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meaning) men, who may be led to think that truth, judgment, and impartiality are small matters, when contrasted with what Dr. Johnson's admirers have thought fit to call, an inimitable elegance of stile and compofition. Our countrymen are certainly interested, that wrong reprefentations of the character of fo capital a writer as John Milton fhould be corrected, and properly cenfured; and therefore as the work from which the following Remarks are extracted may fall into the hands of very few of the numerous readers of Dr. Johnfon's Prefaces, we hope the public will approve. of our republishing thefe ftrictures on. the Doctor's account of Milton, in a form to which may be had an easier and more general accefs.

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We have only to add, that it has been thought convenient to fubjoin to these Remarks, new and accurate editions of two of Milton's profe tracts; viz. his Letter to Mr. Samuel Hartlib on Education, and his Areopagitica. The first was grown fcarce, being omitted in fomet editions, both of the author's profe and poetical works; but highly worthy to be preferved as prefcribing a course of difcipline, which, though out of fashion in these times, affords many useful leffons to those who may have abilities and courage enough to adopt fome of those improvements, of which the modes of learned education in prefent practice are confeffedly fufceptible.

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The other will of courfe recommend itself to all advocates for the liberty of the prefs, .and moreover may, in half an hour's reading, entertain fome part of the public with a contrast between the magnanimity of Milton, in facing a formidable enemy, and Dr. Johnfon's fee-. faw meditations, the fhifty wiles of a inan between two fires, who neither dares fight nor run away. These two tracts are published from the firft editions.

REMARKS

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JOHNSON's Life of MILTON.

WE were in hope that we had done with Milton's Biographers; and had little forefight that fo accomplished an artificer

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of language would have condefcended

to bring up the rear of his hiftorians.

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But it was not for the reputation of Dr. Johnfon's politics that Milton fhould be abused for his principles of Liberty by a lefs eminent hand than his own. The minute fnarlers, or fpumofe declamers against the fentiments and diction of Milton's profe-works, had ceafed to be regarded, till the maxims of fome of those who pay Dr. Johnson's quarterages had occafioned an inquiry into the genuine principles of the English Government, when the writings of Milton, Sydney, Locke, &c. which the moderation of the laft reign had left in fome degree of neglect, were now taken down from the shelves where they had fo long repofed, to confront the doctrines which,

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