writers, who followed Dr. Donne, went in quest of
something better than truth and nature. As Sancho says, in Don Quixote,
they wanted better bread than is made with wheat. They took pains to
bewilder themselves, and were ingenious for no other purpose than to
err. In Johnson's review of Cowley's works, false wit is detected in all
its shapes, and the Gothic taste for glittering conceits, and far-fetched
allusions, is exploded, never, it is hoped, to revive again.

An author who has published his observations on the Life and Writings of
Dr. Johnson, speaking of the Lives of the Poets, says, "These
compositions, abounding in strong and acute remark, and with many fine,
and even sublime, passages, have, unquestionably, great merit; but, if
they be regarded, merely as containing narrations of the lives,
delineations of the characters, and strictures of the several authors,
they are far from being always to be depended on." He adds: "The
characters are sometimes partial, and there is, sometimes, too much
malignity of misrepresentation, to which, perhaps, may be joined no
inconsiderable portion of erroneous criticism." The several clauses of
this censure deserve to be answered, as fully as the limits of this
essay will permit.

In the first place, the facts are related upon the best intelligence,
and the best vouchers that could be gleaned, after a great lapse of
time. Probability was to be inferred from such materials, as could be
procured, and no man better understood the nature of historical evidence
than Dr. Johnson; no man was more religiously an observer of truth. If
his history is any where defective, it must be imputed to the want of
better information, and the errors of uncertain tradition.

"Ad nos vix tenuis famae perlabitur aura."

If the strictures on the works of the various authors are not always
satisfactory, and if erroneous criticism may sometimes be suspected, who
can hope, that in matters of taste, all shall agree? The instances, in
which the public mind has differed, from the positions advanced by the
author, are few in number. It has been said, that justice has not been
done to Swift; that Gay and Prior are undervalued; and that Gray has
been harshly treated. This charge, perhaps, ought not to be disputed.
Johnson, it is well known, had conceived a prejudice against Swift. His
friends trembled for him, when he was writing that life, but were
pleased, at last, to see it executed with temper and mode