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 affumes a crown. Beyond the sweeping of the proudeft 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. That empire is of titled birth or blood; thou art the minister, The reverend monitor of vice. The fence of virtue is a chief's beft caution; The dedication to the play, addreffed to the fubfcribers, gives the reader to understand, 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 breast 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 defcribed, is sceptered in the hearts of his people.' Upon occafion of this publication, Johnson was employed by one Corbet, a bookfeller of fmall note, to take 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 single ray of that brightnefs which beams fo strongly 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 standing armies to ridicule the apprehenfion of that invafion in favour of the pretender, which himself, but a few years after became a witness to, or to compare the improbability of fuch an event with that of a general infurrection 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 fenfe of the propounder. Of this kind of interrogatories the pamphlet I am fpeaking of feems to be an example; Is the man without penfion or place to suspect the impartiality or the judgment of those who are entrufted with the administration of 'public affairs? Is he, when the law is not ftrictly ⚫ 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 several queries the answer must be in the affirmative? and, if fo, the point of the writer's wit is, in this inftance, blunted, and his argument baffled. In the course of this mock vindication of power, Johnson has taken a wide scope, 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 sophism of that superficial thinker, which I remember to have seen 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 fhew, 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 cause and fuch an effect being fo closely 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 most 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 Johnson'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 to call it, that the peasantry of a country was not an ade- quate defence against an invafion of it by an armed force. He almost 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 juft endure the oppofition to the minifter because conducted on whig principles; and I have heard him fay, 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, since 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: nor would he then exclude from this bigotted cenfure those illuftrious divines, Wake, Gibson, Sherlock, Butler, Herring, Pearce, and leaft of all Hoadly; 1 in competition with whom he would fet Hickes, Brett, Leflie, and others of the nonjurors, whofe names are scarcely now remembered. From hence it appears, and to his honour be it faid, that his principles cooperated with his neceffities, and that the proftitution 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 lefs criminal fenfe 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 exercise of his poetical faculty. In Johnson's case, as well in the instances above given as almost all the others that occurred during the course of his life, the impulse 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 fafely ground on a catalogue of publications projected by him at different periods, and now lying before me, a copy whereof is given below: * Under DIVINITY. A small book of precepts and directions for piety: the hint ⚫ taken from the directions in the [countess of] Morton's' [daily] ⚫ exercife. PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY, and LITERATURE in general. Hiftory of Criticism as it relates to judging of authors, from Ariftotle to the prefent age. An account of the rife and imVOL. I. G provements |