charge was believed, and the contriver of it found his way to Johnson, who is represented by Sir John Hawkins, not indeed as an accomplice in the fraud, but, through motives of malignity to Milton, delighting in the detection, and exulting that the poet's reputation would suffer by the discovery x . More malice to a deceased friend cannot well be imagined. Hawkins adds, * that he wished well to the argument, must be inferred from the preface, which indubitably was written by him* The preface, it is well known, was written by Johnson, and for that reason is inserted in this edition 2 . But if Johnson approved of the argument, it was no longer than while he believed it founded in truth. Let us advert to his own words in that very preface. * Among the enquiries to which the [this] ardour of criticism has naturally given occasion, none is more obscure in itself, or more worthy of rational curiosity, than a retrospection of the progress of this mighty genius in the construction of his work ; a view of the fabric gradually rising, perhaps from small beginnings, till its foundation rests in the centre, and its turrets sparkle in the skies ; to trace back the structure, through all its varieties, to the simplicity of the [its] first plan ; to find what was [first] projected, whence the scheme was taken, how it was improved, by what assistance it was executed, and from what stores the materials were collected ; whether its founder dug them from the quarries of nature, or demolished other buildings to embellish his own.' These were the motives that induced Johnson to assist Lauder with a preface : and are not these the motives of a critic and a scholar ? What reader of taste, what man of real know ledge, would not think his time well employed in an enquiry so curious, so interesting, and instructive ? If Lauder's facts were really true, who would not be glad, without the smallest tincture of malevolence, to receive real information ? It is painful to be thus obliged to vindicate a man who, in his heart, towered above
1 ' I could all along observe that Hawkins, p. 276. See Life, i. 230.
Johnson seemed to approve not only The Whig members of the Club,
of the design but of the argument, some of them sound scholars, do
and seemed to exult in a persuasion not seem to have suspected the
that the reputation of Milton was fraud,
likely to suffer by this discovery.' 2 Works, v. 267.
the
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