ration. As to
Prior, it is probable that he gave his real opinion, but an opinion that
will not be adopted by men of lively fancy. With regard to Gray, when he
condemns the apostrophe, in which father Thames is desired to tell who
drives the hoop, or tosses the ball, and then adds, that father Thames
had no better means of knowing than himself; when he compares the abrupt
beginning of the first stanza of the bard, to the ballad of Johnny
Armstrong, "Is there ever a man in all Scotland;" there are, perhaps,
few friends of Johnson, who would not wish to blot out both the
passages.

It may be questioned, whether the remarks on Pope's Essay on Man can be
received, without great caution. It has been already mentioned, that
Crousaz, a professor in Switzerland, eminent for his Treatise of Logic,
started up a professed enemy to that poem. Johnson says, "his mind was
one of those, in which philosophy and piety are happily united. He
looked, with distrust, upon all metaphysical systems of theology, and
was persuaded, that the positions of Pope were intended to draw mankind
away from revelation, and to represent the whole course of things, as a
necessary concatenation of indissoluble fatality." This is not the place
fur a controversy about the Leibnitzian system. Warburton, with all the
powers of his large and comprehensive mind, published a vindication of
Pope; and yet Johnson says, that, "in many passages, a religious eye may
easily discover expressions not very favourable to morals, or to
liberty." This sentence is severe, and, perhaps, dogmatical. Crousaz
wrote an Examen of the Essay on Man, and, afterwards, a commentary on
every remarkable passage; and, though it now appears, that Mrs.
Elizabeth Carter translated the foreign critic, yet it is certain, that
Johnson encouraged the work, and, perhaps, imbibed those early
prejudices, which adhered to him to the end of his life. He shuddered at
the idea of irreligion. Hence, we are told, in the life of Pope, "Never
were penury of knowledge, and vulgarity of sentiment, so happily
disguised; Pope, in the chair of wisdom, tells much that every man
knows, and much that he did not know himself; and gives us comfort in
the position, that though man's a fool, yet God is wise; that human
advantages are unstable; that our true honour is, not to have a great
part, but to act it well; that virtue only is our own, and that
happiness is always in our power." The reader, when he meets all this