with which I had spoken of Johnson's virtues and faults. He desires I will send him the minutes I made at the time of that, as he justly calls it, tremendous* conversation at Dilly's, between you and him, on the subject of Miss Harry's commencing quaker. Boswell had so often spoke to me, with regret, over the ferocious, reasonless, and unchristian violence of his idol that night, it looks impartial beyond my hopes, that he requests me to arrange it. I had omitted to send it in the first collection, from my hopelessness that Mr Boswell would insert it in his life of the Colossus. Time may have worn away those deep-indented lines of bigot fierceness from the memory of the biographer, and the hand of affection may not be firm enough to resolve upon engraving them.

O! yes, as you observe, dreadful were the horrors which attended poor Johnson's dying state. His religion was certainly not of that nature which sheds comfort on the deathbed-pillow. I believe his faith was sincere, and therefore could not fail to reproach his heart, which had swelled with pride, envy, and hatred, through the whole course of his existence But religious feeling, on

* Mr Boswell has strangely mutilated, abridged, and changed the minutes sent him of this conversation. The reader will find them faithfully given in a letter further on, addressed to Mrs Mompesson, and dated December 31, 1785.

which you lay so great a stress, was not the desideratum in Johnson's virtue. He was no cold moralist; it was obedience, meekness, and universal benevolence, whose absence from his heart, driven away by the turbulent fierceness and jealousy of his unbridled passions, filled with so much horror the darkness of the grave. Those glowing aspirations in religion, which are termed enthusiasm, cannot be rationally considered as a test of its truth. Every religion has had its martyrs. I verily believe Johnson would have stood that trial for a system to whose precepts he yet disdained to bend his proud and stubborn heart. How different from his was the death-bed of that sweet Excellence, whom he abused at Dilly's, by the name of the "odious wench!"

Those were shocking suicides which you mentioned. Alas! that vice increases. Infidelity, pride, and extravagance are its general sources; but why an atheist, who groans not under the oppression of poverty and pain, should prefer annihilation to existence, it is difficult to guess. Ennui, whatever discontent it may create, would, one should suppose, be inconsistent with that degree of stimulus which subdues the natural love of life, even where it has nothing new or interesting to present. Next to genuine piety, the love of science is the best preservative against human

misery. Where it exists, novel and interesting objects can never be wanting to shorten the longest summer day. You and I may experience misery, my friend, but we shall never feel the touch of the mental torpedo.

LETTER XII.

COURT DEWES, Eso*.

March 30, 1785.

YES, my dear Sir, our great Laureat is indeed a critic, who, if not unexceptionably judicious, does infinite honour to a profession which so many disgrace. His illustrations and decisions are generally the result of a penetrating judgment and a refined taste, united with a long, industrious, and fortunate study of the poetic art. This admirable work, his edition of Milton's Juvenile Poems, with that great mass of fine criticism contained in the notes, ought to recal the opinions of the public from the anarchy into which

* Now deceased. He resided at Welsbourn, near Stratfordupon-Avon ;—a refined gentleman and an excellent scholar.

they have been thrown concerning the claims of the British poets, by the misleading sophistry of Johnson in his Lives, and by the fastidious trash of his modern imitators. While the former perplex and dazzle the ingenious, the latter destroy every thing like taste and feeling in the common reader. Thus is the science, and thus are its votaries," fallen on evil days and evil tongues." May the powers of Mr Warton clear the times from their darkness.

Admirable as this work is, it often carries the charge of imitation upon Milton vastly too far, and sometimes to a ridiculous excess. Among many real proofs which it brings, that Comus frequently imitates Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, one cannot but smile when such charges of plagiarism as the following are brought against a great bard:

"Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pair."-Comus.

So Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess,

"A gentle pair have promised equal love."

Mr Warton adds, "other petty pilferings of the same sort might be pointed out, which prove Milton's familiarity with Fletcher's play."

Now, if an author may be convicted of theft upon such evidences, it will be impossible for the

most original genius to produce ten, perhaps two lines, that shall not be equally exposed with Milton's, in this instance, to the charge of pilfering. I thought of the mote and the beam, when I saw Mr Warton observing that "Milton's expression, clad in complete steel,' is supposed to have been borrowed from Hamlet;"that" critics must shew their reading by quoting books; but that it was merely an expression, in common use, to signify being armed from head to foot."

Now, certainly," clad in complete steel,” is a more striking arrangement of words, and has much more probability of having been borrowed from Shakespeare, than that the simple and usual expression, "gentle pair," should have been stolen from Fletcher.

When passages from various writers resemble each other, we impute such resemblance, according to the degree of its strength, either to coincidence, imitation, or plagiarism. Even the best critics, as Mr Warton evinces in his own example, are too apt to charge ideas and expressions upon imitation and theft, which might fairly be supposed to result from a coincidence.

However, if Mr Warton be too prone to believe that the rich and plenteous imagination of Milton was perpetually stooping to glean from others, he has fully convicted Pope of "sprink