So easy is his style in these Lives, that I do not recollect more than three uncommon or learned words[139]; one, when giving an account of the approach of Waller's mortal disease, he says, 'he found his legs grow tumid;' by using the expression his legs swelled, he would have avoided this; and there would have been no impropriety in its being followed by the interesting question to his physician, 'What that swelling meant?' Another, when he mentions that Pope had emitted proposals; when published or issued would have been more readily understood; and a third, when he calls Orrery and Dr. Delany[140], writers both undoubtedly veracious[141], when true, honest, or faithful, might have been used. Yet, it must be owned, that none of these are hard or too big words; that custom would make them seem as easy as any others; and that a language is richer and capable of more beauty of expression, by having a greater variety of synonimes.
His dissertation[142] upon the unfitness of poetry for the aweful subjects of our holy religion, though I do not entirely agree with with him, has all the merit of originality, with uncommon force and reasoning.
Various Readings in the Life of WALLER.
'Consented to [the insertion of their names] their own nomination.
'[After] paying a fine of ten thousand pounds.
'Congratulating Charles the Second on his [coronation] recovered right.
'He that has flattery ready for all whom the vicissitudes of the world happen to exalt, must be [confessed to degrade his powers] scorned as a prostituted mind.
'The characters by which Waller intended to distinguish his writings are [elegance] sprightliness and dignity.
'Blossoms to be valued only as they [fetch] foretell fruits.
'Images such as the superficies of nature [easily] readily supplies.
'[His] Some applications [are sometimes] may be thought too remote and unconsequential.
'His images are [sometimes confused] not always distinct?
Against his Life of MILTON, the hounds of Whiggism have opened in full cry[143]. But of Milton's great excellence as a poet, where shall we find such a blazon as by the hand of Johnson? I shall select only the following passage concerning Paradise Lost[144]:
'Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked his reputation stealing its way in a kind of subterraneous current, through fear and silence. I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and waiting without impatience the vicissitudes of opinion, and the impartiality of a future generation[145].'
Indeed even Dr. Towers, who may be considered as one of the warmest zealots of The Revolution Society[146] itself, allows, that 'Johnson has spoken in the highest terms of the abilities of that great poet, and has bestowed on his principal poetical compositions the most honourable encomiums[147].'
That a man, who venerated the Church and Monarchy as Johnson did, should speak with a just abhorrence of Milton as a politician, or rather as a daring foe to good polity, was surely to be expected; and to those who censure him, I would recommend his commentary on Milton's celebrated complaint of his situation, when by the lenity of Charles the Second, 'a lenity of which (as Johnson well observes) the world has had perhaps no other example, he, who had written in justification of the murder of his Sovereign, was safe under an Act of Oblivion[148].'
'No sooner is he safe than he finds himself in danger, fallen on evil days and evil tongues, [and] with darkness and with danger compassed round[149]. This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly deserved compassion; but to add the mention of danger, was ungrateful and unjust. He was fallen, indeed, on evil days; the time was come in which regicides could no longer boast their wickedness. But of evil tongues for Milton to complain, required impudence at least equal to his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow, that he never spared any asperity of reproach, or brutality of insolence[150].'
I have, indeed, often wondered how Milton, 'an acrimonious and surly Republican[151],'--'a man who in his domestick relations was so severe and arbitrary[152],' and whose head was filled with the hardest and most dismal tenets of Calvinism[153], should have been such a poet; should not only have written with sublimity, but with beauty, and even gaiety; should have exquisitely painted the sweetest sensations of which our nature is capable; imaged the delicate raptures of connubial love; nay, seemed to be animated with all the spirit of revelry. It is a proof that in the human mind the departments of judgement and imagination, perception and temper, may sometimes be divided by strong partitions; and that the light and shade in the same character may be kept so distinct as never to be blended[154].
In the Life of Milton, Johnson took occasion to maintain his own and the general opinion of the excellence of rhyme over blank verse, in English poetry[155]; and quotes this apposite illustration of it by 'an ingenious critick,' that it seems to be verse only to the eye[156]. The gentleman whom he thus characterises, is (as he told Mr.