most cursory glance at Johnson's book is enough to show that he judged
authors as if they were criminals in the dock, answerable for every
infraction of the rules and regulations laid down by the laws of art,
which it was his business to administer without fear or favour. Johnson
never inquired what poets were trying to do; he merely aimed at
discovering whether what they had done complied with the canons of
poetry. Such a system of criticism was clearly unexceptionable, upon one
condition--that the critic was quite certain what the canons of poetry
were; but the moment that it became obvious that the only way of
arriving at a conclusion upon the subject was by consulting the poets
themselves, the whole situation completely changed. The judge had to bow
to the prisoner's ruling. In other words, the critic discovered that his
first duty was, not to criticise, but to understand the object of his
criticism. That is the essential distinction between the school of
Johnson and the school of Sainte-Beuve. No one can doubt the greater
width and profundity of the modern method; but it is not without its
drawbacks. An excessive sympathy with one's author brings its own set of
errors: the critic is so happy to explain everything, to show how this
was the product of the age, how that was the product of environment, and
how the other was the inevitable result of inborn qualities and
tastes--that he sometimes forgets to mention whether the work in
question has any value. It is then that one cannot help regretting the
Johnsonian black cap.

But other defects, besides lack of sympathy, mar the _Lives of the
Poets_. One cannot help feeling that no matter how anxious Johnson might
have been to enter into the spirit of some of the greatest of the
masters with whom he was concerned, he never could have succeeded.
Whatever critical method he might have adopted, he still would have
been unable to appreciate certain literary qualities, which, to our
minds at any rate, appear to be the most important of all. His opinion
of _Lycidas_ is well known: he found that poem 'easy, vulgar, and
therefore disgusting.' Of the songs in _Comus_ he remarks: 'they are
harsh in their diction, and not very musical in their numbers.' He could
see nothing in the splendour and elevation of Gray, but 'glittering
accumulations of ungraceful ornaments.' The passionate intensity of
Donne escaped him altogether; he could only wonder how so ingenious a
writer could be