the chief captain Lyfias; and even to require that the faid Archbishop fhould repair to the feveral prifons of these fufferers to ask their pardon, and to conduct them in a person and with honour out of their confinement; as was done in the cafe of Paul and Silas, by the ma giftrates of Philippi; who (however the Biographer may ftomach the idea of fuch a humiliation of this magnanimous ›pre, late) feem to have understood the honour due to the laws of their country, and the rights of free citizens, fomething better than either Abp. Laud or Dr. Johnfon.

But, after all, would Dr. Johnson lead us to the converfe of the fentiment he afcribes to Milton, as a tenet of his

own

own orthodoxy? What his family-connexions with females may be we profefs not to know; but we cannot believe that he is fo far in love with petticoatgovernment, as to fubfcribe to the propofition, that “men are made only for

"obedience, and women only for rebel lion." 151

But here we take our leave of his new narrative; leaving his ftrictures on Milton's poetry to the examination of critics by profeffion; all of whom, we are perfuaded, will not approve them merely because they came from Dr. Johnson. They will obferve that they are tainted throughout with the effects of an inveterate hatred to Milton's politics, with which, as the Biographer of a Poet the

author

author of Paradife Loft, the Critic had

very little to do.

His comparison of Shakespeare and Milton, in his poetical scale, is with respect to their capital performances contemptibly childish. Homer did not, perhaps could not, write like Ariftophanes what then? does that detract from' the merit of Homer in his peculiar walk? "But Shakespeare could have wrote "[lege written] like Milton." Perhaps not. At least it is more than Dr. Johnfon knew, or could prove, for want of inftances whereon to found his comparifon.

There is a line indeed in which they may be compared ; they both wrote fon nets, and little detached pieces of poetry.

Few

Few of Milton's efcape without fome mark of Dr. Johnson's fcorn or execra

tion. Might not a like-minded critic or caviller carp at fome of Shakespeare's performances of this clafs with equal justice and equal malignity? And where does all this end? Why Shakespeare was the abler and more gentleman-like punfter of the two.

We fhould perhaps be degraded into the clafs of fuch cavillers fhould we exprefs our diflike of Dr. Johnson's style; but candor itself muft allow, that there are periods in it which require to be tranflated into intelligible English, even where the fentiment is trivial enough for the conception of an honeft John

Trot.

K

For

For example: "But the reputation "and price of the copy ftill advanced, "till the Revolution put an end to the

fecrefy of love, and Paradife Loft broke

"into open view with fufficient fecurity "of kind reception *."

Many more inftances might be given from this new narrative, where the quaintnefs of the antithefis, as here, borders upon the burlefque; and we are too often put in mind, by Dr. Johnson's style, of what we remember a worthy Oxford tutor faid to his pupils of the ftyle of Seed's Sermons : " Boys will imi"tate it; and boys will be spoiled by imi༩ tating it."

Life, p. 119.

Let

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