trimming, for his ready belief of the story. Mr. Warton, too, who seems to Dr. S. to be" an author who has accidentally and capriciously been elevated into unmerited celebrity," is called to severe account, for attributing an abhorrence of plays to a poet, "who, not only wrote Samson Agonistes, but who has left behind him a variety of subjects for the draina" This mistake of Warton and others, had been already corrected by Mr.Waldron, in his Republication of Downes' Roscius Anglicanus. The force of Hume's arguments in support of the opinion, that the Ikon was written by Charles, is also called in question; the historian is ac cused of exhibiting, "the most delicate and tremulous reserve, with the most determined preference; the most specious affectation of candour, with the most injurious violation and contempt of it." Johnson, Warton, and Hume, have never been suspected of inclining to the cause of the republicans at this crisis, and they all feel, in turns, the weight of Dr. Symmons' resentment. We agree with Hume, that the testimonies to prove that the Ikon is the production of the king, and those which assign it to Dr. Gauden, are both of great strength. Dr. Symmons decides for Gauden; and, it is curiousto remark, the different language of writers who labour to establish opposite positions.

66 These meditations," says Hume," resemble in elegance, purity, neatness, and simplicity, the genius of those performances which we know, with certainty, to have flowed from the royal pen; but are so unlike the bombast, perplexed, rhetorical, and corrupt style, of Dr. Gauden, to whom they are ascribed, that no human testimony seems sufficient to convince us that he was the author."

But now audi alteram partem; Dr Symmons affirms, that,

"The composition of this little volume, is radically different from that of the writings which unquestionably came from the pen of Charles; that its pages are sometimes strewn with false Hlowers, and the glitter of fanciful conceits; that its stile is antithetically and artificially constructed, and that it is infinitely more like to that of a doctor, than to that of a king."

Between such authorities who shall decide? The specimens quoted by Mr. Laing, "that acute and able historian," from the Ikon, and from one of Charles's known compositions, are certainly very different in point of style; but such evidence must always be inconclusive and, notwithstanding the suspicions of Milton;

the memorandum of Lord Anglesey of the disavowal of the Ikon, as a work of their father's, by Charles II. and the Duke of York; Dr. Walker's account; Mrs. Gauden's narrative; and the other corroborating circumstances stated by Dr. Symmons; we do not think the question is yet so settled as our Biographer thinks he has left it. The evidence however undoubtedly preponderates on the side of Gauden.

Whether the world has benefited or lost by Milton's temporary desertion of the Muses in favour of polemical writing, is a question that every one will answer according to his individual feeling. The poet, the man of genius, and the lover of literature, will lament that the author of PARADISE LOST should ever have quitted the flowery walks of Poesy, for the perplexed and thorny labyrinth of Politics :---he who, as Dr. Johnson observes, "had the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful;" whose "delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility, who 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." Dr. Symmons hesitates a little upon this point, but he evidently inclines more towards the poet than the politician.

"By the appropriation of his powers to controversy, during the high noon of his manhood, we have lost, as we may be certain, many a rich effusion of fancy, on which we might have dwelt with exquisite delight but we have gained by it the spectacle of a magnificent mind in a new course of action, throwing its roaring fullness over a strange country, and surprising us with the force and the flexibility of the human intellect."

The motives for Milton's political conduct and writings, were no doubt pure and honourable, and he must be a zealot indeed, who will not allow him to have maintained, amid all the changes and distractions of his time, the most upright and disinterested character--that he did not see through the hypocritical designs of Cromwell, may indeed be some impeachment of his sagacity: his panegyric of the Protector, is very lofty; but, while he applauds the "patriæ liberator, libertatis auctor, custosque idem et conservator," he cautions him against the abuse of the power with which

he had been invested, in terms that sufficiently manifest the virtuous independence of his mind.

We should trespass too far on the limits we propose for this department of the Cabinet, were we to obey the impulse of our wishes, by entering into a minute analysis of this most excellent Life, which, in opposition to the denomination Dr. S. has given to Dr. Johnson's performance, that of "a biographical libel," we shall call a noble biographical eulogy. Each has verged a little towards the extreme; the middle way still remains to be trodden. We must not omit, however, to direct the reader to the character of Laud, and the pernicious tendency of his conduct as a politician and churchman (p. 173). Dr. Symmons, review of the measures of this unfortunate prelate, calls forth a manly and dignified expression of his own sentiments of the Church of England. The character of Charles is thus concisely given.

"If he has been lowered beneath his just level by his enemies, he has been proportionably raised above it by his friends, and, with a nice regard to truth, we may probably place him in the central point between Nero, to whom he has been resembled by the former, and either of the Antonines, above whom he has been advanced, not without a degree of profane temerity, to the honours of sainthood and martyrdom by the latter. His private life was not, perhaps, liable to censure, as it was blemished only with common imperfection; but his public conduct betrayed the violence of a despot, with the duplicity and equivocating morality of a follower of Loyola."

Bradshaw, the president of the tribunal which adjudged Charles to the block, is considered by Dr. S.

"As a man who was mistaken indeed, and placed in an unfortunate situation, but whose radical and vital principle was public virtue; who would have been honoured in the purest times of Grecian and Roman patriotism, and whose high-souled and consistent indepeudence refused, on more than one occasion, to submit to the will of an imperious and irresistible usurper."

The fidelity of these portraits many will question, nor do we conceive that Charles II. worthless and profligate as he was, merits the charge of cruelty and malignity in the degree imputed to him by Dr. S.

A full account is given of the controversy with Salınasius, who is supposed, not without strong grounds, to have furnished Mr. Burke with some of the language and doctrines which we find in his works respecting the French Revolution.

Dr. S. winds up his volume with a summary of Milton's character. The picture he has drawn of him shews the hand of a master; the outline is bold, the colouring vivid, and the expression forcible; the likeness too is strong, but flattering: the rugged features are all softened down, and the whole is more like the description which a lover would give of his mistress, than a faithful portraiture drawn after the life.

We have already said that this is the best Life of Milton. The matter and the manner of it (with the slight drawbacks we have noticed) are entitled to the highest approbation. From the prose works many just inferences are drawn, and much new light thrown upon Milton's views and motives, as well as upon the characters of others who distinguished themselves on the side of the republicans. The stile is uniformly animated; it may be thought at times to be too florid, and to rise above the sober tone of a biographical work; but who in writing a life of Milton, especially one who, like Dr. S. has felt the inspiration of the Muse, could restrain himself within the ordinary limits of prose composition? We shall quote a few speciinens:

"Amid the ruins of Britain, Milton will survive: Europe will preserve one portion of him; and his native strains will be cherished in the expanding bosom of the great queen of the Atlantic, when his own London may present the spectacle of Thebes, and his Thames roll a silent and solitary stream through heaps of blended desolation."

"If his course was rapid and brilliant, (speaking of his short stay in Italy) it was not useless to others or to himself. He was a meteor, which gathering all the luminous particles within the sphere of its attraction, absorbed, and blended them with its own radiant body, for the sole purpose of diffusing a stronger emanation of light."

"At the time of which we are speaking (the end of 1653, and the beginning of 1654) the mighty work, [the Paradise Lost] according to Philips, was seriously undertaken; and it is curious to reflect on the steadiness of its growth, under a complication of adverse circumstances; and to see it, like a pine on the rocks of Norway, ascending to its majestic elevation, beneath the inclemency of a dreary sky, and assailed in the same moment, by the fury of the ocean at its feet, and the power of the tempest above its head."

Many such passages as these will be found in the volume. Dr. S. no doubt thought that he had a right, considering his subject, to introduce the gigantesca sublimita Miltoniana.

As a critic, he has shewn infinite taste and sagacity. His criticism on the irregular Latin Ode in the volume of Milton's Poems sent to the Bodleian Library, is deeply learned, and curiously minute. The single remark of Mr. Warton, which points out a false quantity in the use of the word solers, (and whose observations on Milton's latin prose composition, are stated by Dr. S. to "discover the Critic to be qualified only by presumption for the office") induced Dr. S. to offer a more extensive piece of criticism, on that wild and lawless composition.

The comparison between Milton and Shakspeare, as to their creative power, particularly with respect to Comus, The Tempest, &c. is a masterly specimen of discrimination.

The translations, both of the prose and poetical pieces, are several of them, from the pen of the Rev. Francis Wrangham. They are faithful, elegant, and spirited.

Before, however, we close our Review, we must again observe, that Dr. Johnson has been treated with an asperity, scarcely to be justified even between living literary combatants. We do not hold with the maxim "de mortuis, nil nisi bonum" but certainly "nil nisi verum.'

66

It is more than inferred, and almost directly charged, that Dr. Johnson was a participator with Lauder, in the nefarious attack upon Milton. He is called his "literary accomplice," his "great literary patron ;" and in another place, he is declared to be, an accomplice in the malignity; if candour obliges us to admit his ignorance of the frauds of its author;" again "Dr. Johnson survived the disgrace of his infamous alliance, to enjoy the opportunity of attempting with much deeper, though not more effectual wounds, the impassible reputation of Milton," and, Dr. Symmons might have proceeded to add, of publishing a review on the Paradise Lost, which contains more solid criticism, with clearer and more forcible illustration, and conveys more just and pointed encomium, than all the comments and panegyrics which have ever, either before or since, proceeded from his most enthusiastic admirers.

No man had a greater reverence for truth than Dr. Johnson and even admitting that he wished well to the success of Lauder's undertaking, we trust there are very few persons who will listen without indignation to the suggestion that he had any knowledge of the fraud that had been committed. On the contrary, "ought not candour VOL. I.

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