Various Readings[138] in the Life of COWLEY.

’All [future votaries of] that may hereafter pant for solitude.

’To conceive and execute the [agitation or perception] pains and the pleasures of other minds.

‘The wide effulgence of [the blazing] a summer noon.’

In the Life of WALLER, Johnson gives a distinct and animated narrative of publick affairs in that variegated period, with strong yet nice touches of character; and having a fair opportunity to display his political principles, does it with an unqualified manly confidence, and satisfies his readers how nobly he might have executed a Tory History of his country.

So easy is his style in these Lives, that I do not recollect more than three uncommon or learned words[139]; one, when giving an account of the approach of Waller’s mortal disease, he says, ’he found his legs grow tumid;’ by using the expression his legs swelled, he would have avoided this; and there would have been no impropriety in its being followed by the interesting question to his physician, ’What that swelling meant?’ Another, when he mentions that Pope had emitted proposals; when published or issued would have been more readily understood; and a third, when he calls Orrery and Dr. Delany[140], writers both undoubtedly veracious[141], when true, honest, or faithful, might have been used.  Yet, it must be owned, that none of these are hard or too big words; that custom would make them seem as easy as any others; and that a language is richer and capable of more beauty of expression, by having a greater variety of synonimes.

His dissertation[142] upon the unfitness of poetry for the aweful subjects of our holy religion, though I do not entirely agree with with him, has all the merit of originality, with uncommon force and reasoning.

Various Readings in the Life of WALLER.

’Consented to [the insertion of their names] their own nomination.

’[After] paying a fine of ten thousand pounds.

’Congratulating Charles the Second on his [coronation] recovered right.

’He that has flattery ready for all whom the vicissitudes of the world happen to exalt, must be [confessed to degrade his powers] scorned as a prostituted mind.

’The characters by which Waller intended to distinguish his writings are [elegance] sprightliness and dignity.

’Blossoms to be valued only as they [fetch] foretell fruits.

’Images such as the superficies of nature [easily] readily supplies.

’[His] Some applications [are sometimes] may be thought too remote and unconsequential.

’His images are [sometimes confused] not always distinct?

Against his Life of MILTON, the hounds of Whiggism have opened in full cry[143].  But of Milton’s great excellence as a poet, where shall we find such a blazon as by the hand of Johnson?  I shall select only the following passage concerning Paradise Lost[144]: