the less volatile region of ethics we are able to discover anything more patently instructive and fruitful than the corresponding definition of the ultimate standard of Virtue.

Be it so, or be it not, that the Lives 'contain such principles and illustrations of criticism as, if digested and arranged in one system by some modern Aristotle or Longinus, might form a code upon that subject such as no other nation can show' (as indeed thought Boswell), thus much at any rate is certain, that here is something better than a 'dull collection of theorems,' something more satisfying than a 'rude detection of faults such as the censor was not able to have committed:' here is 'a gay and vigorous dissertation where delight is mingled with instruction.' Think of the numberless excellencies which distinguish the work. Take, first, the soundness and brilliance of its critical judgments, apart altogether from the general theories which these exemplify or contradict. He who desires criticism sagacious, intelligent, and minute, equally free from vagueness and from hairsplitting, need seek no further than the examination of the metaphysical school of poetry, or the masterly review of Addison's prose style, or the remarks upon translation in the life of Dryden, or the unapproachable comparison of Dryden and Pope. Take, again, Johnson's knowledge of the world, 'fresh from life, not strained through books,' to repeat his own phrase. What sound and generous sense informs his observations on Dryden's conversion to Popery! What keen insight, what humane understanding, animate his comments on Addison's occasional propensity to the bottle! With what consummate tact does he contrive to palliate, without attempting to conceal, the failings of Richard Savage! What dignity, what essential self-respect, mark his animadversions on Swift's commerce with the great, or on the pettiness of Milton's biographers who had rather not mention

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that their hero was once a schoolmaster! Consider, too, this remark on Denham: 'He appears to have had, in common with almost all mankind, the ambition of being on proper occasions a merry fellow, and, in common with most of them, to have been by nature or by early habit debarred from it'; and this on Mallet: 'It was remarked of him that he was the only Scot whom Scotchmen did not commend' ; and this on Pope: 'It is pleasant to remark how soon Pope learned the cant of an author, and began to treat critics with contempt, though he had yet suffered nothing from them;' and this on Savage: 'He was remarkably retentive of his ideas, which, when once he was in possession of them, rarely forsook him; a quality which could never be communicated to his money' ; and this on the same: When he was afterwards ridiculed in the character of a distressed poet, he very easily discovered that distress was not a proper subject for merriment, or topic of invective. He was then able to discern that, if misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced'; and this on Ambrose Philips: "In his translations from Pindar he found the art of reaching all the obscurity of the Theban bard, however he may fall below his sublimity; he will be allowed, if he has less fire, to have more smoke.' Here, surely, is humour of the true kind, illuminating apparently grave sentences with its powerful, yet never glaring, light: humour none the less genuine because it is wholly free from the ostentatious and self-conscious archness which is so familiar a mannerism in much of eighteenth century literature. And not less attractive than these characteristics is what Boswell aptly calls the unqualified manly confidence' with which Johnson throughout displays his political convictions. It is good to read that Waller 'sometimes speaks of the rebels

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and their usurpation in the natural language of an honest man'; or that Akenside certainly retained an unnecessary and outrageous zeal for what he called and thought liberty; a zeal which sometimes disguises from the world, and not rarely from the mind which it possesses, an envious desire of plundering wealth or degrading greatness; and of which the immediate tendency is innovation and anarchy, an impetuous eagerness to subvert and confound, with very little care what shall be established.' Again, it may well be doubted whether any writer have so clearly and pointedly stated a great political problem as Johnson has in these words: If nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have previously approved, power must always be the standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his projects, there can be no settlement; if every murmurer at government may diffuse discontent, there can be no peace; and if every sceptic in theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion'; or whether any writer have so tersely, and at the same time comprehensively, summed up the multitude of answers to it as Johnson has done where he says: The liberty of the press is a blessing when we are inclined to write against others, and a calamity when we find ourselves overborne by the multitude of our assailants; as the power of the crown is always thought too great by those who suffer by its influence, and too little by those in whose favour it is exerted; and a standing army is generally accounted necessary by those who command, and dangerous and oppressive by those who support it.' Admirable as these and the like passages are, it is, however, in the life of Milton that Johnson exhibits his polemical power to the greatest advantage. The opportunity was a unique one, and he was not the man to miss it. 'Milton, being now cleared from all effects of his disloyalty, had nothing required from him but the common duty of living in quiet, to be rewarded with the common right of

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protection; but this, which, when he skulked from the approach of his king, was perhaps more than he hoped, seems not to have satisfied him; for, no sooner is he safe, than he finds himself in danger, fallen on evil days and evil tongues, and with darkness and with danger compassed round. This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly deserved compassion; but to add the mention of danger was ungrateful and unjust. He was fallen indeed on evil days; the time was come in which regicides could no longer boast their wickedness. But of evil tongues for Milton to complain required impudence at least equal to his other powers; Milton whose warmest advocates must allow, that he never spared any asperity of reproach or brutality of insolence.' Again, Milton's republicanism was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of greatness, and a sullen desire of independence; in petulance impatient of control, and pride disdainful of superiority. He hated monarchs in the State, and prelates in the Church; for he hated all whom he was required to obey. It is to be suspected that his predominant desire was to destroy rather than establish, and that he felt not so much the love of liberty as repugnance to authority. It has been observed that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it. What we know of Milton's character, in domestic relations, is, that he was severe and arbitrary. His family consisted of women; and there appears in his books something like a Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferior beings. That his own daughters might not break the ranks, he suffered them to be depressed by a mean and penurious education. He thought woman made only for obedience, and man only for rebellion.' He must indeed be a cold-blooded and lethargic Tory who can read these lines without partaking something of the glow and the gusto which Johnson infused into them; and he must be a sour and unthinking bigot, with

as little sense of humour as of justice, who has no relish of such hard and well directed hitting, where every blow goes straight home and leaves its mark.

But whether we like or hate his politics, whether we agree or disagree with his critical judgments, the cardinal and supreme merit of this work, as of all his others, lies, no question, in the style. Everybody knows the set formulæ of criticism on Johnson's prose. That in conversation he displayed an unrivalled command of vigorous and homely English, and expressed himself in sentences at once terse and idiomatic; that upon putting pen to paper he immediately became turgid and otiose, and discovered in his vocabulary a vicious partiality for terms which, long after our speech had been fixed, were borrowed from Greek and Latin, and which, therefore, even when lawfully naturalised, must be considered as born aliens, not entitled to rank with the King's English'; that these distressing defects are peculiarly conspicuous in the Life of Savage, but are, happily, somewhat toned down in the other Lives, which have an infinite advantage in being much more 'conversational' in manner; such are the stereotyped views which critic after critic repeats, and which, like many another opinion that flies uncontradicted from mouth to mouth and from volume to volume, find their truest and their most aggressive expression in the page of Lord Macaulay, who learned his prose in Johnson's school, and who, to do him justice, never showed a 'vicious partiality' for a short word when a long one better served his turn. Of this tangle of error and nonsense who shall unravel the threads? 'Tis enough to recollect that the Life of Savage, which we are invited to contemn, is not only a masterpiece of construction, but also, considered as a separate and distinct work of art, surpasses any single one of its younger brethren. And, if in