396 Essay on
��the petty arts of fraud and imposition, against an injudicious biographer, who undertook to be his editor, and the protector of his memory. Another writer, Dr. Towers, in an Essay on the Life and Character of Dr. Johnson, seems to countenance this calumny. He says, It can hardly be doubted, but that Johnsons aversion to Milton s politics was the cause of that alacrity with which he joined with Lander in his infamous attack on oiir great epic poet, and which induced him to assist in that trans action *. These words would seem to describe an accomplice, were they not immediately followed by an express declaration, that Johnson was unacquainted with the imposture. Dr. Towers adds. It seems to have been by way of making some compensation to the memory of Milton, for the share he had in the attack of Laiider, that Johnson wrote the prologue, spoken by Garrick, at Drury-lane Theatre, in 1750, on the performance of the Masque of Comus, for the benefit of Milton s grand-daughter 2 . Dr. Towers is not free from prejudice ; but, as Shakspeare has it, ' he begets a temperance, to give it smoothness V He is, therefore, entitled to a dispassionate answer. When Johnson wrote the prologue, it does [? not] appear that he was aware of the malignant artifices practised by Lauder. In the postscript to Johnson's preface, a subscription is proposed, for relieving the grand-daughter of the author of Paradise Lost 4 . Dr. Towers will agree that this shews Johnson's alacrity in doing good. That alacrity shewed
1 P. 57. This Essay was pub- 4 * It is yet in the power of a great lished in 1786. See Life, iv. 41, people to reward the poet whose n. i. name they boast, and from their
2 Life, \. 228; Works, i. 115. alliance to whose genius they claim Johnson, in his Life of Milton, some kind of superiority to everyother says: ' The profits of the night were nation of the earth; that poet, whose only ^130. . . . This was the greatest works may possibly be read when benefaction that Paradise Lost ever every other monument of British procured the author's descendants ; greatness shall be obliterated ; to and to this he who has now at- reward him, not with pictures or tempted to relate his life had the with medals, which, if he sees, he honour of contributing a Prologue.' sees with contempt, but with tokens Works, vii. 118. of gratitude, which he, perhaps, may
3 ' You must acquire and beget even now consider as not unworthy a temperance that may give it the regard of an immortal' spirit.' smoothness.' Hamlet, iii. 2. 8. Life, i. 230.
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