Riff's Geometry, Petiseus' Trigonometry, Bosco's Spherics, and Davity's Geography.* Then they were to learn Italian and French; to have a smat. tering of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac; and to hear a theological lecture upon every Sabbath day.

Dr. Johnson recommends a very different course. As the sciences are seldom wanted for the purposes of active life, he thinks, that the season of education should rather be spent in acquiring correct notions of right and wrong, and in making ourselves acquainted with the general history of mankind, and the biography of particular individuals. • Prudence and justice (says he) are virtues and excellencies of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Physiological learning is of so rare emergence, that one may know another half his life, without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears. Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools, that supply most axioms, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation. We have the presumption to think that the disposition and capacities of a boy are little considered, when he is expected to become learned in the sciences, adept in morality, or fertile for conversation, at the same time that he is making himself skilful in the etymology and syntax of the dead languages. To suppose that even a man can, in the same passage, be learning to construe a sentence

6

and to calculate an eclipse,--to acquire axioms of prudence, and to apply the rules of prosody,-to be furnishing himself with materials for conversation,' and storing up definitions of words,-appears the dream of a man, who never witnessed the experiment, or has forgotten the result.

Of institutions (adds Dr. Johnson) we may judge by their effects. From this wonder-working academy, I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent for knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a small History of Poetry, written in Latin, by his nephew, Phillips, of which, perhaps, none of my readers has ever heard.' So much it was necessary to say, in order to substantiate with facts, what had already been proved in theory. It was said in the most profound ignorance of the truth; and, from the fury, with which Mr. Godwin Aies at the doctor, whenever he meets or wherever he can find him, we suspect that his book, in quarto, was written chiefly to refute what he thinks so insolent a paragraph. Indeed, he has himself intimated nearly the same thing. It was accident,' says he, that first threw in my way two or three productions of these writers, (Edward and John Phillips,) that my literary acquaintance whom I consulted had never heard of. Dr. Johnson had told me, that the pupils of Milton had given to the world

only one genuine production.” Persons better informed than Dr. Johnson could tell me perhaps of half a dozen. How great was my surprise, when I found my collection swelling to forty or fifty!"* Posterity was to know, therefore, that Dr. Johnson had committed a mistake; and, to purchase that knowledge, they must be made to read 400 quarto pages. In this book-making age, it would be surprising, indeed, if, by dint of some bibliography upon fifty different works, occasional notices of Milton, a pretty

full history of the civil wars in England, abuse of past and cotemporary critics, together with appen. dixes of dissertation and biography,-a volume of this size could not be easily manufactured.

Dr. Johnson has often been arraigned for his sneer at the wonder-working academy;* and his accusers do not seem to be so much out of patience, because he restricts its products to a single insignificant work on poetry; but because he says that work was composed in Latin; when, if he meant, as they will have it, the Theatrum Poetarum, all but these two first words of the title page is written in English, But an Enumeratio Poetarum, in Latin, by the same author, was published in 1669; and, as Dr. Johnson gives no specific reference to either work, Mr. Todd thinks it is more candid to believe that he alluded to the latter.f Mr. Godwin cannot imitate this candour. It is extremely improbable,' he thinks,

that Johnson, who evidently knew nothing of what he was talking about, should ever have met with this scarce volume of Buchlerus, (to which the Enumeratio was appended,) and still more so, that he should have remarked the modest, and in that sense obscure, treatise printed at the end, and its author. Whereas we know that he had Jacob and Cibber lying by his side when he wrote his Lives of the Poets, and that the name of Phillips' Theatrum Poetarum must repeatedly have struck him.'

If we attend critically to the language of Dr. Johnson, the candour of Mr. Todd will not be found misplaced. First, then, he speaks of the only genuine product.' It was long ago suspected, that Milton bore a hand in the composition of the Theatrum Poetarum ;$ but no attempt has been made to

rob Phillips of originality in the Enumeratio. Dr. Johnson, too, may have seen some of the voluminous translations of John Phillips: he would hardly fail, at any rate, of finding the World of Words, a dictionary, by Edward; but as none of these produc. tions was original, they could not be called genuine. In the next place, Dr. Johnson suggests a doubt by interjecting the words 'I believe. If he had actually seen the Enumeratio Poetarum, and the Theatrum Poetarum had only struck his eye in Jacob and Cibber, he might well believe,' from the identity of the author, and the similarity of titles, that the only difference in the two works, was, that, as we have just said, the latter was somewhat indebted to the hand of Milton. Again, he calls it a small history.' The Theatrum was large enough to be published in a separate volume. The Enumeratio, styled, in the title page, Compendiosa, was, in Mr. Godwin's own language, 'a little essay,' appended to an edition of the Phrasium Poeticorum Thesaurus, by Buchlerus.* This was the seventeentht edition of the Thesaurus ; and yet Mr. Godwin talks of its being “a scarce volume.' It was a Dictionary of Poetical Phrases ; and yet Mr. Godwin supposes, that the compiler of our own Dictionary would not have been sufficient. ly interested to see what the volume contained. In the third place, Dr. Johnson calls it, in the most general terms, a ' History of Poetry.' The Theatrum

was confined solely to the English poets; the Enumeratio extended to the poets of all countries: nempe Italorum, Germanorum, Anglorum, &c. If Dr. Johnson 'is known to have had Jacob and Cib. ber,' so is he known to have had Wood, lying by his side ;' and it could not have escaped him, that in the life of Phillips, not only the title-page of the Enumeratio is given at full length in the latter, but the work itself is said to have been added to the seventeenth edition of Joh. Buclerus his book, entit. Sacrarum profanarumque phrasium poeticorum Thesaurus, &c. 1669.'* Finally, since the Theatrum was mentioned frequently in Jacob and Cibber, two of the most popular biographers, Dr. Johnson would hardly have suggested, that his readers knew nothing about it; but, as the Enumeratio was thrust into the corner of a Thesaurus, which, however popular at first, had been completely superseded by the Gradus ad Parnassumt--and as so obscure a work was only mentioned in Wood, who was seldom read except by authors,—Dr. Johnson might well say, that perhaps none of his readers had ever heard of it.

Milton was now to teach other things, besides grammar; and other pupils, besides his two nephews and the sons of his friends. Some lines in Lycidas had already threatened the death of Laud, and the extermination of episcopacy. In 1641, the clamour against the bishops had become outrageous; and Milton, to use his own language, “thinking, that, from such beginnings, a way might be opened to true liberty, engaged heartily in the dispute.'! In another work, he protests, that, 'should the church be brought under heavy oppression, and God have given me ability the while to reason against that man that should be the author of so foul a deed; or should she, by blessing from above on the industry

• Ath. Ox. pp. 1118, 1119.

+ Godw. p. 142.

Def, Sec.