that "critics are writers who have failed,"[1] the fact probably is that literary criticism more often errs by indiscriminate praise than by imperfect recognition. Dryden's panegyric on Congreve is an instance in point, and though we may assume that it was a little coloured by personal friendship, praise so deliberately given in his noblest style by a critic with a reputation to support must be regarded as on the whole a genuine opinion. No one now doubts either that Congreve was very clever or that he is not one of the immortals. Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets represent an extremely high average of the work done in England during the eighteenth century. Macaulay's limitation that the critic "was undoubtedly an excellent judge of compositions fashioned on his own principles," must be qualified by the recollection that Johnson's principles were substantially those of the age. Now, that Johnson would have put Cowley on a level with Shakespeare or Milton if he had been asked the question, may fairly be doubted, but his praise of the small man is as liberal as what he awards the great, and more appreciative, and he quotes approvingly a sentiment ascribed to Milton, that Spenser, Shakespeare, and Cowley were the three greatest English poets. His praise of Pope's Iliad as "the noblest version of poetry which the world has ever seen," will appear strong to those who remember Spenser's Ruins of Rome, Fairfax's Tasso, and Dryden's Vergil and Juvenal, but is reasonable by the side of the eulogy on Savage, a deservedly forgotten poetaster, who is praised so that a foreigner reading the two lives would rank him above Gray. It may be admitted that Dr. Johnson was a man of strong prejudices. What, however, are we to say to Dr.
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