'He possessed extraordinary powers of understanding, which were much cultivated by study, and still more by meditation and reflection. His memory was remarkably retentive, his imagination uncommonly vigorous, and his judgement keen and penetrating. He had a strong sense of the importance of religion; his piety was sincere, and sometimes ardent; and his zeal for the interests of virtue was often manifested in his conversation and in his writings. The same energy which was displayed in his literary productions was exhibited also in his conversation, which was various, striking, and instructive; and perhaps no man ever equalled him for nervous and pointed repartees.'
'His Dictionary, his moral Essays, and his productions in polite literature, will convey useful instruction, and elegant entertainment, as long as the language in which they are written shall be understood.' BOSWELL.
[148] Boswell paraphrases the following passage:—'The King, with lenity of which the world has had perhaps no other example, declined to be the judge or avenger of his own or his father's wrongs; and promised to admit into the Act of Oblivion all, except those whom the Parliament should except; and the Parliament doomed none to capital punishment but the wretches who had immediately co-operated in the murder of the King. Milton was certainly not one of them; he had only justified what they had done.' Johnson's Works, vii. 95.
|
[149] 'Though fall'n on evil days, On evil days though fall'n and evil tongues, In darkness, and with dangers compast round.' Paradise Lost, vii. 26. |
[150] Johnson's Works, vii. 105.
[151] 'His political notions were those of an acrimonious and surly republican.' Ib. p. 116.
[152] 'What we know of Milton's character in domestick relations is, that he was severe and arbitrary.' Ib. p. 116.
[153] 'His theological opinions are said to have been first, Calvinistical; and afterwards, perhaps when he began to hate the Presbyterians, to have tended towards Arminianism.... He appears to have been untainted by any heretical peculiarity of opinion.' Ib. p. 115.
[154] Mr. Malone things it is rather a proof that he felt nothing of those cheerful sensations which he has described: that on these topicks it is the poet, and not the man, that writes. BOSWELL.
[155] See ante, i. 427, ii. 124, and iv. 20, for Johnson's condemnation of blank verse. This condemnations was not universal. Of Dryden, he wrote (Works, vii. 249):—'He made rhyming tragedies, till, by the prevalence of manifest propriety, he seems to have grown ashamed of making them any longer.' His own Irene is in blank verse; though Macaulay justly remarks of it:—'He had not the slightest notion of what blank verse should be.' (Macaulay's Writings and Speeches, ed. 1871, p. 380.) Of Thomson's Seasons, he says (Works, vii. 377):—'His is one of the works in which blank verse seems properly used.' Of Young's Night Thoughts:—'This is one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage.' Ib. p. 460. Of Milton himself, he writes:—'Whatever be the advantages of rhyme, I cannot prevail on myself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer; for I cannot wish his work to be other than it is; yet, like other heroes, he is to be admired rather than imitated.' Ib. vii. 142. How much he felt the power of Milton's blank verse is shewn by his Rambler, No. 90, where, after stating that 'the noblest and most majestick pauses which our versification admits are upon the fourth and sixth syllables,' he adds:—' Some passages [in Milton] which conclude at this stop [the sixth syllable] I could never read without some strong emotions of delight or admiration.' 'If,' he continues, 'the poetry of Milton be examined with regard to the pauses and flow of his verses into each other, it will appear that he has performed all that our language would admit.' Cowper was so indignant at Johnson's criticism of Milton's blank verse that he wrote:—'Oh! I could thresh his old jacket till I made his pension jingle in his pocket.' Southey's Cowper, iii. 315.