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REV. JOSEPH WARTON, D. D. &c.

My pleafant and refpectable Friend!

IN prefixing your name to this yolume, I feel

and confefs the double influence of an affectionate and of an ambitious defire to honour you and myself. Our loft and lamented Friend GIBBON has told us, I think very truly, in dedicating a juvenile work to his Father, that there are but two kinds of Dedications, which can do honour either to the Patron or the Author -the firft arifing from literary esteem, the fecond from personal affection. If either of thefe two characteristics may be fufficient to give propriety to a Dedication, I have little to apprehend for the prefent, which has certainly the advantage of uniting the two.

The kind and friendly manner in which you commended the firft edition of this Life might

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alone have induced me to infcribe a more ample copy of it to that literary veteran, whose applause is fo juftly dear to me. I have additional inducements in recollecting your animated and enlightened regard for the glory of MILTON. It is pleafing to address a sympathetic friend on a fubject that interests the fancy and the heart. I remember, with peculiar gratification, the liberality and frankness, with which you lamented to me the extreme feverity of the late Mr. Warton, in describing the controversial writings of Milton. I honour the rare integrity of your mind, my candid friend, which took the part of injured genius and probity against the prejudices of a brother, eminent as a scholar, and entitled alfo, in many points of view, to your love and admiration. I fympathize with you most cordially in regretting the feverity to which I allude, fo little to be expected from the general temper of the critic, and from that affectionate fpirit, with which he had vindicated the poetry of Milton from the mifreprefentations of cold and callous aufterity. But Mr. Warton had fallen into a mistake, which has betrayed other well-difpofed minds into an unreasonable abhor

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rence of Milton's profe; I mean the mistake of regarding it as having a tendency to fubvert our exifting government. Can any man juftly think it has fuch a tendency, who recollects that no government, fimilar to that which the Revolution established for England, existed when Milton wrote. His impaffioned yet difinterefted ardour for reformation was excited by those grofs abufes of power, which that new fettlement of the state very happily corrected.

Your learned and good-natured brother, my dear friend, was not the only man of learning and good-nature, who indulged a prejudice, that to us appears very extravagant, to give it the gentleft appellation. A literary Paladine (if I may borrow from romance a title of diftinction. to honour a very powerful historian) even Gibbon himself, whom we both admired and loved for his literary and for his focial accomplishments, furpaffed, I think, on this topic, the severity of Mr. Warton, and held it Hardly compatible with the duty of a good citizen to republish, in the prefent times, the prose of Milton, as he apprehended it might be productive of public-evil. For my own part, although I fin

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I fincerely respected the highly cultivated mind that harboured this apprehenfion, yet the apprehenfion itself appeared to me fomewhat fimilar to the fear of Falstaff, when he says, "afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be "dead." As the profe of Milton had a reference to the diftracted period in which it arose, its arguments, if they could by any means be pointed against our exifting government, are furely as incapable of inflicting a wound, as completely dead for all the purposes of hoftility, as the noble Percy is reprefented, when he excites the ludicrous terror of Sir John: but while I presume to describe the profe of Milton as inanimate in one point of view, let me have the juftice to add, that it frequently breathes fo warm a spirit of genuine eloquence and philanthropy, that I am perfuaded the prophecy of its great author concerning it will be gradually accomplished; its defects and its merits will be more temperately and juftly eftimated in a future age than they have hitherto been. The prejudices fo recently entertained against it, by the two eminent writers I have mentioned, were entertained at a period when a very extraordinary

panic poffeffed and overclouded many of the most elevated and enlightened minds of this kingdom-a period when a retired student could hardly amuse himself with perusing the nervous republican writers of the last century,. without being suspected of framing deadly machinations against the monarchs of the present day; and when the principles of a Jacobin were very blindly imputed to a truly English writer of acknowledged genius, and of the pureft reputation, who is, perhaps, of all men living, the moft perfectly blamelefs in his fentiments of government, morality, and religion. But happily for the credit of our national understanding, and our national courage, the panic to which I allude has speedily paffed away, and a man of letters may now, I prefume, as fafely and irreproachably perufe or reprint the great republican writers of England, as he might tranflate or elu-, cidate the political vifions of Plato, a writer whom Milton paffionately admired, and to whom he bore, I think, in many points, a very ftriking resemblance. Perhaps they both poffelfed too large a portion of fancy and enthufiafm to make good practical statesmen; the vifiona

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