and knowledge to relations and the sons of gentlemen who were his intimate friends, and that neither his writings nor his way of teaching ever savoured in the least of pedantry.’ ‘Thus laboriously,’ says Johnson, ‘does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and what might be confessed without disgrace. Milton was not a man who could become mean by a mean employment. This, however, his warmest friends seem not to have found; they therefore shift and palliate. He did not sell literature to all comers at an open shop; he was a chamber-milliner, and measured his commodities only to his friends.’
This same strong sense, which makes Phillips ridiculous by reminding him that a school-master’s is an honest calling, finds ample exercise among the sentimentalities of literary history. Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, it is well known, has a highwayman for its hero. Its representation was said to have caused a large increase in the number of street-robbers. ‘But this opinion,’ says Johnson, ‘is surely exaggerated. The play, like many others, was plainly written only to divert, without any moral purpose, and is therefore not likely to do good; nor can it be conceived, without more speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much evil. Highwaymen and house breakers seldom frequent the play-house or mingle in any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he may rob with safety because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage.’ There is a sentence in the Preface to Shakespeare which might well be applied to clinch this matter: ‘The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.’
