Lives of the English Poets: From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of Johnson's Lives — John Shaqi
Lives of the English Poets: From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of Johnson's LivesCary, Henry Francis
General
Lives of the English Poets: From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of Johnson's Lives
Cary, Henry Francis
Poets, English -- Biography
horror of every thing fanciful in politics was at its height, has passed
the noblest eulogium that one modern has ever made on another, and which
the reader will pardon me if in my veneration for a great name I place
here as an antidote to the detraction of Johnson.
Place before your eyes such a man as Montesquieu. Think of a genius not
born in every country, or every time; a man gifted by nature with a
penetrating aquiline eye; with a judgment prepared with the most
extensive erudition; with an herculean robustness of mind, and nerves
not to be broken with labour; a man who could spend twenty years in one
pursuit. Think of a man, like the universal patriarch of Milton (who had
drawn up before him in his prophetic vision, the whole series of the
generations which were to issue from his loins), a man capable of
placing in review, after having brought together, from the east, the
west, the north, and the south, from the coarseness of the rudest
barbarism, to the most refined and subtle civilization, all the schemes
of government which had ever prevailed amongst mankind, weighing,
measuring, collating, and comparing them all, joining fact with theory,
and calling into council, upon all this infinite assemblage of things,
all the speculations which have fatigued the understandings of profound
reasoners in all times! Let us then consider that all these were but so
many preparatory steps to qualify a man, and such a man, tinctured with
no national prejudice, with no domestic affection to admire, and to hold
out to the admiration of mankind the constitution of England.--_Appeal
from the Nero to the Old Institutes, at the end_.
It is to be feared, that the diploma of Doctor of Laws, which was sent
to Johnson in the same year (1775), at the recommendation of Lord North,
at that time Chancellor of the University, and Prime Minister, was in
some measure intended to be the reward of his obsequiousness. In this
instrument, he is called, with an hyperbole of praise which the
University would perhaps now he more cautious of applying to any
individual, "In Literarum Republica Princeps jam et Primarius."
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