Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Inquiry: Into Some Passages in Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets Particularly His Observations on Lyric Poetry, and the Odes of Gray
With the political tenets of the wr1ter, i have nothing to do; my bufinefs is with his criticifm: yet it were to be Wilhed that the fpirit of party had not been' fo warmly dif fufed through this work;-it is often difagreeable, but in the Life. Of Milton it is difgufiing: not that I am inclined to de fend the religious or political principles of our great poet; I know too well the intolerant fpiritof that liberty, which worked its odious purpofes through injul'tice, opprefiion, and cruelty but his of littleconfequence to the prefent and future ages whether the authorof, Paradife Loft was Papift or Prefby terian, Royalift or Republican; it is the Poet that claims our attention: if however in the life of Milton it were ne cellary to take notice of the part he bore in thofe difal'trous times, it might have \been more eligible to have imitated the moderation of]: Philips, who, though he wrote more than feventy'years nearer thofe times, when the facts were yet frelh-on mens. Memories, checked his exprefiion of the fabhorrence of them, through refpeet to his mafter, with this beautiful apof'rrophe, And had that other Bard, Oh, hadbut, he, that firf't ennobled fong B 2(4)
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