sake of
those observations which he had introduced into it on the metaphysical
poets. Here he has mistaken the character of Marino, whom he supposes to
be at the head of them. Marino abounds in puerile conceits; but they are
not far-fetched, like those of Donne and Cowley; they generally lie on
the surface, and often consist of nothing more than a mere play upon
words; so that, if to be a punster is to be a metaphysician, Marino is a
poetical Heraclitus. But Johnson had caught the cant of the age, in
which it was usual to designate almost any thing absurd or extravagant
by the name of metaphysical.

It is difficult to suppose that he had read some of the works on which
he passes a summary sentence. The comedy of Love's Riddle, which he
says, "adds little to the wonders of Cowley's minority," deserved to be
commended at least for the style, which is a specimen of pure and
unaffected English. Of Congreve's novel, he tells us, that he had rather
praise it than read it. Judging from the letters of Congreve, his only
writings in prose which it has been my good fortune to meet with, and
which, as I remember, contain some admirable remarks on the distinction
between wit and humour, I should conclude that one part of his character
as a writer has yet to make its way to the public notice. I have heard
it observed by a lady, that Johnson, in his Life of Milton, is like a
dog incensed and terrified at the presence of some superior creature, at
whom he snarls, then runs away, and then returns to snarl again. If the
comparison be a just one, it may be added, in extenuation of Johnson's
malignity, that he is at least a dog who thinks himself to be attacking
the inveterate foe of his master; for Milton's hostility to a kingly
government was the crime which he could not forgive.

The mention of Milton, and of his politics, brings to my mind two
sayings of Johnson's that were related to me by Mr. Price, of Lichfield.
After passing an evening together at Mr. Seward's, the father of the
poetess, where, in the course of conversation, the words "Me miserable!"
in Paradise Lost, had been commended as highly pathetic, they had walked
some way along the street in silence, which the good man was not likely
first to break, when Johnson suddenly stopped, and turning round to him,
exclaimed, "Sir! don't you think that 'Me miserable' is miserable
stuff?" On another occasion he thus whimsically described the different
manner in which he felt himse