after all, of much the same value as the proposition that 'who drives fat oxen should himself be fat,' and so Johnson himself could see plainly enough upon occasion. It certainly seems hard that if 'the poet's art is selection' (which who can doubt?) and if he ought to show 'the beauties without the grossness of country life' (an assertion which Johnson lived to see refuted in practice, with his own sanction, by Crabbe), Lyttleton's early verses should be disposed of with the curt remark that they 'cant of shepherds and flocks and crooks dressed with flowers'; and if the fact that 'they exhibit a mode of life which does not exist, nor ever existed,' is not to be objected to Ambrose Philips's Pastorals, it is not easy to perceive the justice of a dispensation which is granted to Namby Pamby and withheld from Milton.

The judicious reader has, doubtless, observed that, so far as we have yet traced it, Johnson's system of criticism remains incomplete and one-sided. It has been seen that poetry, by means of making new things familiar and familiar things new, is to afford pleasure. Pleasure to whom? If it be pleasure to anybody and everybody, then 'what is good only because it pleases cannot be pronounced good until it has been found to please.' What pleases A must, ex hypothesi, be as good as what pleases B. Any standard seems impossible of attainment. There are two ways of meeting this objection. The one consists in telling people that they lie, or, at all events, are deceived, when they say that they take pleasure in what does not please you. This somewhat rude and primitive expedient is more than once employed by Johnson, and that not without courage or address, as when he says: 'Surely no man could have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure had he not known its author'; or hints a natural doubt as to the genuineness of the admiration for Milton professed by 'readers of every class.' The other method is to nominate a body of men-be its

number great or small-whose determination shall settle the matter; and when such a selection is made it is obvious that some other element than pleasure at once comes into play. In a very remarkable passage Johnson deliberately chooses his tribunal. Speaking of Gray's Elegy, he rejoices to concur with the common reader: 'for,' says he, 'by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours.' Well; and having thus explicitly cited and impanelled his jury, what weight does he attach to its verdict? Exactly none, when it conflicts with his own. The common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices approves of Lycidas, and Johnson roundly declares that its diction is harsh, its rhymes uncertain, and its numbers unpleasing. The common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices applauds The Bard, and sets even greater store by The Progress of Poesy; Johnson laughs unmercifully at both odes, and thinks that the writer's mind 'works with unnatural violence. Double, double, toil and trouble. He has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking on tiptoe. His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too little appearance of ease and nature.' Johnson, to be brief, holds that he is right, and that those who differ with him are wrong, these words being used to signify conformity and disconformity, not to the whim or caprice of Johnson, but, to some abstract and ideal standard of taste. The truth seems to be that, with regard to the pursuit of a final criterion, tasting literature is like tasting wine. That is best which pleases a competent judge, and he is a competent judge who is pleased with that which is best. By such a definition, little seems to be gained, yet it is of more value than its glaring tautology suggests. At all events we are not like to come by a better, and may consider ourselves fortunate if in

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

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

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