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"in the place of acknowledging that "fuch particular paffages only were in"terpolated, he gave up the whole effay "against Milton as delufion and mifre"presentation, and therefore impofed "more grievoufly on the public than I "had done; and that too in terms much "more fubmiffive and abject than the "nature of the offence required *."

The amanuenfis here gained two confiderable points. 1. It was at his option to mention or not the affistance that Lauder had in compofing his effay; and confequently to conceal in what degree the fraud was communicated to him from the beginning. 2. He effectually anfwered Mr. Douglas's expectation, who * Vindication of King Charles I. p. 4.

would

would naturally conclude that Lauder had no accomplices in his villany, except the jefuits.

But they who read Lauder's complaints of this confidential friend in the pamphlet juft quoted, muft fuperabound both in faith and charity, if they can believe that the compofer of the letter to Mr. Douglas was unconscious of Lauder's forgery, previously to Dr. Douglas's detection of it.

A poftfcript to a fecond edition of Dr. Douglas's Vindication, dated May 17, 1756, finished the controverfy. Lauder was difgraced with the public, and dif carded by his amanuenfis, who turned a deaf ear to all his reproaches, and abandoned him to his fate, with a cool philofophical

fophical apathy, vóid of all ambition to fhare with him the blushing honours himself had fo generously contributed to thicken upon Lauder's devoted head.

The effects of his journey-work, in defaming Milton, being thus difappointed by the laudable diligence of Dr.Douglas, and the unmanageable petulance of Lauder, common prudence fuggested to our biographer the expedience of fuppreffing his impatience for another opportunity of leffening the public veneration for Milton's merit. Accordingly he laid by his project for about two years, when he might reasonably hope his manœuvres, under the hide of Lauder, would be forgotten, or laid asleep by a fucceffion of that variety of entertainment

a

which

which the prefs is always providing for the public on all forts of fubjects.

In January 1758 he released himself from his quarentine, and appeared in the Literary Magazine for that month, holding forth to the public his POETICAL SCALE, the particulars of which, fave what relates to Milton, we leave to the critics by profeffion. This is what he fays of Milton gol!

"I am fenfible that in the calculations I have here exhibited I have, in many inftances, ftrong prejudices against me. "The friends of Milton will not yield to Shakespeare the fuperiority of genius, which, I think, lies on the fide "of Shakespeare. Both of them have "faults. But the faults of Shakespeare

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"6 were thofe of Genius; thofe of Milton

The former

"of the MAN OF GENIUS. "arifes from imagination getting the "better of judgment; the latter from "babit getting the better of imagination. "Shakespeare's faults were thofe of a

great poet; thofe of Milton of a little "pedant. When Shakespeare is execra "ble he is fo exquifitely fo, that he is "inimitable in his blemishes as in his "beauties. The puns of Milton betray a narrowness of education, and a degeneracy of habit."

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Thus far Dr. Johnfon's exhibition of Milton in the fcale of poetical merit, which perhaps at the bottom may amount to no more than that Milton could not make a faddle, or dance upon

the

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