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THE

MONTHLY REVIEW,

For JULY, 1779

ART. I. The Works of the English Poets, with Prefaces Biographical and Critical. By Samuel Johnson. The Heads engraved by Bartolozzi, &c. Small 8vo. 65 Vols. 71. 10 s. half bound. Bathurst, &c.

1779.

HE long-expected beautiful edition of the English poets

TH has at length made its appearance. Promifes that are

delayed too frequently, end in difappointment; but to this remark the prefent publication is an exception. We muft ingenuoufly confefs, that, from the first of its being advertised, we confidered Dr. Johnfon's name merely as a lure which the proprietors of the work had obtained, to draw in the unwary purchaser; taking it for granted that he would have juft allotted, as he owns he originally intended, to every poet, an advertisement, like thofe which are found in the French mifcelJanies, containing a few dates, and a general character; an undertaking, as he obferves, not very tedious or difficult; and, we may add, an undertaking alfo that would have conferred not much reputation upon the Writer, nor have communicated much information to his readers. Happily for both, the honest defire of giving useful pleasure, to borrow his own expreffion, has led him beyond his firft intention. This honeft defire is very amply gratified. In the walk of biography and criticism, Dr. Johnfon has long been without a rival. It is barely justice to acknowledge that he still maintains his fuperiority. The prefent work is no way inferior to the best of his very celebrated productions of the fame clafs.

Of the four volumes of his Prefaces already published (more lives being promised), the firft is allotted to Cowley and Waller, the fecond to Milton and Butler, the third is appropriated entirely to Dryden, and the fourth is divided between poets of inferior name, Denham, Sprat, Rofcommon, Rochefter, Yalden, OtVOL. LXI,

B

way,

way, Duke, Dorset, Halifax, Stepney, Walsh, Garth, King, J. Philips, Smith, Pomfret, and Hughes.

In the narrative.of Cowley's life there is little, except the manner in which it is told, that is new; but this deficiency, which was not in the Biographer's power to remedy, is fully compenfated for in the review of his writings, which abounds in original criticism. Cowley's poetical character is introduced with an account of a race of writers who appeared about the beginning of the feventeenth century, whom Dr. Johnfon terms the Metaphyfical Poets.

The metaphyfical poets, fays he, were men of learning, and to fhew their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily refolving to fhew it in rhyme, inftead of writing poetry, they only wrote verfes, and very often fuch verfes as ftood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was fo imperfect, that they were only found to be verfes by counting the fyllables.

If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry réxun puren, an imitative art, thefe writers will, without great wrong, lofe their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be faid to have imitated any thing: they neither copied nature nor life; neither painted the forms of matter, nor reprefented the operations of intellect.

Thofe however who deny them to be poets, allow them to be wits. Dryden confeffes of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne in wit, but maintains that they furpass him in poetry.

• If Wit be well defcribed by Pope, as being " that which has been often thought, but was never before fo well expreffed," they certainly never attained, nor ever fought it; for they endeavoured to be fingular in their thoughts, and were careless of their diction. But Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous: he depreffes it below its natural dignity, and reduces it from ftrength of thought to happiness of language.

If by a more noble and more adequate conception that be confidered as Wit, which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that, which he that never found it, wonders how he miffed; to wit of this kind the metaphyfical poets have feldom rifen. Their thoughts are often new, but feldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he miffed them, wonders more frequently by what perverfeness of industry they were ever found.

But Wit, abtracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philofophically confidered as a kind of difcordia concors; a combination of diffimilar images, or difcovery of occult refemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ranfacked for illuftrations, comparisons, and allufions; their learning instructs, and their fubtilty furprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improve

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