478 Essay on
��as sound observation x . The writers, who followed Dr. Donne, went in quest of something better than truth and nature. As Sancho says in Don Quixotte, they wanted better bread than is made with wheat. They took pains to bewilder themselves, and were ingenious for no other purpose than to err. In Johnson's review of Cowley's works, false wit is detected in all its shapes, and the Gothic 2 taste for glittering conceits, and far-fetched allusions, is exploded, never, it is hoped, to revive again.
An author, who has published his observations on the Life and Writings of Dr. Johnson 3 , speaking of the Lives of the Poets, says, 'These [considered as] compositions, [and as] abounding in [with] strong and acute remarks, and with many fine and [some] even sublime passages, have unquestionably great merit ; but if they be regarded merely as containing narrations of the lives, delineations of the characters, and strictures of the several authors, they are far from being always to be depended on.' He adds, * The characters are sometimes partial, and there is sometimes TOO MUCH MALIGNITY [the capital letters are Murphy's] of misrepresentation, to which, perhaps, may be joined no inconsiderable portion of erroneous criticism.' The several clauses of this censure deserve to be answered as fully as the limits of this essay will permit.
strangely subtile and metaphysical ; the age, in which it was usual to
for other poor mortals of an ordinary designate almost anything absurd or
capacity are forced to be ignorant extravagant by the name of meta-
of that which they can neither see, physical.' Gary's Lives of English
hear, feel, nor understand.' Sermons, Poets, ed. 1846, p. 86. ed. 1823, ii. 304. * ' The Life of COWLEY he himself
Dr. Warton says that Johnson considered as the best of the whole,
calls the poets metaphysical after on account of the dissertation which
Dryden. Warton's Pope's Works, it contains on the Metaphysical
i. 270. Poets' Life, iv. 38.
4 The designation,' writes Southey, 2 Gothic is not in Johnson's
' is not fortunate, but so much re- Dictionary. It was commonly used
spect is due to Johnson that it would for mediaeval or barbarous. Ante,
be unbecoming to substitute, even if p. 384, n. I.
it were easy to propose, one which 3 An Essay on the Life, Character,
might be unexceptionable.' Southey's &c., of Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1786,
Cowper, ii. 127. p. 53. It was published anonymously,
'Johnson had caught the cant of but it was by Dr. Joseph Towers.
In
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