1 dice, and his judgment is insensibly warped by the particularity of his private opinion. These obfervations apply to his Life of Savage, the most finished of his biographical difquifitions; and his Lives of feveral other eminent men, which were originally printed in the " Gentleman's Magazine," and in other periodical publications, and afterwards collected by Mr. Davies, in his 66 Mifcellaneous and Fugitive Pieces," and to his Lives of the Poets. As a critic, he is entitled to the praise of being the greatest that our nation has produced. He has not, like his prodeceffors, tried merely to learn the art, and not to feel it. He has not gone to Dacier or to Boffu, to borrow rules to fetter genius by example, and impart distinctions which lead to no end; but, poffeffed of two qualities, without which a critic is no more than a caviller, strong sense, and an intimate knowledge of human nature, he has 1 followed his own judgment, unbiassed by authority, and has adopted all the good sense of Ariftotle, untrammelled by his forms. This praise he has merited by his Preface to Shakespeare, and the detached pieces of criticism which appear among his works. But his critical powers shine with more concentrated radiance in the Lives of the Poets. These compositions, abounding in strong and just illustrations of criticifm, evince the vigour of his mind, and that happy art of moralization, by which he gives to well-known incidents the grace of novelty and the force of instruction; and grapples the attention," by expreffing common thoughts with uncommon ftrength and elegance. Of many passages, it is scarcely hyperbolical to affirm, that they are executed with all the skill and penetration of Aristotle, and animated and embellished with all the fire of Longinus. The Lives of Cowley, Milton, 66 Butler, Waller, Dryden, Addison, and Pope, are elaborately composed, and exhibit the noblest specimens of entertaining and solid criticism, that ancient or modern times have produced. The dissertation in the Life of Cowley, on the metaphyfical poets of the last century, has all the attraction of novelty, as well as found observation. In the review of his works, false wit is detected in all its shapes; and the Gothic tafte for glittering conceits, and far-fetched allusions, is exploded, never, it is hoped, to revive again. The "Paradife Loft," is a poem which the mind of Milton only could have produced; the criticism upon it is such as, perhaps, the pen of Johnfon only could have written. His estimate of Dryden and Pope, challenges Quintilian's remarks upon Demofthenes and Cicero, and rivals the finest specimens of elegant composition and critical acuteness in the English language. Some caution, however, is required to peruse these admirable compositions with advantage. The present writer means not to say that they are perfect, or that, on the whole, they are executed with propriety. If they be regarded merely as containing narrations of the lives, delineations of the characters, and strictures of the several authors, they are far from being always to be depended upon. Johnson, as he has had occafion to remark, in reviewing his judgments of the several poets who have fallen under his confideration, brought to the production of this work ideas already formed, opinions tinctured with his ufual hues of party and prejudice, and the rigid unfeeling philosophy, which could neither bend to excuse failings, or judge of what was not capable of a dispassionate disquisition. To think for himself in critical, as in all other matters, is a privilege to which every one is undoubtedly entitled. This privilege of critical independence, an affectation of fingularity, or fome other principle not immediately visible, is frequently betraying into a dogmatical spirit of contradiction to received opinion. Of this there need no further proofs, than his almost uniform attempt to depreciate the writers of blank verse, and his degrading estimate of the exquisite compositions of Prior, Hammond, Collins, Gray, Shenstone, and Akenside, and his pronouncing the "Paradise Loft" one of those books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take it up again." In his judgments of these poets, he may be justly accused of being inflamed by prejudice, refolutely blind to merit. His rigorous condemnation, and puerile criticisms upon Gray, and his faftidious judgment of Shenstone, have drawn down upon him the united cenfures of those who admire poetry in her most daring attitudes and gorgeous at |