general tendency, and, by reflecting on the fentiments inculcated in the following speeches therein to be found, to measure the injustice done him:

Is it of fate that he who affumès a crown
Throws off humanity?

Beyond the fweeping of the proudest train

That shades a monarch's heel, I prize these weeds. our Dalecarlians

Have oft been known to give a law to kings.

Divide and conquer is the fum of politics.
if thou think'st

That empire is of titled birth or blood;
That nature, in the proud behalf of one,
Shall difenfranchise all her lordly race,
And bow her general iffue to the yoke
Of private domination, &c.

thou art the minister,

The reverend monitor of vice.

The fence of virtue is a chief's beft caution;
And the firm furety of my people's hearts

Is all the guard that e'er fhall wait Gustavus.

The dedication to the play, addreffed to the fubfcribers, gives the reader to underftand, that the author had ftudied the ancient laws of his country,

though not converfant with her prefent political ftate,' that he is a friend to national liberty and perfonal free'dom,' (meaning by the first, 'a ftate refulting from 'virtue or reafon ruling in a breaft fuperior to appetite ' and paffion,' and, by the laft, a fecurity arifing from ' the nature of a well-ordered conftitution, for those ad( vantages

vantages and privileges that each man has a right to by contributing as a member to the weal of that com'munity;') these declarations are interspersed with reflections on the lord-chamberlain, and a complaint that his treatment of the author was fingular and un'precedented;' after which follows an effufion of patriotic fentiments ferving to fhew, that a monarch or head of fuch a conftitution as he above has described, is fceptered in the hearts of his people.'

take

Upon occafion of this publication, Johnson was employed by one Corbet, a bookseller of small note, to up the cause of this injured author, and he did it in a pamphlet, intitled, A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage from the malicious and fcandalous afperfions of Mr. Brooke, author of • Gustavus Vafa.' 4to. 1739.

Criticism would be ill employed in a minute examination of the Marmor Norfolcienfe, and the Vindication of the Licensers: in general it may fuffice to say that they are both ironical, that they difplay neither learning nor wit, and that in neither of them is there to be discovered a fingle ray of that brightness which beams fo ftrongly in the author's moral and political effays. Did it become a man of his difcernment, endowed with fuch powers of reafoning and eloquence as he poffeffed, to adopt vulgar prejudices, or, in the cant of the oppofition, to clamor against place-men, and penfioners and ftanding armies? to ridicule the apprehenfion of that invafion in favour of the pretender, which himself, but a few years after became a witnefs to, or to compare the improbability of fuch an event with that of a general insurrection of all who were prohibited the use of gin?

Of

Of all the modes of fatire, I know none fo feeble as that of uninterrupted irony. The reafon of this feems to be, that in that kind of writing the author is compelled to advance pofitions which no reader can think he believes, and to put questions that can be answered in but one way, and that fuch an one as thwarts the sense of the propounder. Of this kind of interrogatories the pamphlet I am speaking of feems to be an example; Is the man without pension or place to fufpect the impartiality or the judgment of those who are entrusted with the administration of public affairs? Is he, when the law is not strictly ⚫ obferved in regard to him, to think himself aggrieved, to tell his fentiments in print, to affert his claim to better ufage, and fly for redrefs to another tri'bunal ?'

Who does not fee that to these feveral queries the answer must be in the affirmative? and, if fo, the point of the writer's wit is, in this instance, blunted, and his argument baffled.

In the course of this mock vindication of power, Johnson has taken a wide fcope, and adopted all the vulgar topics of complaint as they were vented weekly in the public papers, and in the writings of Bolingbroke, flimfy and malignant as they are. And here let me note a curious fophifm of that fuperficial thinker, which I remember to have feen in his celebrated Differtation on Parties; but which, not having the book by me, I cite by memory: it is to this purpose: The advocates of the minifter,' fays his Lordfhip, 'defy us 'to shew, that, under his administration, any infraction ' had been made of the original contract.' To this we anfwer, that between fuch an infraction and the lofs of

Our

our liberties, there can no point of time intervene; fuch a caufe and fuch an effect being fo clofely connected, that we cannot fee the one till we feel the other.

Such was the conduct of oppofition at this time, and by fuch futile arguments as the above were the filly people of three kingdoms deluded into a belief, that their liberties were in danger, and that nothing could fave this country from impending ruin, and that the moft formidable of all the evils they had to dread, was the continuance of the then administration, of which they had nothing worse to say than that they hated it.

The truth is, that Johnfon's political prejudices were a mist that the eye of his judgment could not penetrate! in all the measures of government he could fee nothing right; nor could he be convinced, in his invectives against a standing army, as the Jacobites affected ta call it, that the peafantry of a country was not an adequate defence against an invafion of it by an armed force. He almoft afferted in terms, that the fucceffion to the crown had been illegally interrupted, and that from whig-politics none of the benefits of government could be expected. He could but just endure the oppofition to the minifter because conducted on whig principles; and I have heard him say, that during the whole course of it, the two parties were bidding for the people. At other times, and in the heat of his refentment, I have heard him affert, that, fince the death of Queen Anne, it had been the policy of the administration to promote to ecclefiaftical dignities none but the most worthlefs and undeferving men: ner would he then exclude from this bigotted cenfure thofe illuftrious divines, Wake, Gibfon, Sherlock, Butler, Herring, Pearce, and leaft of all Hoadly;

in competition with whom he would fet Hickes, Brett, Leslie, and others of the nonjurors, whose names are fcarcely now remembered. From hence it appears, and to his honour be it faid, that his principles cooperated with his neceffities, and that the prostitution of his talents, taking the term in one and that its worst fense, could not, in justice, be imputed to him.

But there is another, and a less criminal fense of the word prostitution, in which, in common with all who are called authors by profeffion, he may be faid to fland in need of an excufe. When Milton wrote the Paradife Loft, the fum he received for the copy was not his motive, but was an adventitious benefit that refulted from the exercife of his poetical faculty. In Johnson's cafe, as well in the inftances above given as almost all the others that occurred during the course of his life, the impulfe of genius was wanting had that alone operated in his choice of fubjects to write on, mankind would have been indebted to him for a variety of original, interesting and useful compofitions; and tranflations of fome, and new editions of others of the ancient authors. The truth of which affertion I think I may safely ground on a catalogue of publications projected by him at different periods, and now lying before me, a copy whereof is given below:*

‹ DIVINITY.

Under

• A small book of precepts and directions for piety: the hint ⚫ taken from the directions in the [countefs of] Morton's' [daily] • exercise,

PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY, and LITERATURE in general.

History of Criticism as it relates to judging of authors, from Aristotle to the prefent age. An account of the rife and im