ed 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.

[156] One of the most natural instances of the effect of blank verse
occurred to the late Earl of Hopeton. His Lordship observed one of his
shepherds poring in the fields upon Milton's _Paradise Lost_; and having
asked him what book it was, the man answered, 'An't please your
Lordship, this is a very odd sort of an authour: he would fain rhyme,
but cannot get at it.' BOSWELL. 'The variety of pauses, so much boasted
by the lovers of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to
the periods of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy
readers of Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where the lines
end or begin. "Blank verse," said an ingenious critick, "seems to be
verse only to the eye."' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 141. In the _Life of
Roscommon_ (_ib_. p. 171), he says:--'A poem frigidly didactick, without
rhyme, is so near to prose, that the reader only scorns it for
pretending to be verse.'

[157] Mr. Locke. Often mentioned in Mme. D'Arblay's _Diary_.

[158] See vol. in. page 71. BOSWELL.

[159] It is scarcely a defence. Whatever it was, he thus ends it:-'It is
natural to hope, that a comprehensive is likewise an elevated soul, and
that whoever is wise is also honest. I am willing to believe that
Dryden, having employed his mind, active as it was, upon different
studies, and filled it, capacious as it was, with other materials, came
unprovided to the controversy, and wanted rather skill to discover the
right than virtue to maintain it. But inquiries into the heart are not
for man; we must now leave him to his judge.' Works, vii. 279.

[160] In the original _fright_. _The Hind and the Panther_, i. 79.

[161] In this quotation two passages are joined. _Works_, vii. 339, 340.

[162] 'The deep and pathetic morality of the _Vanity of Human Wishes_'
says Sir Walter Scott, 'has often extracted tears from those whose eyes
wander dry over the pages of professed sentimentality.' CROKER. It. drew
tears from Johnson himself. 'When,' says Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 50),
'he read his own satire, in which the life of a scholar is painted, he
burst into a passion of tears. The family and Mr. Scott only were
present, who, in a jocose way, clapped him on the back, and