Lost" was always connected
with the man for whom a reward was offered in the _London Gazette_.
But in their triumph, the lovers of monarchy missed their greater
glory, in not separating for ever the republican Secretary of State
from the rival of Homer.

That the genius of Milton pined away in solitude, and that all the
consolations of fame were denied him during his life, from this
political criticism on his works, is generally known; but not perhaps
that this spirit propagated itself far beyond the poet's tomb. I give
a remarkable instance. Bishop Sprat, who surely was capable of feeling
the poetry of Milton, yet from political antipathy retained such an
abhorrence of his _name_, that when the writer of the Latin
Inscription on the poet JOHN PHILIPS, in describing his versification,
applied to it the term _Miltono_, Sprat ordered it to be erased, as
polluting a monument raised in a church.[339] A mere critical opinion
on versification was thus sacrificed to political feeling:--a stream
indeed which in its course has hardly yet worked itself clear. It
could only have been the strong political feeling of Warton which
could have induced him to censure the prose of Milton with such
asperity, while he closed his critical eyes on its resplendent
passages, which certainly he wanted not the taste to feel,--for he
caught in his own pages, occasionally, some of the reflected warmth.
This feeling took full possession of the mind of Johnson, who, with
all the rage of political criticism on subjects of literature, has
condemned the finest works of Milton, and in one of his terrible
paroxysms has demonstrated that the Samson Agonistes is "a tragedy
which ignorance has admired and bigotry applauded." Had not Johnson's
religious feelings fortunately interposed between Milton and his
"Paradise," we should have wanted the present noble effusion of his
criticism; any other Epic by Milton had probably sunk beneath his
vigorous sophistry, and his tasteless sarcasm. Lauder's attack on
Milton was hardily projected, on a prospect of encouragement, from
this political criticism on the literary character of Milton; and he
succeeded as long as he could preserve the decency of the delusion.

The Spirit of Party has touched with its plague-spot the character of
Burnet; it has mildewed the page of a powerful mind, and tainted by
its suspicions, its rumours, and its censures, his probity as a man.
Can we forbear listening to all the vociferation