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difplaying continually, in the following work, the various examples of his severity to Milton. Nothing is more apt to excite our spleen than a ftroke of injustice against an author whom we love and revere; but I fhould be forry to find myself infected by the acrimony which I was obliged to display, and I should be equally forry to run into an oppofite failing, and to indulge a fpirit of obloquy, like Mrs. Candour, in the School for Scandal, with all

the grimaces of affected good nature. I have, fpoken, therefore my own feelings, without bitterness and without timidity. I cannot say that I speak 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 oppofite fources of prejudice and partiality as a critical biographer of the poets he often excites my transient indignation; but as an eloquent teacher of morality he fills me with more lafting reverence and affection.

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His lives of the poets will probably give birth, in this or the next century, to a work of literary retaliation. Whenever a poet arises with as large a portion of spleen towards the critical writers of paft ages, as Johnson indulged towards the poets in his poetical biography, the literature of England will be enriched with "the Lives of the Critics," a work from which you, my dear Warton, will have little to apprehend; you, whofe effay teaches, as

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the critical biographer very truly and liberally obferved, "how the brow of criticism may be smoothed, and how " she may be enabled, with all her feverity, to attract "and delight."

Yet to fhew how apt a writer of verses is to accuse a profest critic of severity, we may both recollect, that when I had occasion to speak of your entertaining and inftructive Essay on Pope, I fcrupled not to confider the main scope of it a little too fevere; and in truth, my dear friend, I think fo ftill; because it is the aim of that charming Effay to prove, that Pope poffeffed not those very high poetical talents, for which the world, though fufficiently inclined to discover and magnify his defects, had allowed him credit. You confider him as the poet of reason, and intimate that "he stooped to truth, and moralized his fong," from a want of native powers to fupport a long flight in the higher province of fancy. To me, I confess, his Rape of the Lock appears a fufficient proof that he possessed, in a superlative degree, the faculty in which you would reduce him to a secondary rank; he chose, indeed, in many of his productions, to be the poet of reafon rather than of fancy; but I apprehend his choice was influenced by an idea (I believe a mistaken idea) that moral fatire is the fpecies of poetry by which a poet of modern times may render the greatest service to mankind. But if in one article you have been not so kind, as I could wish, to the

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poet of morality, I rejoice in recollecting, that you are on the point of making him confiderable amends, and of fulfilling a prediction of mine, by removing from the pages of Pope a great portion of the lumber with which they were amply loaded by Warburton. You will foon, I trust, prove to the literary world, as you perfectly proved to me fome years ago, that the poet has fuffered not a little from the abfurdities of his arrogant annotator. It is hardly poffible for a man of letters, who affectionately venerates the name of Milton, and recollects fome expreffions of Warburton concerning his poetry and his moral character, to speak of that fupercilious prelate without catching fome portion of his own scornful spirit: you will immediately perceive that I allude to his having bestowed upon Milton the opprobrious title of a time-ferver *. Do you recollect, my dear learned critic, extensive as your ftudies have

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been; do you recollect, in the wide range of ancient and modern defamation, a more unpardonable abuse of language? Milton, a poet of the most powerful, and, perhaps, the most independent mind that was ever given to a mere mortal, infulted with the appellation of a timeferver; and by whom? by Warburton, whose writings, and whofe fortune-but I will not copy the contemptuous' prelate in his favourite exercise of reviling the literary characters, whose opinions were different from his own; his habit of indulging a contemptuous and dogmatical spirit has already drawn upon his name and writings the natural punishment of such verbal intemperance; and the mitred follower of his fame and fortune, who has lately endeavoured to prop his reputation by a tenderly partial, but a very imperfect life of his precipitate and quarrelsome patron, has rather leffened, perhaps, his own credit, than increased that of his mafter, by that affected coldness of contempt with which he defcribes, or rather disfigures, the illuftrious chaftifer of Warburtonian infolence, the more accomplished critic, of whom you eminent fcholars of Winton are very juftly proud; I mean the eloquent and graceful LowтH.

But as I am not fond of literary ftrife, however dignified and diftinguished the antagonists may be, I will haften to extricate myself from this little group of contentious eritics; for it must be matter of regret to every fincere

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votary of peace and benevolence to obferve, that the field of literature is too frequently a field of cruelty, which almost realizes the hyperbolical expreffion of Lucan, and exhibits

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where men, whose kindred ftudies fhould humanize their temper, and unite them in the ties of fraternal regard, are too apt to exert all their faculties in ferociously mangling each other; where we fometimes behold the friendship of years diffolved in a moment, and converted into furious hostility, which, though it does not endanger, yet never fails to embitter life; and perhaps the fource of fuch contention,

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instead of being a fair and faithless Helen, is nothing more than a particle of grammar in a dead language. O that the spleen-correcting powers of mild and friendly ridicule could annihilate fuch hoftilities !-Cannot you, my dear Warton, who have the weight and authority of a pacific Neftor in this tumultuous field, cannot you suggest effectual lenitives for the genus irritabile fcriptorum. The celebrated Saxon painter Mengs has, I think, given us all an admirable hint of this kind in writing to an ingenious but petulant Frenchman, who had provoked him by fpeaking

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