ose
talents deserve all praise, this account is by no means accurate.

Sir Richard Steele, in a dedication of the comedy of the Drummer, to Mr.
Congreve, gave the first insight into that business. He says, in a style
of anger and resentment: "If that gentleman (Mr. Tickell) thinks himself
injured, I will allow I have wronged him upon this issue, that, if the
reputed translator of the first book of Homer shall please to give us
another book, there shall appear another good judge in poetry, besides
Mr. Alexander Pope, who shall like it." The authority of Steele
outweighs all opinions, founded on vain conjecture, and, indeed, seems
to be decisive, since we do not find that Tickell, though warmly
pressed, thought proper to vindicate himself.

But the grand proof of Johnson's malignity, is the manner in which he
has treated the character and conduct of Milton. To enforce this charge
has wearied sophistry, and exhausted the invention of a party. What they
cannot deny, they palliate; what they cannot prove, they say is
probable. But why all this rage against Dr. Johnson? Addison, before
him, had said of Milton:

"Oh! had the poet ne'er profan'd his pen,
To varnish o'er the guilt of faithless men!"

And had not Johnson an equal right to avow his sentiments? Do his
enemies claim a privilege to abuse whatever is valuable to Englishmen,
either in church or state? and must the liberty of unlicensed printing
be denied to the friends of the British constitution?

It is unnecessary to pursue the argument through all its artifices,
since, dismantled of ornament and seducing language, the plain truth may
be stated in a narrow compass. Johnson knew that Milton was a
republican: he says, "an acrimonious and surly republican, for which it
is not known that he gave any better reason than, that a popular
government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy would
set up an ordinary commonwealth." Johnson knew that Milton talked aloud
"of the danger of readmitting kingship in this nation;" and when Milton
adds, "that a commonwealth was commended, or rather enjoined, by our
Saviour himself, to all christians, not without a remarkable
disallowance, and the brand of gentilism upon kingship," Johnson thought
him no better than a wild enthusiast. He knew, as well as Milton, "that
the happiness of a nation must needs be firmest and certainest in a full
and free council of their own electing, where no single person, but
reason on