political or literary controversy his mind was narrowly imprisoned in
the opinions of his own or his father's age: and that is what makes him
such an admirable witness to them; but here as elsewhere the
life-giving quality in him lies in his hold on the universal human
things which are affected by no controversies and belong to all the
ages. None of his books exhibit more of what he himself calls "the two
most engaging powers of an author." In it "new things are made
familiar and familiar things are made new." The famous criticism of
the "metaphysical poets" is so {224} written that a plain man feels at
home in it: the thrice-told tale of the lives of Pope and Addison is so
retold that every one thinks he reads it for the first time. The man
who had in his earlier works sometimes seemed the most general and
abstract even of eighteenth-century writers, becomes here, by force of
his interest in the primary things of humanity, almost a pioneer of the
new love of externalities, a relater of details, an anticipator of his
own Boswell.

To the critical discussions he gave less space than to the lives, and
no one will pretend to wish he had done the opposite. Allusion has
already been made to his limitations as a critic of poetry. He was
blind to the most poetic qualities of the greatest men: the purest
poetry, the poetry that has refined away all but the absolutely
indispensable minimum of prose alloy, often escaped him altogether,
sometimes simply irritated his prejudices. _Omne ignotum pro
injucundo_. He found people enthusiastic admirers of Milton's
_Lycidas_ or Gray's _Odes_, was angry at others enjoying what he found
no pleasure in, and vented his temper on Gray and Milton. Though
Collins was his friend he makes no mention of the _Ode to Evening_. In
these cases and some others the critic is much less scrupulously fair
than the biographer, to tell the truth, nearly {225} always is. There
is perhaps a malicious touch here and there in the lives of Milton,
Swift and Gray: but little as he liked any of them, how fairly in each
case the good points of the man are brought out, and how they are left
at the end quite overbalancing the rest in our memories! But in the
case of their works it is different. He has little to say about Gray's
_Elegy_, which he admired, and much about his _Odes_, which he disliked.

Yet, in spite of some incapacity and some unfairness, Johnson's
criticism of poetry is still a thing to be