The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes, Volume 08: The Lives of the Poets, Volume IIJohnson, Samuel
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The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes, Volume 08: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II
Johnson, Samuel
Poets, English -- 18th century -- Biography; Poets, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography
Its reputation soon invited a translator. It was first turned into
French prose, and afterwards, by Resnel, into verse. Both translations
fell into the hands of Crousaz, who first, when he had the version in
prose, wrote a general censure, and afterwards reprinted Resnel's
version, with particular remarks upon every paragraph.
Crousaz was a professor of Switzerland, eminent for his treatise of
logick, and his Examen de Pyrrhonisme; and, however little known or
regarded here, was no mean antagonist. His mind was one of those in
which philosophy and piety are happily united. He was accustomed to
argument and disquisition, and, perhaps, was grown too desirous of
detecting faults; but his intentions were always right, his opinions
were solid, and his religion pure.
His incessant vigilance for the promotion of piety disposed him to look
with distrust upon all metaphysical systems of theology, and all schemes
of virtue and happiness purely rational; and, therefore, it was not long
before he was persuaded that the positions of Pope, as they terminated,
for the most part, in natural religion, were intended to draw mankind
away from revelation, and to represent the whole course of things as a
necessary concatenation of indissoluble fatality; and it is undeniable,
that in many passages a religious eye may easily discover expressions
not very favourable to morals, or to liberty.
About this time Warburton began to make his appearance in the first
ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and
vehement, supplied by incessant and unlimited inquiry, with wonderful
extent and variety of knowledge, which yet had not oppressed his
imagination, nor clouded his perspicacity. To every work he brought a
memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile of original
combinations, and, at once, exerted the powers of the scholar, the
reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too multifarious to be
always exact, and his pursuits too eager to be always cautious. His
abilities gave him an haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal
or mollify; and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his
adversaries with such contemptuous superiority, as made his readers
commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes of
some who favoured the cause. He seems to have adopted the Roman
emperour's determination, "oderint dum metuant;" he used no allurements
of gentle language, but wished to compel rather than persuade.
His style is copious without selection, and forcible without neatness;
he took the words that presented themselves: his diction is coarse and
impure, and his sentences are unmeasured.
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