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ries of public virtue have feldom fucceeded in the management of dominion, and in politics it has long been a prevailing creed to believe, that government is like gold, and muft not be fafhioned for extenfive ufe without the alloy of corruption. But I mean not to burthen you, my lively friend, with political reflections, or with a long differtation on the great mafs of Milton's profe; you, whofe ftudies are fo various and extenfive, are fufficiently familiar with those fingular compofitions; and I am not a little gratified in the affurance that you think as I do, both of their blemishes and their beauties, and approve the ufe that I have made of them in my endeavours to elucidate the life and character of their author. Much as we refpected the claffical erudition and the taste of your lamented brother, I am confident that we can neither of us fubfcribe to the cenfure he has paffed on the Latin ftile of Milton, who, to my apprehenfion, is often moft admirably eloquent in that language, and particularly fo in the paffage I have cited from his character of Bradfhaw; a character in which I have known very acrimonious enemies to the name of the man commended

very candidly acknowledge the eloquence of the eulogist. Some rigorous idolaters of the unhap py race of Stuart may yet cenfure me even for this difpaffionate revival of fuch a character; but you, my liberal friend to the freedom of literary difcuffion, you will fuggeft to me, that the minds of our countrymen in general afpire to Roman magnanimity, in rendering juftice to great qualities in men, who were occafionally the objects of public deteftation, and you join with me in admiring that example of fuch magnanimity, to which I particularly allude. Nothing is more. honourable to ancient Rome, than her generofity in allowing a ftatue of Hannibal to be raised and admired within the walls of the very city, which it was the ambition of his life to distress and destroy.

In emulation of that fpirit, which delights to honour the excellencies of an illuftrious antagonist, I have endeavoured to preserve in my own mind, and to exprefs on every proper occafion, my unshaken regard for the rare faculties and virtues of a late extraordinary biographer, whom it has been my lot to encounter continually as a very bitter, and fometimes, I

Bases

think, an infidious enemy to the great poet, whose memory I have frequently wished to rescue from indignity and detraction. The afperity of Johnfon towards Milton has often struck the fond admirers of the poet in various points of view; in one moment it excites laughter, in another indignation; now it reminds us of the weapon of Goliah as described by Cowley;

"A fword fo great, that it was only fit

"To cut off his great head that came with it;"

now it prompts us to exclaim, in the words of an angry Roman:

"Nec bellua tetrior ulla eft

'' Quam fervi rabics in libera colla furentis."

I have felt, I confefs, thefe different emotions of refentment in perusing the various farcasms of the auftere critic against the object of my poetical idolatry, but I have tried, and I hope with fome fuccefs, to correct the animofity they must naturally excite, by turning to the more temperate works of that very copious and admirable writer, particularly to his exquifite paper in the Rambler (N° 54) on the deaths

and

and afperity of literary men. It is hardly poffible, I think, to read the paper I have mentioned without losing, for fome time at least, all senfations of displeasure towards the eloquent, the tender moralift, and reflecting, with a fort of friendly fatisfaction, that, as long as the language of England exifts, the name of JOHNSON will remain, and deserve to remain,

Magnum et memorabile nomen.

As long as eloquence and morality are objects of public regard, we muft revere that great mental physician, who has given to us all, infirm mortals as the beft of us are, fuch admirable prescriptions for the regimen of mind, and we fhould rather speak in forrow than in anger, when we are forced to recollect, that, like other phyficians, however able and perfect in theory, he failed to correct the infirmity of his own morbid fpirit. You, my dear Warton, whom an oppofite temperament has made a critic of a more airy and cheerful complexion, you are one of the beft witneffes that I could poffibly produce, if I had occafion to prove any that my ideas of Johnfon's malevolent prejudices against

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Milton are not the offsprings of a fancy equally

prejudiced

cerity in saying, that I wish to acquit Johnfor of malevolence in every article where my reafon will allow me to do fo. I have been under the painful neceffity of displaying continually, in the following work, the various examples of his feverity to Milton. Nothing is more apt to excite our spleen than a stroke of injustice against an author whom we love and revere; but I should be forry to find myself infected by the acrimony which I was obliged to difplay, and I fhould be equally forry to run into an oppofite failing, and to indulge a spirit of obloquy, like Mrs. Candour, in the School for Scandal, with all the grimaces of affected good nature. I have spoken, therefore, my own feelings, without bitterness and without timidity. I cannot fay that I fpeak of Johnson " fine ira "et ftudio," as Tacitus faid of other great men (very differently great!) for, in truth, I feel towards the fame object those two opposite fources of prejudice and partiality as a critical biographer of the poets he often excites my tranfient indignation; but as an eloquent teacher of morality he fills me with more lafting reverence and affection.

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