meaning) men, who may be led to think that truth, judgment, and impartiality are small matters, when contrafted with what Dr.Johnson's admirers have thought fit to call, an inimitable elegance of stile and composition. Our countrymen are certainly interested, that wrong representations of the character of so capital a writer as John Milton should 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. Johnson's Prefaces, we hope the public will approve of our republishing these strictures on the Doctor's account of Milton, in a form to which may be had an eafier and more general access.

We

i

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 prose tracts; viz. his Letter to Mr. Samuel Hartlib on Education, and his Areopagitica. The first was grown scarce, being omitted in some editions, both of the author's profe and poetical works; but highly worthy to be preferved as prescribing a course of discipline, which, though out of fashion in these times, affords many useful lessons to those who may have abilities and courage enough to adopt some of those improvements, of which the modes of learned education in present practice are confefsedly fufceptible.

The

:

The other will of course recommend

itself to all advocates for the liberty of

the press, and moreover may, in half an hour's reading, entertain some part of the public with a contrast between the magnanimity of Milton, in facing a formidable enemy, and Dr. Johnson's feesaw meditations, the shifty wiles of a man between two fires, who neither dares fight nor run away. These two tracts are published from the first editions.

REMARKS

Gabriel. Manigault.Caroliniensis.del.

REMARKS

ON

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

Bastre St:

:

B

of

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of language would have condefcended to bring up the rear of his hiftorians.

But it was not for the reputation of Dr. Johnson's politics that Milton should be abused for his principles of Liberty by a less eminent hand than his own. The minute fnarlers, or spumose declamers against the sentiments and diction of Milton's profe-works, had ceased 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 last reign had left in some degree of neglect, were now taken down from

the shelves where they had so long re

posed, to confront the doctrines which,