thought. They are weighted with meaning; and if they are dogmatic are not tyrannical; they belong rather to that genial kind of conversational dogma which suggests rich themes for friendly debate.
A discerning reader, who cares for the critic as much as for any of the poets whom the critic passes in review, will find that the Lives abound in personal reminiscence, and reflect light at many points on Johnson’s own character and career. Sometimes they record curious facts of which the interest to Johnson was mainly personal, as, for instance, where, speaking of the marriages of John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, he says: ‘It is observable that the Duke’s three wives were all widows.’ Sometimes he embroiders his story with reflections borrowed from his own experience. After describing, on the authority of the early biographers, the regular course of Milton’s day, and the exact assignment of its hours, he adds, ‘So is his life described, but this even tenour appears attainable only in Colleges. He that lives in the world will sometimes have the succession of his practice broken and confused. Visiters, of whom Milton is represented to have had great numbers, will come and stay unseasonably; business, of which every man has some, must be done when others will do it.’ There is more, again, of Johnson than of Milton in the remarks on Milton’s omission of a set hour for prayers: ‘Of this omission the reason has been sought, upon a supposition which ought never to be made, that men live with their own approbation, and justify their conduct to themselves. Prayer certainly was not thought superfluous by him, who represents our first parents as praying acceptably in the state of innocence, and efficaciously after their fall. That he lived without prayer can hardly
