravagant partialities for Johnson, he admits, that as Savage was a licentious man, his companion did not preserve himself wholly pure. But these are scenes over which benevolence would wish to drop the veil of oblivion. If, in narrating the life of his former companion and friend, Johnson has partially merged in concealment some of his most odious vices; if, in other cases, he has insinuated apologies for faults too egregious to be excused, let it be remembered that such offences are, on his part, extremely rare. And let it be remembered, that he has closed the biography of this most eccentric man with the following sound and salutary reflection. "This relation will not be wholly without its use, if those who languish under any part of his sufferings, shall be enabled to fortify their patience by reflecting that they feel only those afflictions from which the abilities of Savage did not exempt him; or those who, in confidence of superiour capacities or attainments, disregard the common maxims of life, shall be reminded that nothing will supply the want of prudence; and that negligence and irregularity, long continued, will make knowledge useless, wit ridiculous, and genius contemptible."

Our remarks on the Life of SWIFT shall be extremely brief. When, in travelling, we are met with a spot on which "no salutary plant takes root, no verdure quickens," and which is perhaps overgrown with brambles, we enter on it with reluctance, and leave it with all practicable rapidity. Swift was one of those remarkable characters which, though they make much show and bustle while they live, are but little regretted when they die. If, as some contend, he had an iron intellect, the same material was still more visible in the composition of his heart. His unparalleled and almost savage treatment of two estimable and lovely women, harrowed up their sensibilities, and shortened their days. Johnson has given his character justly and briefly in the following sentences: "He was not a man to be either loved or envied. He seems to have wasted life in discon

tent, by the rage of neglected pride, and the languishment of unsatisfied desire. He is querulous and fastidious, arrogant and malignant; he scarcely speaks of himself, but with indignant lamentation, or of others but with indignant superiority when he is gay, and with angry contempt when he is gloomy. From the letters that pass between him and Pope, it might be inferred that they, with Arbuthnat and Gay, had engrossed all the understanding and virtue of mankind; that their merits had filled the world, or that there was no hope of more."

Of the poetical works of Swift, Johnson remarks: "To divide this collection into classes, and show how some pieces are gross, and some are trifling, would be to tell the reader what he knows already, and to find faults of which the author could not be ignorant, who certainly wrote often, not to his judgement, but his humour."

I will add, without fear, on my own responsibility, that if a large portion of the poetry of Swift, or rather his rhymes, had, with the other sweepings of his study, found its way to the region of everlasting forgetfulness, the world would have been no loser, nor would his own reputation have been less unsullied. When men write "not to their judgement, but their humour," the public may well be spared the infliction of their eccentricities, and their follies.

We now come to the Life of POPE. On this ample field, it might naturally have been expected that Johnson. would bestow much labour, and that his powers, both of biography and criticism, would be displayed to no common advantage. Nor is the expectation altogether disappointed.

Pope may be said almost to have commenced a new era in English poetry. It is true that Dryden, a great reformer, had preceded him. But if Dryden began a reformation, it was Pope who, entering his school, and uniformly acknowledging his obligations to his master, made that reformation perfect. Under his hand, English verse assumed a harmony, and a finish, and the English language a precision, a force and beauty, unknown before. Nor will it be denied, that he possessed a power of conception, and a felicity of expression, which are not exceeded in any writer of ancient or modern times, and which have no parallel, but in the classic authors of Greece and Rome. Johnson once remarked in conversation, "a thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of ver