rapidity and elegance of his narrative, that the reader is inclined to with, as Johnson did with regard to GRAY, that to travel, and to tell his travels, had been more of his employment.

As to Johnson's Parliamentary Debates, nothing with propriety can be faid in this place. They are collected in two volumes by Mr. Stockdale, and the flow of eloquence which runs through the feveral speeches is fufficiently known.

It will not be ufelefs to mention two more volumes, which may form a proper fupplement to this edition. They contain a set of Sermons left for publication by John Taylor, LL.D. The Reverend Mr. Hayes, who ushered these Difcourfes into the world, has not given them. as the compofition of Dr. Taylor. All he could fay for his departed friend was, that he left them in filence among his papers. Mr. Hayes knew them to be the production of a fuperior mind; and the writer of thefe Memoirs owes it to the candour of that elegant scholar, that he is now warranted to give an additional proof of Johnson's ardour in the cause of piety, and every moral duty. The laft difcourfe in the collection was intended to be delivered by Dr.

Taylor

Taylor at the funeral of Johnson's wife; but that Reverend gentleman declined the office, because, as he told Mr. Hayes, the praife of the deceafed was too much amplified. He, who reads the piece, will find it a beautiful moral leffon, written with temper, and no where overcharged with ambitious ornaments. The reft of the Difcourfes were the fund, which Dr. Taylor, from time to time, carried with him to his pulpit. He had the LARGEST BULL* in England, and fome of the best Sermons.

We come now to the Lives of the Poets, a

work undertaken at the age of feventy, yet the most brilliant, and certainly the most popular of all our Author's writings. For this performance he needed little preparation. Attentive always to the hiftory of letters, and by his own. natural bias fond of Biography, he was the more willing to embrace the propofition of the Bookfellers. He was verfed in the whole body of English Poetry, and his rules of criticifm were fettled with precision. The differtation, in the Life of Cowley, on the metaphyfical Poets of the laft century, has the attraction of

*See Johnfon's Letters from Ashbourne in Vol. XII. of this edition.

novelty

novelty as well as found obfervation. The writers, who followed Dr. Donne, went in queft of fomething better than truth and nature. As Sancho fays in Don Quixotte, they wanted better bread than is made with wheat. They took pains to bewilder themselves, and were ingenious for no other purpose than to err. Johnfon's review of Cowley's works, false wit is detected in all its fhapes, and the Gothic tafte for glittering conceits, and far-fetched allufions, is exploded, never, it is hoped, to revive again.

In

An author, who has published his obfervations on the Life and Writings of Dr. Johnfon, fpeaking of the Lives of the Poets, fays, "These compofitions, abounding in strong and "acute remark, and with many fine and even "fublime paffages, have unquestionably great

merit; but if they be regarded merely as "containing narrations of the Lives, delinea"tions of the characters, and ftrictures of the feveral authors, they are far from being always to be depended on." He adds, "The "characters are fometimes partial, and there "is fometimes TOO MUCH MALIGNITY of mif"representation,

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"representation, to which, perhaps, may be joined no inconfiderable portion of erroneous "criticifm." The feveral claufes of this cenfure deserve to be anfwered as fully as the limits of this effay will permit.

In the first place, the facts are related upon the best intelligence, and the best vouchers that could be gleaned, after a great lapfe of time. Probability was to be inferred from fuch materials as could be procured, and no man better understood the nature of hiftorical evidence than Dr. Johnson; no man was more religiously an obferver of truth. If his History is any where defective, it must be imputed to the want of better information, and the errors of uncertain tradition.

Ad nos vix tenuis famæ perlabitur aura.

If the strictures on the works of the various authors are not always fatisfactory, and if erroneous criticism may fometimes be fufpected, who can hope that in matters of taste all fhall agree? The inftances in which the public mind has differed from the pofitions advanced by the author, are few in number. It has

been

been faid, that juftice has not been done to Swift; that Gay and Prior are undervalued; and that Gray has been harthly treated. This charge, perhaps, ought not to be difputed. Johnfon, it is well known, had conceived a prejudice againft Swift. His friends trembled for him when he was writing that life, but were pleased, at laft, to fee it executed with temper and moderation. As to Prior, it is probable that he gave his real opinion, but an opinion that will not be adopted by men of lively fancy. With regard to Gray, when he condemns the apostrophe, in which Father Thames is defired to tell who drives the hoop, or toffes the ball, and then. adds, that Father Thames had no better means of knowing than himself; when he compares the abrupt beginning of the first stanza of the bard to the ballad of JOHNNY ARMSTRONG, Is there ever a man in all Scotland;" there are, perhaps, few friends of Johnfon, who would not wish to blot out both the paffages. It may be queftioned whether the remarks on Pope's Effay on Man can be received without great caution. It has been already mentioned, that Croufaz, a profeffor in Switzerland, eminent for his Treatise of Logic, ftarted

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