meaning) men, who may be led to think that truth, judgment, and impartiality are small matters, when contrafted with what Dr. Johnson's admirers have thought fit to call, an inimitable elegance of stile and composition. Our countrymen are certainly interested, that wrong representations of the character of so capital a writer as John Milton should be corrected, and properly censured; and therefore as the work from which the following Remarks are extracted may fall into the hands of very few of the numerous readers of Dr. Johnson's Prefaces, we hope the public will approve of our republishing these strictures on the Doctor's account of Milton, in a form to which may be had an eafier and more general access. We We have only to add, that it has been thought convenient to fubjoin to these Remarks, new and accurate editions of two of Milton's prose tracts; viz. his Letter to Mr. Samuel Hartlib on Education, and his Areopagitica. The first was grown scarce, being omitted in some editions, both of the author's prose and poetical works; but highly worthy to be preserved as prescribing a course of discipline, which, though out of fashion in these times, affords many useful lessons to those who may have abilities and courage enough to adopt fome of those improvements, of which the modes of learned education in present practice are : confefsedly fufceptible The other will of course recommend itself to all advocates for the liberty of the press, and moreover may, in half an hour's reading, entertain some part of the public with a contrast between the magnanimity of Milton, in facing a formidable enemy, and Dr. Johnson's feefaw meditations, the shifty wiles of a man Jetween two fires, who neither dares fight nor run away. These two tracts are published from the first editions. JOHNSON'S Life of MILTON. WE were in hope that we had done with Milton's Biographers; and had little forefight that so accomplished an artificer : The other will of course recommend itself to all advocates for the liberty of the press, and moreover may, in half an hour's reading, entertain some part of the public with a contrast between the magnanimity of Milton, in facing a formidable enemy, and Dr. Johnson's feefaw meditations, the shifty wiles of a man Jetween two fires, who neither dares fight nor run away. These two tracts are published from the first editions. |