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vour to himself. He had his eye only on the caufe, and when the Presbyterians deferted that, he deferted them, not out of humour, as this rancorous Biographer would infinuate *; but because they fainted in the progrefs of that work to the completion of which their firft avowed principles would have led them...

Would Dr. Johnson have chosen to have fubmitted his works to the licenfers appointed by fuch a parliament? or would he venture to expoftulate with the pow

* See fome fenfible and masterly reflections on the fubject in Dr. Moore's View of Society and Manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany. See likewife Gilbert Mabbot's reafons for defiring to be difmiffed from the office of Licenfer. Toland's Life of Milton, Mr. Hollis's edition, p. 57.

ers

ers in being on any point of literary privilege, wherein he fhould think them effentially wrong, with that generous and

honeft freedom that Milton exhibits in this incomparable tract? No, he sneaks away from the queftion, and leaves it as he found it.

"As faction feldom leaves a man ho

"how

"neft," fays the Doctor, p. 51, "ever it might find him, Milton is fuf"pected of having interpolated the book "called Icon Bafilike, which the council of "ftate, to whom he was now made Latin Secretary, employed him to cenfure, by inferting a prayer, &c."

The contexture of this fentence feems to be a little embaraffed: and to leave us

under fome uncertainty whether Milton F 2

"" inter

"interpolated by inferting," or whether he was "employed to cenfure by infert❝ing, &c."

Milton, however, it feems, was “fuf"pected of inferting, in the Icon Bafi"like, a prayer taken from Sidney's "Arcadia, and imputing it to the King, "whom he charges, in his Iconoclaftes, "with the use of this prayer, as with a heavy crime, in the indecent language "with which profperity had embolden"ed the advocates for rebellion to infult

"all that is venerable and great.'

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Does the Doctor mean to fay, that these advocates for rebellion infulted the venerable and great Creator of all things, or that there was nothing venerable and great but King Charles I. and his appurtenances?

tenances? The imputation of blaf phemy on the one fide or the other is

unavoidable.

After which follows the citation from the Iconoclaffes, where the imputation and the grounds of it are fairly and openly told. Now for the proof of the interpolation.

"The papers

which the King gave to

"Dr. Juxon, on the fcaffold, the regicides "took away, so that they were at least "the publishers of this prayer."

Let us parallel this with an inference from another fcrap of English hiftory.

The miniftry took away Mr. Wilkes's 46 papers, among which was faid to be "the Effay on Woman; fo that the minifters were at least the publishers of F 3

* that

"that Effay; and, confidering the num

bers of poets they have always at their "beck, why may they not be fufpected "as the forgers of it?"

So reafoned Mr. Wilkes's friends in the year 1763. Dr. Johnfon knows what the ministerial writers replied; and let that fuffice for an answer to this prefumptive proof of Milton's dishonesty. But,

"Dr. Birch, who examined the quef"tion with great care, was inclined to "think them [the Regicides] the forg "ers."

Dr. Birch's examination,, careful as the Doctor reprefents it, was blameably partial in not giving Toland's confutation of Dr. Gill's tale its full ftrength; and indeed the examination feems to have

becn

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