admired, and to whom he bore, I think, in many points, a very striking resemblance. Perhaps they both poffeffed too large a portion of fancy and enthusiasm to make good practical statesmen; the vifionaries of public virtue have feldom fucceeded in the management of dominion, and in politics it has long been a prevailing creed to believe, that goverment is like gold, and must not be fashioned for extensive 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, whose studies are so various and extensive, 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 ftyle of Milton, who, to my apprehenfion, is often most admirably eloquent in that language, and particularly fo in the paffage I have cited from his character of Bradshaw; 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 unhappy race of Stuart may yet cenfure me even for this difpaffionate

revival of such a character; but you, my liberal friend to the freedom of literary difcuffion, you will fuggest to me, that the minds of our countrymen in general aspire to Roman magnanimity, in rendering juftice to great qualities in men, who were occafionally the objects of public detestation, and you join with me in admiring that example of such magnanimity, to which I particularly allude. Nothing is more honourable to ancient Rome, than her generosity 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 spirit, which delights to honour the excellencies of an illustrious antagonist, I have endeavoured to preserve in my own mind, and to express 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 sometimes, I think, an infidious enemy to the great whose memory I have fervently wished to rescue from poet, indignity and detraction. The afperity of Johnson towards Milton has often ftruck the fond admirers of the in various points of view; in one moment it excites poet laughter, in another indignation; now it reminds us of the weapon of Goliah as described by Cowley ;

"A sword so great, that it was only fit

"To cut off his great head that came with it

"

now

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

I have felt, I confefs, thefe different emotions of refentment in perusing the various farcasms of the austere critic against the object of my poetical idolatry, but I have tried, and I hope with some fuccefs, to correct the animosity 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 afperity of literary men. It is hardly poffible, I think, to read the paper I have mentioned without losing, for some time at least, all sensations of displeasure towards the eloquent, the tender moralist, and reflecting, with a fort of friendly fatisfaction, that, as long as the language of England exists, 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 must revere that great mental physician, who has given to us all, infirm mortals as the best of us are, fuch admirable prescriptions for the regimen of mind, and we should rather speak in forrow than in anger, when we are forced to recollect, that, like other physicians, however

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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 complection, you are one of the best witnesses that I could poffibly produce, if I had any occasion to prove that my ideas of Johnson's malevolent prejudices against Milton are not the offsprings of a fancy equally prejudiced itself against the great author, whose prejudices I have prefumed to oppofe; you, my dear friend, have heard the harsh critic advance in converfation an opinion against Milton, even more fevere than the many detractive sarcasms with which his life of the great poet abounds; you have heard him declaim against the admiration excited by the poetry of Milton, and affirm it to be nothing more than the cant (to use his own favourite phrase) of affected sensibility.

I have prefumed to fay, that Johnson fometimes appears as an infidious enemy to the poet. Is there not fome degree of infidious hoftility in his introducing into his dictionary, under the article Sonnet, the very fonnet of Milton, which an enemy would certainly chufe, who wifhed to represent Milton as a writer of verses entitled to scorn and derision? You will immediately recollect that I allude to the fonnet which begins thus:

"A book was writ of late called Tetrachordon."

The

The fonnet is, in truth, contemptible enough, if we fuppofe that Milton intended it as a serious composition; but I apprehend it was an idle lufus poeticus, and either meant as a ludicrous parody on fome other fonnet, which has funk into oblivion, or merely written as a trifling paftime, to fhew that it is poffible to compose a fonnet with words moft unfriendly to rhyme. However this may be, it was barbarous furely towards Milton (and, I might add, towards the poetry of England) to exhibit this unhappy little production, in fo confpicuous a manner, as a fpecimen of English fonnets. Yet I perceive it is poffible to give a milder interpretation of Johnson's design in his display of this unfortunate sonnet; and as I moft fincerely wish not to charge him with more malevolence towards Milton than he really exerted, I will obferve on this occafion, that as he had little, or rather no relish for fonnets, which the ftern logician feems to have despised as perplexing trifles (difficiles nuga) he might only mean to deter young poetical students from a kind of verse that he disliked, by leading them to remark, how the greatest of our poets had failed in this petty compofition. You, who perfectly know how much more inclined I am to praise than to cenfure, will give me full credit for my fincerity in saying, that I wish to acquit Johnfon of malevolence in every article where my reafon will allow me to do so. I have been under the painful neceflity of difplaying

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