passages, Croft is at an immeasurable distance from the writer he imitates. No one acquainted with Johnson has found occasion to believe, while reading the 'Life of Young,' that the narration before him was the work of the author of the other Lives, or to wish, as Johnson suggests, that he had solicited and obtained more such favours from his friend.

"In the Life of Lyttelton,' Johnson seems to have been not favourably disposed towards that nobleman." Such is the observation of Boswell, such was the opinion of the friends of Lord Lyttelton, and such is the result at which every reader of the Life arrives. It is indeed a sketch reluctantly and hastily put together-reluctantly, because he was willing to have adopted a life by any friendly hand, and hastily, because he wrote it from few materials, and at the last moment. His letters to Lord Westcote, the brother of Lord Lyttelton, exhibit his desire to obtain a life with as little trouble to himself as possible :

"To LORD WESTCOTE.

"MY LORD, "Bolt Court, Fleet Street, July 27, 1780. "The course of my undertaking will now require a short life of your brother, Lord Lyttelton. My desire is to avoid offence, and to be totally out of danger. I take the liberty of proposing to your Lordship that the historical account should be written under your direction by any friend you may be willing to employ, and I will only take upon myself to examine the poetry. Four pages like those of his work, or even half so much, will be sufficient. As the press is going on, it will be fit that I should know what you shall be pleased to determine.—I am, &c. "SAM. JOHNSON."

"To LORD WESTCOTE.

"MY LORD,

"Bolt Court, Fleet Street, July 28, 1780.

"I wish it had been convenient to have had that done which I proposed. I shall certainly not wantonly nor willingly offend; but when there are such near relations living, I had rather they would please themselves. In the Life of Lord Lyttelton I shall need no help-it was very public, and I have no need to be minute. But I return your Lordship thanks for your readiness to help me. I have another life in hand, that of Mr. West, about which I am quite at a loss; any information about him would be of great use to

My Lord, yours, &c.

"SAM. JOHNSON."

What he thought of Lord Westcote's refusal he described at the time in a letter to Mrs. Thrale:-"I sent to Lord Westcote about his brother's Life; but he says he knows not whom to employ, and is sure I shall do him no injury. There is an ingenious scheme to save a day's work, or part of a day, utterly defeated. Then what avails it to be wise? The plain and the artful man must both do their own work. But I think I

have got a Life of Dr. Young."s

Failing in his endeavours to obtain a Life, he went to his task sullenly, and " poor Lyttelton," as he has called him, suffered by the failure of the "ingenious scheme." Mrs. Montagu exhibited her displeasure at her own table and before Johnson. Mr. Pepys in the library at Streatham made battle with the biographer in defence of his deceased friend. Johnson did not give way-he took credit to himself for concealing what he called the coarseness of Lord Lyttelton's manners, and an anecdote as he told Hawkins in its nature very ridiculous. Johnson was occasionally himself the "good hater he liked he was not favourably disposed towards Lytteltonand his early dislike coloured the whole of his biography; for notwithstanding his many virtues and great goodness of heart, his resentment too frequently subsided with a lasting sediment. The occasion of his dislike to Lyttelton is unknown-for Mrs. Piozzi's supposition that it rose from rivalry for the heart of Miss Boothby is too absurd even for fiction. If I may be allowed a conjecture, I would suggest that Johnson's dislike may be traced to the neglect which he met with from Lyttelton -for he had known him slightly, and Lyttelton during Johnson's of struggle (1738-1752) was the professed patron of poets and literary men.

years

The last of the 'Lives' in the order of composition was that of Gray. That his criticism is now and then captious, and not unfrequently unfounded, is, I think, very generally allowed. He admired the Elegy, he respected Gray's learning, and he loved his virtuous life; yet he had little sympathy with him after all. They were contemporaries who never met. Gray

8 'Boswell,' by Croker, Ed. 1847, p. 650.

lived with Mason and Walpole, Johnson with Hawkesworth and Goldsmith. Gray's little coterie (Gray himself excepted) depreciated Johnson and his little senate of admirers; and Goldsmith, the most eminent of Johnson's little club (Johnson himself excepted), suffered his usual good taste to be so far overcome by prejudice that he is found to prefer-and in print moreover the Night Piece of Parnell to the Elegy of Gray. But Johnson did not share his friend's mistaken preference, and has said so in his 'Life.' The tone of his criticism in this last of his Lives' must be referred to the same cause which led him to laugh at Warton's poetry, and to foretell (falsely enough) that Hoole's translation of Tasso would supplant the earlier and nobler version of Fairfax.

Johnson's Life of Gray is a disparaging performance, the work of a superior mind anxious to cavil and find fault: its depreciatory tone has, however, been far from catching, and Gray has had ample justice done him in the general admiration of the world.

But Johnson was at least consistent in his dislike of the poetry of Gray. His contempt for his Odes was a frequent subject of conversation with him, and some of his severest sayings were remembered by Boswell, by Piozzi, and by Langton. Indeed he who was blind to the beauties of 'Lycidas' was sure to indulge in cold and contemptuous language about the lyrical effusions of the fanciful Gray. Even his friendship for Collins could not extort any great approbation of his Odes. Johnson loved Collins, but he had no sympathy with his poetry and his observations on Gray are in keeping with the tone of all his criticism throughout the Lives of the Poets.'

"Between the extremes," says Dryden, "of admiration and of malice it is hard to judge uprightly of the living. Friendship and hatred alike blind us in deciding upon the merits of our contemporaries; we are either bribed by interest or prejudiced by malice. A large portion of ill-nature, guided by a small quantity of judgment, will go far in finding the mistakes and inelegancies of writers."

It is easy to see in what Johnson thought good poetry to

consist. He appears to have admired Dryden as much as he could admire any author. He rather sees than appreciates the sublime beauties of Milton. Tickell's Elegy on Addison' he silently prefers to Milton's 'Lycidas.' He does not delight in fiction or in blank verse, but likes sterling sense expressed in vigorous English, and in English hexameters with rhyme. Poetry, in his eyes, was not poetry as it appeared to Gray—

"Truth severe in fairy Fiction drest ".

but was valuable chiefly for the quantity it contained of solid reasoning. When he fails to convince us, he always leaves us with a favourable opinion of his good sense; for even when wrong, he is still sagacious and penetrating, and the reader never loses the presence of a clear intellect. Wherever the world has dissented from his judgments, the world is still curious to preserve his opinions; and where understanding alone is sufficient for poetical criticism, the decisions of Johnson are generally right. Indeed, the judgment of the world is that of Byron. "Johnson," writes the noble poet, "strips many a leaf from every laurel; still Johnson's is the finest critical work extant, and can never be read without instruction and delight."

It has been often said, but by no writer more strongly than by Ben Jonson, to whom his great namesake bore so many resemblances, that to judge of poets is not the faculty of all poets, but only of the best of poets. Nor is Johnson to be rejected even by this test; he has a right to be heard on a poetical question, for he is most assuredly a poet. His 'Vanity of Human Wishes,' his Prologue for Garrick,' and his Lines on Levett,' would do honour to any name in our literature. He gives (I feel and regret) a most undue preference to blank verse over rhyme, and is too uncompromising an advocate for the school of Dryden and Pope; yet when his principles are understood, it is easy to read him without falling into his errors. When Lord Chesterfield was told during his Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland that his coachman was a Roman Catholic, and went every Sunday to mass, "Does he indeed?" replied his Lord

ship; "I will take good care that he shall never drive me there." The characteristic rejoinder of the witty nobleman deserves to be remembered on other occasions than where servants are concerned.

The style of Johnson in his 'Lives' is freer from inflation and sesquipedalian terms than the other works of their writer. His sentences are seldom long; they are close, forcible, and sounding. His manner is his own; as he spoke he wrote, for just conceptions are seldom without the very words required to give them utterance. The style throughout is peculiarly good Johnsonian, modulated to a march never monotonous. It is free from the strut of Robertson or the pomp of Gibbon, is familiar without grossness, dignified without ostentation, and easy without labour.

He wrote with great facility, and from the nearness of his vision in a manner almost peculiar to himself. It was his habit to form each sentence in his mind before committing any portion of it to paper. "Of composition," he says, "there are different methods. Some employ at once memory and invention, and with little intermediate use of the pen form and polish large masses by continued meditation, and write their productions only, when in their own opinion they have completed them." 999 His style attained in this way that certain roll and balance so characteristic of him. The original MS. of his 'Life of Pope' (now in Mr. Dillon's possession) fully confirms the statement of his biographer. The corrections are very few in number, and yet from the proof sheets of the work quoted by Boswell (the originals of which are now in Mr. Daniel's keeping) it is clear that he was a pains-taking corrector of his own writings, weighing the full meaning of every word, and altering with a precision that supplies a useful lesson to the most experienced.

Curiosity is always alive to learn what prices were received by writers for works that reflect credit on our literature. Johnson's original agreement for the Lives was two hundred guineas; and for this sum he was to part with the entire copyright. The success of the work, and Johnson's enlargement

"Life of Pope.'