“In this poem,” he says, “there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new.  Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting; whatever images it can supply are easily exhausted, and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction on the mind.  When Cowley tells of Hervey that they studied together, it is easy to suppose how much he must miss the companion of his labours and the partner of his discoveries; but what image of tenderness can be excited by these lines?—­

  We drove afield, and both together heard
  What time the gray fly winds her sultry horn,
  Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night.

We know that they never drove a-field and had no flocks to batten; and though it be allowed that the representation may be allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote that it is never sought, because it cannot be known when it is found.

“Among the flocks and copses and flowers appear the heathen deities:  Jove and Phoebus, Neptune and Aeolus, with a long train of mythological imagery such as a college easily supplies.  Nothing can less display knowledge or less exercise invention than to tell how a shepherd has lost his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, without any judge of his skill in piping; how one god asks another god what has become of Lycidas, and neither god can tell.  He who thus grieves will excite no sympathy; he who thus praises will confer no honour.”

This is of course utterly outrageous, and yet much of it is undeniably true.  To explain why, in spite of truth, Lycidas is a wonderful poem, would be to go pretty deeply into the theory of poetic expression.  Most critics prefer simply to shriek, being at any rate safe from the errors of independent judgment.

The general effect of the book, however, is not to be inferred from this or some other passages of antiquated and eccentric criticism.  It is the shrewd sense everywhere cropping up which is really delightful.  The keen remarks upon life and character, though, perhaps, rather too severe in tone, are worthy of a vigorous mind, stored with much experience of many classes, and braced by constant exercise in the conversational arena.  Passages everywhere abound which, though a little more formal in expression, have the forcible touch of his best conversational sallies.  Some of the prejudices, which are expressed more pithily in Boswell, are defended by a reasoned exposition in the Lives.  Sentence is passed with the true judicial air; and if he does not convince us of his complete impartiality, he at least bases his decisions upon solid and worthy grounds.  It would be too much, for example, to expect that Johnson should sympathize with the grand republicanism of Milton, or pardon a man who defended the execution of the blessed Martyr.  He failed, therefore, to satisfy the ardent admirers of the great poet.  Yet his judgment is not harsh or ungenerous, but, at worst, the judgment of a man striving to be just, in spite of some inevitable want of sympathy.