tunity of omitting duties."

Johnson's principal work as a scholar and critic of literature is to be
found in his Dictionary, the edition of Shakespeare, and the _Lives of
the Poets_. It has the strength {203} and weakness which might be
anticipated by any intelligent person who had read Boswell and the
_Ramblers_. It abounds in manliness, courage, and modesty: it never
for an instant forgets that literature exists for the sake of life and
not life for the sake of literature: it has no esoteric or professional
affectations, but says plain things in plain words such as all can
understand. The literary critic can have no more valuable qualities
than these. But they do not complete his equipment. The criticism of
Johnson has many limitations. He was entirely without aesthetic
capacity. Not only were music and the plastic arts nothing to him--as
indeed they have been to many good judges of poetry--but he does not
appear to have possessed any musical ear or much power of imagination.
It is not going too far to say that of the highest possibilities of
poetry he had no conception. He imagines he has disposed of _Lycidas_
by exhibiting its "inherent improbability" in the eyes of a crude
common sense: a triumph which is as easy and as futile as his
refutation of Berkeley's metaphysics by striking his foot upon the
ground. The truth is of course that in each case he is beating the
air. The stamp upon the ground would have been a triumphant answer to
a fool who should say that the senses cannot feel: it does not touch
{204} Berkeley who says they cannot know. So the attack on _Lycidas_
might be fatal to a judge who put his judgment into the form of a
pastoral; as the criticism of a poet it is in the main simply
irrelevant. It is evident that what Johnson admires in Milton is the
power of his mind and the elevation of his character, not at all his
purely poetic gifts. He never betrays the slightest suspicion that in
speaking of Milton he is speaking of one of the very greatest artists
the world has ever known. He thought blank verse was verse only to the
eye, and found the "numbers" of _Lycidas_ "unpleasing." He did not
believe that anybody read _Paradise Lost_ for pleasure, and said so
with his usual honesty. He saw nothing in _Samson Agonistes_ but the
weakness of the plot; of the heights and depths of its poetry he
perceived nothing. He preferred the comedies to the tragedies of
Shakespeare: felt the poet in him