good man.' We shall now see Johnson's mode of defending a man; taking him into his own hands, and discriminating. JOHNSON: 'No, sir. There is, to be sure, in Sheridan, something to reprehend and everything to laugh at; but, sir, he is not a bad man. No, sir; were mankind to be divided into good and bad, he would stand considerably within the ranks of good. And, sir, it must be allowed that Sheridan excels in plain declamation, though he can exhibit no character.'

I should, perhaps, have suppressed this disquisition concerning a person of whose merit and worth I think with respect, had he not attacked Johnson so outrageously in his Life of Swift, and, at the same time, treated us his admirers as a set of pigmies. He who has provoked the lash of wit cannot complain that he smarts from it.

Mrs. Montague, a lady distinguished for having written an Essay on Shakespeare, being mentioned ;REYNOLDS: 'I think that essay does her honour.' JOHNSON: 'Yes, sir; it does her honour, but it would do nobody else honour. I have, indeed, not read it all. But when I take up the end of a web, and find it pack-thread, I do not expect, by looking farther, to find embroidery. Sir, I will venture to say there is not one sentence of true criticism in her book.' GARRICK: 'But, sir, surely it shows how much Voltaire has mistaken Shakespeare, which nobody else has done.' JOHNSON: Sir, nobody else has thought it worth while. And what merit is there in that? You may as well praise a schoolmaster for whipping a boy who has construed ill. No, sir, there is no real criticism in it: none showing the beauty of thought, as formed on the workings of the human heart.'

The admirers of this Essay1 may be offended at the slighting manner in which Johnson spoke of it; but let it be remembered that he gave his honest opinion unbiassed by any prejudice or any proud jealousy of a woman intruding herself into the chair of criticism; for Sir Joshua Reynolds has told me that when the Essay first came out, and it was not known who had written it, Johnson wondered how Sir Joshua could like it. At this time Sir Joshua himself had received no information concerning the author, except being assured by one of our most eminent literati, that it was clear its author did not know the Greek tragedies in the original. One day at Sir Joshua's table, when it was related that Mrs. Montague, in an excess of compliment to the author of a modern tragedy, had exclaimed, 'I tremble for Shakespeare'; Johnson said, 'When Shakespeare has got for his rival, and

Mrs. Montague for his defender, he is in a poor state indeed.'

Johnson proceeded : The Scotsman 2 has taken the right method in his Elements of Criticism.' I do not mean that he has taught us anything; but he has told us old things in a new way.' MURPHY: 'He seems to have read a great deal of French criticism, and wants to make it his own; as if he had been for

1 Of whom I acknowledge myself to be one, considering it as a piece of the secondary or comparative species of criticism, and not of that profound species which alone Dr. Johnson would allow to be 'real criticism.' It is, besides, clearly and elegantly expressed, and has done effectually what it professed to do, namely, vindicated Shakespeare from the misrepresentations of Voltaire; and considering how many young people were misled by his witty, though false observations, Mrs. Montague's Essay was of service to Shakespeare with a certain class of readers, and is, therefore, entitled to praise. Johnson, I am assured, allowed the merit which I have stated, saying (with reference to Voltaire), it is conclusive ad hominem.'

2 Lord Kames.