’Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked his reputation stealing its way in a kind of subterraneous current, through fear and silence.  I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and waiting without impatience the vicissitudes of opinion, and the impartiality of a future generation[145].’

Indeed even Dr. Towers, who may be considered as one of the warmest zealots of The Revolution Society[146] itself, allows, that ’Johnson has spoken in the highest terms of the abilities of that great poet, and has bestowed on his principal poetical compositions the most honourable encomiums[147].’

That a man, who venerated the Church and Monarchy as Johnson did, should speak with a just abhorrence of Milton as a politician, or rather as a daring foe to good polity, was surely to be expected; and to those who censure him, I would recommend his commentary on Milton’s celebrated complaint of his situation, when by the lenity of Charles the Second, ’a lenity of which (as Johnson well observes) the world has had perhaps no other example, he, who had written in justification of the murder of his Sovereign, was safe under an Act of Oblivion[148].’

’No sooner is he safe than he finds himself in danger, fallen on evil days and evil tongues, [and] with darkness and with danger compassed round[149].  This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly deserved compassion; but to add the mention of danger, was ungrateful and unjust.  He was fallen, indeed, on evil days; the time was come in which regicides could no longer boast their wickedness.  But of evil tongues for Milton to complain, required impudence at least equal to his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow, that he never spared any asperity of reproach, or brutality of insolence[150].’

I have, indeed, often wondered how Milton, ’an acrimonious and surly Republican[151],’—­’a man who in his domestick relations was so severe and arbitrary[152],’ and whose head was filled with the hardest and most dismal tenets of Calvinism[153], should have been such a poet; should not only have written with sublimity, but with beauty, and even gaiety; should have exquisitely painted the sweetest sensations of which our nature is capable; imaged the delicate raptures of connubial love; nay, seemed to be animated with all the spirit of revelry.  It is a proof that in the human mind the departments of judgement and imagination, perception and temper, may sometimes be divided by strong partitions; and that the light and shade in the same character may be kept so distinct as never to be blended[154].