in carrying on the work, we see from a series of letters to Mr. Nichols, the printer, whose variety of literary inquiry and obliging disposition rendered him useful to Johnson. Thus :

"In the Life of Waller, Mr. Nichols will find a reference to the Parliamentary History, from which a long quotation is to be inserted. If Mr. Nichols cannot easily find the book, Mr. Johnson will send it from Streatham. "Clarendon is here returned.

"By some accident I laid your note upon Duke up so safely, that I cannot find it. Your informations have been of great use to me. I must beg it again, with another list of our authors, for I have laid that with the other. I have sent Stepney's epitaph. Let me have the revises as soon as can be. December, 1778.

I have sent Philips, with his Epitaphs, to be inserted. The fragment of a preface is hardly worth the impression, but that we may seem to do something. It may be added to the Life of Philips. The Latin page is to be added to the Life of Smith. I shall be at home to revise the two sheets of Milton. 1, 1779.

March

"Please to get me the last edition of Hughes's Letters; and try to get Dennis upon Blackmore and upon Cato, and anything of the same writer against Pope. Our materials are defective.

"As Waller professed to have imitated Fairfax, do you think a few pages of Fairfax would enrich our edition? Few readers have seen it, and it may please them. But it is not necessary.

"An Account of the Lives and Works of some of the most eminent English Poets, by, &c. 'The English Poets, biographically and critically considered, by Sam. Johnson.' Let Mr. Nichols take his choice, or make another to his mind. May, 1781.

"You somehow forgot the advertisement for the new edition. It was not enclosed. Of Gay's Letters I see not that any use can be made, for they give no information of anything. That he was a member of the philosophical society is something; but surely he could be but a corresponding member. However, not having his life here, I know not how to put it in, and it is of little importance."

1

Mr. Steevens appears, from the papers in my possession, to

expand: and it is not wonderful that at so advanced an age he was not very anxious to purchase minute accuracy by the labour of revision.

1 See several more in "The Gentleman's Magazine," 1785. The editor of that miscellany, in which Johnson wrote for several years, seems justly to think that every fragment of so great a man is worthy of being preserved.

have supplied him with some anecdotes and quotations; and I observe the fair hand' of Mrs. Thrale as one of his copyists of select passages. But he was principally indebted to my steady friend, Mr. Isaac Reed, of Staples-inn, whose extensive and accurate knowledge of English literary history I do not express with exaggeration, when I say it is wonderful; indeed, his labours have proved it to the world; and all who have the pleasure of his acquaintance can bear testimony to the frankness of his communications in private society.

It is not my intention to dwell upon each of Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," or attempt an analysis of their merits, which, were I able to do it, would take up too much room in this work; yet I shall make a few observations upon some of them, and insert a few various readings.

The Life of COWLEY he himself considered as the best of the whole, on account of the dissertation which it contains on the Metaphysical Poets. Dryden, whose critical abilities were equal to his poetical, had mentioned them in his excellent Dedication of his Juvenal, but had barely mentioned them. Johnson has exhibited them at large, with such happy illustration from their writings, and in so luminous a manner, that indeed he may be allowed the full merit of novelty, and to have discovered to us, as it were, a new planet in the poetical hemisphere.

It is remarked by Johnson, in considering the works of a poet," that amendments are seldom made without some token of a rent;" but I do not find that this is applicable to prose. We shall see, that though his amendments in this work are for the better, there is nothing of the pannus assutus; the texture is uniform and indeed, what had been there at first, is very seldom unfit to have remained.

1 A fair hand in more than one sense-her writing is an almost perfect specimen of calligraphy; and this power remained unimpaired to the last years of her long life.-C.

2 Hawkins says, that he also gave it the preference, as containing a nicer investigation and discrimination of the characteristics of wit, than is elsewhere to be found.-C.

3 Life of Sheffield.

4 See, on a subsequent page, where the same remark is made, and Johnson is there speaking of prose. In his Life of Dryden, his observations on the opera of "King Arthur” furnish a striking instance of the truth of this remark.-M.

Various Readings' in the Life of COWLEY.

"All [future votaries of] that may hereafter pant for solitude.

"To conceive and execute the [agitation or perception] pains and the plea sures of other minds.

"The wide effulgence of [the blazing] a summer noon.

In the Life of WALLER, Johnson gives a distinct and animated narrative of public affairs in that variegated period, with strong yet nice touches of character; and having a fair opportunity to display his political principles, does it with an unqualified manly confidence, and satisfies his readers how nobly he might have exeented a Tory History of his country.

So easy is his style in these Lives, that I do not recollect more than three uncommon or learned words: one, when giving an account of the approach of Waller's mortal disease, he says, "he found his legs grow tumid," by using the expression his legs swelled, he would have avoided this; and there would have been no impropriety in its being followed by the interesting question to his physician, "What that swelling meant ?" Another, when he mentions that Pope had emitted proposals; when published or issued would have been more readily understood; and a third, when he calls Orrery and Dr. Delaney writers both undoubtedly veracious; when true, honest, or faithful might have been used. Yet, it must be owned, that none of these are hard or too big words; that custom would make them seem as easy as any others; and that a language is richer and capable of more beauty of expression, by having a greater variety of synonymes.

His dissertation upon the unfitness of poetry for the awful subjects of our holy religion, though I do not entirely agree with him, has all the merit of originality, with uncommon force and reasoning.

Various Readings in the Life of WALLER.

"Consented to [the insertion of their names] their own nomination. "[After] paying a fine of ten thousand pounds.

Congratulating Charles the Second on his [coronation] recovered right.

“He that has flattery ready for all whom the vicissitudes of the world hap

1 The original reading is enclosed in brackets, and the present one is printed in italics.

pen to exalt, must be [confessed to degrade his powers] scorned as a prostituten nind.

"The characters by which Waller intended to distinguish his writings are [elegance] sprightliness and dignity.

"Blossoms to be valued only as they [fetch] foretell fruits.

"Images such as the superficies of nature [easily] readily supplies.

"[His] Some applications [are sometimes] may be thought too remote and unconsequential.

"His images are [sometimes confused] not always distinct.”

Against his Life of MILTON, the hounds of whiggism have opened in full cry. But of Milton's great excellence as a poet, where shall we find such a blazon as by the hand of Johnson? I shall select only the following passage concerning "Paradise Lost : "—

"Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked his 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."

Indeed even Dr. Towers, who may be considered as one of the warmest zealots of The Revolution Society itself, allows, that "Johnson has spoken in the highest terms of the abilities of that great poet, and has bestowed on his principal poetical compositions the most honourable encomiums."

1

That a man, who venerated the church and monarchy as Johnson did, should speak with a just abhorrence of Milton as a politician, or rather as a daring foe to good polity, was surely to be expected;

1 See "An Essay on the Life, Character, and Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson," London, 1787; which is very well written, making a proper allowance for the democratical bigotry of its author; whom I cannot however but admire for his liberality in speaking thus of my illustrious friend :

"He possessed extraordinary powers of understanding, which were much cultivated by study, and still more by meditation and reflection. His memory was remarkably retentive, his imagination uncommonly vigorous, and his judgment keen and penetrating. He had a strong sense of the importance of religion; his piety was sincere, and sometimes ardent; and his zeal for the interests of virtue was often manifested in his conversation and in his writings. The same energy which was displayed in his literary productions was exhibited also in his conversation, which was various, striking, and instructive; and perhaps no man ever equalled him for nervous and pointed repartees. His Dictionary, his Moral Essays, and his productions in polite literature, will convey useful instruction, and elegant entertainment, as long as the language in which they are written shall be understood."

and to those who censure him, I would recommend his commentary on Milton's celebrated complaint of his situation, when by the lenity. of Charles the Second, "a lenity of which," as Johnson well observes, "the world has had perhaps no other example, he, who had written in justification of the murder of his sovereign, was safe under an Act of Oblivion." "No sooner is he safe than he finds himself in danger, fallen on evil days and evil tongues, with darkness and with dangers compassed round. This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly deserved compassion; but to add the mention of danger was ungrateful and unjust. He was fallen, indeed, on evil days; the time was come in which regicides could no longer boast their wickedness. But of evil tongues for Milton to complain, required impudence at least equal to his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow, that he never spared any asperity of reproach, or brutality of insolence."

1

66

I have, indeed, often wondered how Milton, an acrimonious and surly republican," '—" a man who in his domestic relations was so severe and arbitrary," and whose head was filled with the hardest and most dismal tenets of Calvinism, should have been such a poet; should not only have written with sublimity, but with beauty, and even gaiety; should have exquisitely painted the sweetest sensations of which our nature is capable; imaged the delicate raptures of connubial love; nay, seemed to be animated with all the spirit of revelry. It is a proof that in the human mind the departments of judgment and imagination, perception and temper, may sometimes be divided by strong partitions; and that the light and shade in the same character may be kept so distinct as never to be blended."

In the Life of Milton, Johnson took occasion to maintain his own and the general opinion of the excellence of rhyme over blank verse, in English poetry; and quotes this apposite illustration of it by "an ingenious critic," that it seems to be verse only to the eye. The gentle

1 Johnson's Life of Milton.

3

2 Mr. Malone thinks it is rather a proof that he felt nothing of those cheerful sensations which he has described: that on these topics it is the poet, and not the man, that writes.

3 One of the most natural instances of the effect of blank verse occurred to the late Earl of Hopeton. His lordship observed one of his shepherds poring in the fields upon Milton's "Paradise Lost ;" and having asked him what book it was, the man answered, "An't please 8

VOL. IV.