70 JOHNSON. 



Of his other Lives some, as that of Savage, have been 

 praised too much ; some, as that of Milton, too severely 

 censured. It cannot be denied that the former is written 

 with a rare power of invention, though somewhat swollen 

 and monotonous ; but its partiality to the subject, which 

 both blinds the author to his friend's defects, and fills 

 him with a very exaggerated idea of his poetical merits, 

 forms the principal defect. That he had strong prepos- 

 sessions against Milton's political opinions, cannot be 

 doubted; but it is extremely incorrect to affirm, as has 

 too generally been affirmed, that this feeling made him 

 unfair to that great poet's merits. No one can read his 

 criticism on 'Paradise Lost' without perceiving that he 

 places it next to the Iliad, and in some respects on an 

 equal, if not a higher level. His praise of it in the 

 1 Rambler' is equally ample. His objections are not at 

 all groundless : and although to the lesser pieces he may 

 not be equally just, it is certain that except to the ' Lyci- 

 das' he shews no very marked unfairness, while, in ob- 

 serving the faults of the others, he largely commemorates 

 their beauties. The ' Life of Swift,' which, as a piece of 

 biography, stands high in the collection, is disfigured by 

 more prejudice than any other. The merits of that great 

 writer's poetry are almost entirely overlooked, and his 

 prose works, especially the ' Gulliver,' are undervalued in 

 a degree which, when we recollect Johnson's own talent 

 for sarcasm, and his proneness to see in a ludicrous light 

 the objects of his scorn or his aversion, would seem in- 

 comprehensible, or only to be explained by the suppo- 

 sition that his religious feelings were roused against one 

 whom he regarded as having, like Sterne, an object of 

 his special scorn, disgraced by his writings his sacred 



