[Footnote 56: Here, as Warton justly observes, "Johnson has confounded two descriptions!"
The melancholy man does not go out while it rains, but waits, till——the sun begins to fling His flaring beams. J. B.]
[Footnote 57: Mr. Warton intimates, and there can be little doubt of the truth of his conjecture, that Milton borrowed many of the images in these two fine poems from Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, a book published in 1621, and, at sundry times since, abounding in learning, curious information, and pleasantry. Mr. Warton says, that Milton appears to have been an attentive reader thereof; and to this assertion I add, of my own knowledge, that it was a book that Dr. Johnson frequently resorted to, as many others have done, for amusement after the fatigue of study. H.—Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Johnson said, was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise. Boswell's Life, ii. 120.]
[Footnote 58: Surely there are precedents enough for the practice, though pessimi exempli, in Milton's favourite tragedian Euripides. ED.]
[Footnote 59: Author of the Essay on Study.]
[Footnote 60: Algarotti terms it, "gigantesca sublimità Miltoniana."
Dr.J.]
[Footnote 61: But, says Dr. Warton, it has, throughout, a reference to human life and actions. C.]
[Footnote 62: The earl of Surrey translated two books of Virgil without rhyme; the second and the fourth. J.B.]
BUTLER.
Of the great author of Hudibras there is a life prefixed to the later editions of his poem, by an unknown writer, and, therefore, of disputable authority; and some account is incidentally given by Wood, who confesses the uncertainty of his own narrative; more, however, than they knew cannot now be learned, and nothing remains but to compare and copy them.