has the sanction of power, and the countenance of greatness. How little this is the state of our country needs not to be told. . . . The edicts of an English academy would probably be read by many, only that they might be sure to disobey them. . . . The present manners of the nation would deride authority, and therefore nothing is left but that every writer should criticize himself 1 .' This surely is not conclusive. It is by the standard of the best writers that every man settles for himself his plan of legitimate composition ; and since the authority of superior genius is acknowledged, that authority, which the individual obtains, would not be lessened by an association with others of distinguished ability. It may, therefore, be inferred, that an Academy of Literature would be an establishment highly useful, and an honour to Literature. In such an institution profitable places would not be wanted. Vatis avarus hand facile est animus 2 ; and the minister, who shall find leisure from party and faction, to carry such a scheme into execution, will, in all probability, be respected by posterity as the Maecenas of letters 3 .
We now take leave of Dr. Johnson as an author. Four volumes of his Lives of the Poets were published in I778 4 , and the work was completed in 1781. Should Biography fall again into
1 Works 9 \\\.\bj. 'JOHNSON. Sub- Pope, Imitations of Horace, 1.
ordination is sadly broken down in 192.
this age. No man now has the same 3 Macaulay recorded on Dec. 10,
authority which his father had 1850 : ' I met Sir Bulwer Lytton.
except a gaoler. No master has it He is anxious about some scheme
over his servants ; it is diminished for some association of literary men.
in our colleges ; nay in our Gram- I detest all such associations. I hate
mar-schools.' Life, iii. 262. the notion of gregarious authors.
It is strange that Matthew Arnold The less we have to do with each
in his Literary Influence of A cade- other the better.' Trevelyan's Mac-
mies (Essays in Criticism, ed. 1889, aulay, ed. 1877, ii. 289.
p. 42), nowhere mentions Johnson's 4 Murphy had correctly stated
opinion. (ante, p. 433) that the Y were P UD '
' Vatis avarus lished in 1779. Hawkins, writing
Non temere est animus.' but six years after the publication of
Horace, Ept's. ii. I. 119. the last six volumes of the Lives,
mind.' in ten small volumes.' p. 534.
disuse,
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