ised it under
the title of An Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns, in
his Paradise Lost; dedicated to the universities of Oxford and
Cambridge. While the book was in the press, the proof-sheets were shown
to Johnson, at the Ivy lane club, by Payne, the bookseller, who was one
of the members. No man in that society was in possession of the authors
from whom Lauder professed to make his extracts. The charge was
believed, and the contriver of it found his way to Johnson, who is
represented, by sir John Hawkins, not indeed as an accomplice in the
fraud, but, through motives of malignity to Milton, delighting in the
detection, and exulting that the poet's reputation would suffer by the
discovery. More malice to a deceased friend cannot well be imagined.
Hawkins adds, "that he wished well to the argument must be inferred from
the preface, which, indubitably, was written by him." The preface, it is
well known, was written by Johnson, and for that reason is inserted in
this edition. But if Johnson approved of the argument, it was no longer
than while he believed it founded in truth. Let us advert to his own
words in that very preface. "Among the inquiries to which the ardour of
criticism has naturally given occasion, none is more obscure in itself,
or more worthy of rational curiosity, than a retrospection of the
progress of this mighty genius in the construction of his work; a view
of the fabrick gradually rising, perhaps from small beginnings, till its
foundation rests in the centre, and its turrets sparkle in the skies; to
trace back the structure, through all its varieties, to the simplicity
of the first plan; to find what was projected, whence the scheme was
taken, how it was improved, by what assistance it was executed, and from
what stores the materials were collected; whether its founder dug them
from the quarries of nature, or demolished other buildings to embellish
his own." These were the motives that induced Johnson to assist Lauder
with a preface; and are not these the motives of a critic and a scholar?
What reader of taste, what man of real knowledge, would not think his
time well employed in an enquiry so curious, so interesting, and
instructive? If Lauder's facts were really true, who would not be glad,
without the smallest tincture of malevolence, to receive real
information? It is painful to be thus obliged to vindicate a man who, in
his heart, towered above the petty arts of fraud and imposition,