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"with a laudable envy of rivalling,

"eclipfing, and excelling, all who at

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'tempted fublimity of fentiment and "description."

Could this be a hopeful attempt in fo wretched a writer of profe? or does the critic propofe to entertain his readers with a miracle, or only with a paradox? Immediately however the critic withdraws Milton from this fixed point of light, and places his fublimity of fentiment and description in contraft with Shakespeare's amiable variety; and concludes, "that "Shakespeare could have wrote like

Milton, but Milton could never have "wrote like Shakespeare."

Does not the Doctor here overturn his own metaphyfical fyftem? Shakespeare's

judge

judgement, to have qualified him to write like Milton, must have got the better of his imagination; a confinement of Shakefpeare's powers not half fo poffible as that Dr. Johnson fhould turn Whig.

"Some may think," fays the Doctor, in this fame poetical fcale, " that I have "under-valued the character of Waller; "but, in my own opinion, I have rather "over-rated it."

He has however made ample amends for this lenity in writing Waller's life; and it is a very gentle cenfure paffed upon him by the Critical Reviewers *

,

"that the Doctor's remarks on fome of "our best poets, particularly Milton and "Waller, whofe political opinions by no

*For May, 1779.

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"" means

" means coincided with his own, may be

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thought rather too severe.”

It was Waller's misfortune (a misfortune only in the scale of Dr. Johnson) to be born of a mother who was fifter to the illuftrious patriot John Hampden, whom the Doctor calls the zealot of rebellion, by the fame figure of fpeech which repre-fents Chriftopher Milton, as taught by the law to adhere to king Charles, who was breaking the law every day by a thou-. fand of thofe arbitrary acts and oppreffions which make up the defcription of a tyrant.

It is not eafy to determine which, in this character of Hampden, is the more confpicuous, the zeal of the loyalift, or the manners of the gentleman. The man

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talks

talks in one place of Milton's brutality. We could wish to have his definition of the term, that we may not injure him in the adoption of it to his own ftyle.

But Milton only, for the prefent, is our client, and only Milton the prosewriter, who, in that character, must ever be an eye-fore to men of Dr. Johnson's principles; principles that are at enmity with every patron of public liberty, and every pleader for the legal rights of Englifhmen, which, in their origin, are neither more nor less than the natural rights of all mankind.

Milton, in contending for these against the tyrant of the day and his abettors, was ferious, energetic, and irrefragable. He bore down all the filly fophifms in favour

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favour of defpotic power like a torrent, and left his adverfaries nothing to reply, but the rhetoric of Billingfgate, from which Lauder, in the end of his pamphlet, intituled, “ King Charles I. vindi"cated, &c." has collected a nofegay of the choiceft flowers; and pity it was, that he was too early to add his friend. Johnson's character of Milton the prosewriter to the favoury bouquet.

When the Doctor found, on fome late occafions, that his crude abuse and malicious criticisms would not bring down Milton to the degree of contempt with the public which he had affigned him in the scale of profe-writers; he fell upon an expedient which has fometimes fuc

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eded

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