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Cowley
Denham
Milton
Butler
Rochester
Roscommon
Otway
Waller
Pomfret
Dorset
Stepney
J. Philips
Walsh
Dryden
Smith
Duke
King
Sprat
Halifax
Parnell
Garth
Rowe
Addison
Hughes
Sheffield, duke of Buckinghamshire
Such was the simple and unpretending advertisement that announced theLives of the English Poets; a work that gave to the British nation a newstyle of biography. Johnson's decided taste for this species of writing,and his familiarity with the works of those whose lives he has recorded,peculiarly fitted him for the task; but it has been denounced by some asdogmatical, and even morose; minute critics have detected inaccuracies;the admirers of particular authors have complained of an insufficiencyof praise to the objects of their fond and exclusive regard; and thepolitical zealot has affected to decry the staunch and unbendingchampion of regal and ecclesiastical rights. Those, again, of high andimaginative minds, who "lift themselves up to look to the sky of poetry,and far removed from the dull-making cataract of Nilus, listen to theplanet-like music of poetry;" these accuse Johnson of a heavy andinsensible soul, because he avowed that nature's "world was brazen, andthat the poets only delivered a golden[1]."
But in spite of the censures of political opponents, private friends,and angry critics, it will be acknowledged, by the impartial, andby every lover of virtue and of truth, that Johnson's honest heart,penetrating mind, and powerful intellect, has given to the worldmemoirs fraught with what is infinitely more valuable than mere verbalcriticism, or imaginative speculation; he has presented, in his Lives ofthe English Poets, the fruits of his long and careful examination of menand manners, and repeated in his age, with the authoritative voice ofexperience, the same dignified lessons of morality, with which hehad instructed his readers in his earlier years. And if these livescontained few merits of their own, they confessedly amended thecriticism of the nation, and opened the path to a more enlarged andliberal style of biography than had, before their publication, appeared.
The bold manner in which Johnson delivered what he believed to be thetruth, naturally provoked hostile attack, and we are not prepared tosay, that, in many instances, the strictures passed upon him might notbe just. We will call the attention of our readers to some few of thecharges brought against the work now before us, and then leave it totheir candid and unbiased judgment to decide, whether the deficienciespointed out are but as dust in the balance, when brought to weighagainst the sterling excellence with which this last and greatestproduction of our Moralist abounds.
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