fophical apathy, void of all ambition to share with him the blushing honours himself had so generously contributed to thicken upon Lauder's devoted head. The effects of his journey-work, in defaming Milton, being thus disappointed by the laudable diligence of Dr.Douglas, and the unmanageable petulance of Lauder, common prudence suggested to our biographer the expedience of fuppreffing his impatience for another opportunity of lessening the public veneration for Milton's merit. Accordingly. he laid by his project for about two years, when he might reasonably hope his ma nœuvres, under the hide of Lauder, would be forgotten, or laid asleep by a, succession of that variety of entertainment. which which the press 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 says of Milton: "I am sensible that in the calculations "I have here exhibited I have, in many "instances, strong prejudices against me. "The friends of Milton will not yield to Shakespeare the fuperiority of ge-"nius, which, I think, lies on the fide " of Shakespeare. Both of them have "faults. But the faults of Shakespeare "were 7 "were those of Genius; those of Milton "of the MAN OF GENIUS. The former "arises from imagination getting the "better of judgment; the latter from "habit getting the better of imagination. "Shakespeare's faults were those of a "great poet; those of Milton of a little. "pedant. When Shakespeare is execra"ble he is so exquifitely so, that he is " inimitable in his blemishes as in his "beauties. The puns of Milton betray, a narrowness of education, and a dege.. "neracy of habit." Thus far Dr. Johnson's exhibition of Milton in the scale of poetical merit, which perhaps at the bottom may amount to no more than that Milton could not make a saddle, or dance upon the : the rope. But this too we leave to critics on poetry, of whom we should request to explain the difference between a Genius and a Man of Genius, and by what operation habit, in the abstract, gets the better of imagination; remarking only for ourselves, that for the balance-mafter to reproach Milton for his pedantry is certainly betraying a strange unconsciousness of his own talents, unless he depends upon his reader's sagacity in discriminating a great pedant from a little one. He is obliged, however, to complete the humiliation of Milton, to put his profe-works into the scale. "His theological quibbles and per"plexed speculations are daily equalled * See Cibber's Letter to Pope, p. 35. 7 " and "and excelled by the most abject en "thusiasts; and if we confider him as a " profe-writer, he has neither the learn"ing of a scholar, nor the manners of a "gentleman. There is no force in his " reasoning, no elegance in his style, and "no taste in his compofition." Peremptory, but not decisive! To make this go down, even with a moderate tory, it should have been added, that the narrowness of Milton's education prevented, not only his proficiency in the study of the abstruser sciences, but even in the elemental acquifitions of reading or spelling.. "We are therefore," continues the critic, "to confider him in one fixed "point of light, that of a great poet, |