tire, and those who are pleased with her modeft beauties, moft humble fteps, and least adorned guise. He observes of Shenftone, that he fet little value upon those parts of knowledge which he had not cultivated himself. His own tafte of poetry feems in fome degree regulated by a fi-` milar standard; method, ratiocination, and argument, especially if the vehicle be rhyme, often obtaining his regard and commendation, while the bold and enthufiaftic, though perhaps irregular flights of imagination, are paffed by with obftinate and perverse indifference. It is not, then, to be wondered at, that the panegyrift of Blackmore should withhold from Collins and Gray the commendation he has beftowed on Savage and Yalden; and that his praises of the whole class of descriptive poets are parfimoniously bestowed, and too frigid to make an impreffion. This is to be attributed to the natural turn of his

1

་

[ 206 ]

mind, and to the bent which his feelings had received from the habits of his life. A certain inelegance of taste, a frigid churlishness of temper, unfubdued and unqualified by that melting fenfibility, that divine enthusiasm of foul, which are effential to a hearty relish of poetical compofition, too often counteracted and corrupted the other poetical virtues of his intellect. Poetry pleases only as it is the image of reality. He who has never delighted in the filent beauties of creation, can feel no emotions, as they are reflected to him in description. Accustomed to dogmatize in his closet, and fwelter in fome alley in the city, Johnson's mind never throbbed with poetic thrills, as nature expanded her rural glories to his eye; and he preferred the duft of Fleet-Street, or the windings of the Strand, to the air of Hampstead, or the beauties of Greenwich.

One general remark may be ventured upon here: Through the whole of his work, the defire of praise, except in the case of some very favourite author, is almoft always overpowered by his difpofition to cenfure; and while beauties are paffed over with the neutrality of a stranger, and the coldness of a critic,” the flighteft blemish is examined with microscopical fagacity. The truth of this obfervation is particularly obvious, when he defcends to his contemporaries, for whom he appears to have little more brotherly kindness, than they might have expected at Conftantinople. The prefent writer is under no apprehenfion of being charged with an unjustifiable partiality in this opinion of him, by those who know his difpofition and the habits of his life. All that is great and genuinely good in Johnfon, have had no warmer encomiaft. He has uniformly praised his genius, his learn

ing, his good fenfe, the ftrength of his reafonings, the fagacity of his critical decifions, the happiness of his illustrations, and the animation and energy of his style: He has acknowledged that there is no fatiety in the delight he inspires on moral and religious themes; and he makes no fcruple to declare, that, though there are many opinions erroneous, and many obfervations improper, a great part of his Lives of the Poets is fuch as no one but himself could have executed, and in which he will not be followed with fuccefs.

As a moralift, his periodical papers are distinguished from those of other writers, who have derived celebrity from fimilar publications. He has neither the wit nor the graceful eafe of Addison; nor does he fhine with the humour and claffic fuavity of Goldsmith. His powers are of a more grave, energic, and dignified kind, than any of his competitors; and if he enter

tains us lefs, he inftructs us more. He fhows himself master of all the recesses of the human mind, able to detect vice, when disguised in her most specious form, and equally poffefled of a corrofive to eradicate, or a lenitive to affuage the follies and forrows of the heart. Virtuous in his object, juft in his conceptions, ftrong in his arguments, and powerful in his exhortations, he arrefts the attention of levity by the luxuriance of his imagery, and grandiloquence of his diction; while he awes detected guilt into fubmiffion by the majefty of his declamation, and the iterling weight of his opinions. But his genius is only formed to chaftife graver faults, which require to be touched with an heavier hand. He could not chafe away fuch lighter foibles as buzz in our ears in fociety, and fret the feelings of our less important hours. His gigantic powers were able to prepare the immortal path to hea