ties in their turn to inculcate that fort of learning which tended to uphold the epifcopal authority, and confequently to prevent the reformation Milton, wifhed for.

"One of his abjections," fays the Doctory to academical education, as it was

then conducted, is, that men defigned . for orders in the church were per"mitted to act plays, writhing and un"boning their clergy limbs to all the antic and difboneft gestures of Trinculoes, "buffoons, and bawds, prostituting the fhame of that ministry, which either they "bad or were nigh having, to the eyes of "courtiers and court-ladies, with their grooms and madamoifelles *."

* Apology for Smeftymnus, p. 110. Birch's èd.

the refentment of the reputable public, and to atone, in fome degree, for their immoralities.

A man of genius, who has words and will to deprefs or raife fuch characters respectively, will confider little in his operations upon them, but the motives and occafions which call for his prefent interference; and the world who know the artificer will make it no wonder that the encomiaft and apologist of the profligate Richard Savage fhould employ his pen to fatyrize and calumniate the virtuous John Milton.

"The Life of Milton," fays Dr. Johnfon, has been already written in fo "many forms, with fuch minute enqui

6.6

ry, that I might perhaps more pro

"perly

་ perly have contented myself with the " addition of a few notes to Mr. Fen"ton's elegant Abridgement; but that a "new narrative was thought neceffary to "the uniformity of this edition *."

The uniformity of editions is com monly the bookfeller's care, and the neceffity of fuch uniformity generally arifes from the taste of the public; of which, among the number of names exhibited in the title pages of thefe volumes, there must be many competent judges. It would be a pity, however that a conformity to this tafte fhould engage Dr. Johnfon in writing this Life, to go beyond what would more properly have contented himfelf; the leaft intimation from the

1

1

* Life of Milton, p. 1.

Biographer of the impropriety of a ner narrative would, we are perfuaded, have made the undertakers of the edition contented with the Doctor's plan.

He might not indeed have found the means to introduce certain particulars, which embellifh his new narrative, into his notes on Mr. Fenton's abridgement, in which there is a vein of candor that does the writer more honour than the ingenuity of his performance; not to men

1

tion the different judgment, from that of Dr. Johnson, formed by Mr. Fenton, on fome of Milton's poetical pieces.

We therefore believe this new narrative was calculated rather for Dr. Johnfon's private contentment than the neceffities of the edition.

A few

A few inftances will ferve to fhew the probability of this furmife.

All the writers of Milton's Life before Dr. Johnson speak of the esteem with which Milton was honoured by his fellow-members of Chrift's College at Cambridge. Milton values himself upon it at a time when the under-workers of the royalifts, who fent different accounts to the defenders of Salmafius abroad, might have effectually confuted him. Let us now obferve the contrast..

"Of the exercises which the rules of the univerfity required, fome were published by him in his maturer

years. They had been undoubtedly "applauded, for they were fuch as few

"can perform; yet there is reafon to

fuf