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The cause of Johnson's supposed personal dislike to Swift has not been ascertained. Boswell, admitting the bias, is at a loss to account for it. But the reason was probably simple. The best of men are beset with prejudices, and Johnson had at least his full share. He remembered a kindness, more especially one in early life (witness his partiality for Warburton), and forgave but did not forget a neglect. When young, and known (at least among authors) as the writer of a vigorous satire, he was offered the mastership of a charity school, "provided he could obtain the degree of Master of Arts," without which, by the statutes of the school, he was inadmissible. The salary was sixty pounds a-year, and Lord Gower interested himself by letter to obtain through Swift the required diploma. Swift, it is supposed, withheld his recommendation, for Johnson, to whom the place was of the utmost consequence, failed in obtaining it. In other words, Swift refused or neglected him, when a kind word would have been a real charity to the rarest merit.

With less probability, other reasons are assigned: "he seemed to me," writes Boswell, "to have an unaccountable prejudice against Swift; for I once took the liberty to ask him if Swift had personally offended him, and he told me he had not." He was certainly, as Scott says, no friend to the fame of Swift.7

I am thus particular in referring to Johnson's Life of Swift,' clouded as it is with an air of constrained indifference, free as it is from his wonted assumption of superiority. There is throughout an evident struggle against a hatred burning within him; and when his pen is becoming bitter, he seems glad to escape, and to borrow a description from mild Dr. Delany. How otherwise did the filth of Swift's writings pass without Johnson's chastisement — without those reflections which the names of Stella, Varina, and Vanessa could not fail to awaken in a mind so well principled as his?

The Life of Savage was written when Johnson was a young man, and from the interest of its story, and the admirable manner in which that story is told, is deservedly looked upon 7 Misc. Works, ed. 1834, vol. ii. p. 441.

as one of the best biographies in the English language. It is, however, unduly proportioned, when contrasted with the series of Lives into which it was somewhat violently introduced, for the merits of Savage as a poet can give him but a very slender claim to so lengthened a biography. But the life was originally written as a tale accompanied by a moral, and with no view whatever to a series of Lives. It would indeed be difficult. in that sense to tell the story of Savage in fewer words than Johnson; and this he seems himself to have felt, for the Life as printed among the Poets differs from the first edition only in the alteration of an almost unimportant passage, and in the omission of certain extracts, meant at first for filling. It was a work of necessity and love. "I wrote," he observed in after life," forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of the Life of Savage at a sitting; but then I sat up all night." Had he continued at this speed, he would have written the whole Life at four sittings, for the original edition, to which he referred, is contained in one hundred and eighty pages.

The Life of Pope,' for the facts it contains-facts first found in Johnson is certainly the most important of the Lives. It is indeed a noble specimen of biography—and I will add (in spite of some few words), of English. That I have partly formed my opinion from Mr. Croker (whose knowledge of Pope is undoubted) will I am sure in no way detract from the value of my judgment in this particular.

When Boswell, in conversation with Burke, characterised the 'Life of Young' as a work possessing a considerable share of merit, and displaying a pretty successful imitation of Johnson's style, Burke vehemently opposed him. "No, no," he exclaimed, "it is not a good imitation of Johnson; it has all his pomp, without his force; it has all the nodosities of the oak, without its strength; it has all the contortions of the sibyl, without the inspiration." As if he had no sense of the sarcastic criticism of Burke, Croft bound up his copy of the Lives (which I have seen) with this lettering, "Johnson's Beauties and Deformities;" his own part of the book exhibiting the deformities of Johnson rather exaggerated than improved. Even in his few good

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passages, Croft is at an immeasurable distance from the writer he imitates. No one acquainted with Johnson has found occasion to believe, while reading the Life of Young,' that the narration before him was the work of the author of the other Lives, or to wish, as Johnson suggests, that he had solicited and obtained more such favours from his friend.

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"In the Life of Lyttelton,' Johnson seems to have been not favourably disposed towards that nobleman." Such is the observation of Boswell, such was the opinion of the friends of Lord Lyttelton, and such is the result at which every reader of the Life arrives. It is indeed a sketch reluctantly and hastily put together-reluctantly, because he was willing to have adopted a life by any friendly hand, and hastily, because he wrote it from few materials, and at the last moment. His letters to Lord Westcote, the brother of Lord Lyttelton, exhibit his desire to obtain a life with as little trouble to himself as possible :

"MY LORD,

"To LORD WESTCOTE.

"Bolt Court, Fleet Street, July 27, 1780. "The course of my undertaking will now require a short life of your brother, Lord Lyttelton. My desire is to avoid offence, and to be totally out of danger. I take the liberty of proposing to your Lordship that the historical account should be written under your direction by any friend you may be willing to employ, and I will only take upon myself to examine the poetry. Four pages like those of his work, or even half so much, will be sufficient. As the press is going on, it will be fit that I should know what you shall be pleased to determine.—I am, &c.

"SAM. JOHNSON."

"To LORD WESTCOTE.

"MY LORD,

"Bolt Court, Fleet Street, July 28, 1780.

"I wish it had been convenient to have had that done which I proposed. I shall certainly not wantonly nor willingly offend; but when there are such near relations living, I had rather they would please themselves. In the Life of Lord Lyttelton I shall need no help-it was very public, and I have no need to be minute. But I return your Lordship thanks for your readiness to help me. I have another life in hand, that of Mr. West, about which I am quite at a loss; any information about him would be of great use to "My Lord, yours, &c.

"SAM. JOHNSON."

What he thought of Lord Westcote's refusal he described at the time in a letter to Mrs. Thrale :-"I sent to Lord Westcote about his brother's Life; but he says he knows not whom to employ, and is sure I shall do him no injury. There is an ingenious scheme to save a day's work, or part of a day, utterly defeated. Then what avails it to be wise? The plain and the artful man must both do their own work. But I think I

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Failing in his endeavours to obtain a Life, he went to his task sullenly, and "poor Lyttelton," as he has called him, suffered by the failure of the "ingenious scheme." Mrs. Montagu exhibited her displeasure at her own table and before Johnson. Mr. Pepys in the library at Streatham made battle with the biographer in defence of his deceased friend. Johnson did not give way-he took credit to himself for concealing what he called the coarseness of Lord Lyttelton's manners, and an anecdote as he told Hawkins in its nature very ridiculous. Johnson was occasionally himself the "good hater" he liked—he was not favourably disposed towards Lyttelton— and his early dislike coloured the whole of his biography; for notwithstanding his many virtues and great goodness of heart, his resentment too frequently subsided with a lasting sediment. The occasion of his dislike to Lyttelton is unknown-for Mrs. Piozzi's supposition that it rose from rivalry for the heart of Miss Boothby is too absurd even for fiction. If I may be allowed a conjecture, I would suggest that Johnson's dislike may be traced to the neglect which he met with from Lyttelton -for he had known him slightly, and Lyttelton during Johnson's years of struggle (1738-1752) was the professed patron of poets and literary men.

The last of the 'Lives' in the order of composition was that of Gray. That his criticism is now and then captious, and not unfrequently unfounded, is, I think, very generally allowed. He admired the Elegy, he respected Gray's learning, and he loved his virtuous life; yet he had little sympathy with him after all. They were contemporaries who never met. Gray

8 Boswell,' by Croker, Ed. 1847, p. 650.

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lived with Mason and Walpole, Johnson with Hawkesworth and Goldsmith. Gray's little coterie (Gray himself excepted) depreciated Johnson and his little senate of admirers; and Goldsmith, the most eminent of Johnson's little club (Johnson himself excepted), suffered his usual good taste to be so far overcome by prejudice that he is found to prefer-and in print moreover the Night Piece of Parnell to the Elegy of Gray. But Johnson did not share his friend's mistaken preference, and has said so in his 'Life.' The tone of his criticism in this last of his Lives' must be referred to the same cause which led him to laugh at Warton's poetry, and to foretell (falsely enough) that Hoole's translation of Tasso would supplant the earlier and nobler version of Fairfax.

Johnson's Life of Gray is a disparaging performance, the work of a superior mind anxious to cavil and find fault: its depreciatory tone has, however, been far from catching, and Gray has had ample justice done him in the general admiration of the world.

But Johnson was at least consistent in his dislike of the poetry of Gray. His contempt for his Odes was a frequent subject of conversation with him, and some of his severest sayings were remembered by Boswell, by Piozzi, and by Langton. Indeed he who was blind to the beauties of 'Lycidas' was sure to indulge in cold and contemptuous language about the lyrical effusions of the fanciful Gray. Even his friendship for Collins could not extort any great approbation of his Odes. Johnson loved Collins, but he had no sympathy with his poetry and his observations on Gray are in keeping with the tone of all his criticism throughout the Lives of the Poets.'

"Between the extremes," says Dryden, "of admiration and of malice it is hard to judge uprightly of the living. Friendship and hatred alike blind us in deciding upon the merits of our contemporaries; we are either bribed by interest or prejudiced by malice. A large portion of ill-nature, guided by a small quantity of judgment, will go far in finding the mistakes. and inelegancies of writers."

It is easy to see in what Johnson thought good poetry to

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