found.

"Among the flocks and copses and flowers appear the heathen deities:
Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and Aeolus, with a long train of mythological
imagery such as a college easily supplies. Nothing can less display
knowledge or less exercise invention than to tell how a shepherd has
lost his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, without any
judge of his skill in piping; how one god asks another god what has
become of Lycidas, and neither god can tell. He who thus grieves will
excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour."

This is of course utterly outrageous, and yet much of it is undeniably
true. To explain why, in spite of truth, _Lycidas_ is a wonderful poem,
would be to go pretty deeply into the theory of poetic expression. Most
critics prefer simply to shriek, being at any rate safe from the errors
of independent judgment.

The general effect of the book, however, is not to be inferred from this
or some other passages of antiquated and eccentric criticism. It is the
shrewd sense everywhere cropping up which is really delightful. The keen
remarks upon life and character, though, perhaps, rather too severe in
tone, are worthy of a vigorous mind, stored with much experience of many
classes, and braced by constant exercise in the conversational arena.
Passages everywhere abound which, though a little more formal in
expression, have the forcible touch of his best conversational sallies.
Some of the prejudices, which are expressed more pithily in _Boswell_,
are defended by a reasoned exposition in the _Lives_. Sentence is passed
with the true judicial air; and if he does not convince us of his
complete impartiality, he at least bases his decisions upon solid and
worthy grounds. It would be too much, for example, to expect that
Johnson should sympathize with the grand republicanism of Milton, or
pardon a man who defended the execution of the blessed Martyr. He
failed, therefore, to satisfy the ardent admirers of the great poet. Yet
his judgment is not harsh or ungenerous, but, at worst, the judgment of
a man striving to be just, in spite of some inevitable want of sympathy.

The quality of Johnson's incidental remarks may be inferred from one or
two brief extracts. Here is an observation which Johnson must have had
many chances of verifying. Speaking of Dryden's money difficulties, he
says, "It is well known that he seldom lives frugally who lives by
chance. Hope is always liberal, and they