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judgement, to have qualified him to write like Milton, must have got the better of his imagination; a confinement of Shakefpeare's powers not half fo poffible as that Dr. Johnson fhould turn Whig.

"Some may think," fays the Doctor, in this fame poetical scale, "that I have under-valued the character of Waller; "but, in my own opinion, I have rather "over-rated it."

He has however made ample amends for this lenity in writing Waller's life; and it is a very gentle cenfure paffed upon him by the Critical Reviewers *.

that the Doctor's remarks on fome of

"our beft poets, particularly Milton and Waller, whofe political opinions by no

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"means coincided with his own, may be thought rather too severe."

It was Waller's misfortune (a misfortune only in the scale of Dr. Johnson) to be born of a mother who was fifter to the illuftrious patriot John Hampden, whom the Doctor calls the zealot of rebellion, by the fame figure of fpeech which repre-fents Christopher Milton, as taught by the law to adhere to king Charles, who was breaking the law every day by a thou-fand of thofe arbitrary acts and oppref-. fions which make up the defcription of a tyrant.

It is not eafy to determine which, in this character of Hampden, is the more confpicuous, the zeal of the loyalift, or the manners of the gentleman. The man

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talks

talks in one place of Milton's brutality. We could wish to have his definition of the term, that we may not injure him in the adoption of it to his own ftyle.

But Milton only, for the prefent, is our client, and only Milton the profewriter, who, in that character, must ever be an eye-fore to men of Dr. Johnson's principles; principles that are at enmity with every patron of public liberty, and every pleader for the legal rights of Englishmen, which, in their origin, are neither more nor lefs than the natural rights of all mankind.

Milton, in contending for these against the tyrant of the day and his abettors, was ferious, energetic, and irrefragable. He bore down all the filly fophifms in favour

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favour of defpotic power like a torrent, and left his adverfaries nothing to reply, but the rhetoric of Billingfgate, from which Lauder, in the end of his pamphlet, intituled, "King Charles I. vindi 66 cated, &c." has collected a nofegay of the choiceft flowers; and pity it was, that he was too early to add his friend Johnfon's character of Milton the profcwriter to the favoury bouquet.

When the Doctor found, on fome late occafions, that his crude abuse and malicious criticisms would not bring down Milton to the degree of contempt with the public which he had affigned him in the scale of profe-writers; he fell upon an expedient which has fometimes fucceeded

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ceeded fin particular exigences. In one word, he determined to write his Life. There are no men fo excellent who have not fome perfonal or cafual defect in their bodily frame, fome aukward peculiarity in their manners or converfation, fome fcandalous calumny tacked to their private hiftory, or fome of thofe natural failings which diftinguifh human from angelic beings.

On the other hand, few men are so totally abandoned and depraved as to have no remnants of grace and goodness, no intervals of fobriety, no touches of regret for departed innocence, no fenfe of thofe generous paffions which animate the wife and good to praife-worthy actions, or no natural or acquired abilities to abate

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