That the Lives continue to be read, admired, and edited, is in itself a high proof of the eminence of Johnson’s intellect; because, as serious criticism, they can hardly appear to the modern reader to be very far removed from the futile.  Johnson’s aesthetic judgments are almost invariably subtle, or solid, or bold; they have always some good quality to recommend them—­except one:  they are never right.  That is an unfortunate deficiency; but no one can doubt that Johnson has made up for it, and that his wit has saved all.  He has managed to be wrong so cleverly, that nobody minds.  When Gray, for instance, points the moral to his poem on Walpole’s cat with a reminder to the fair that all that glisters is not gold, Johnson remarks that this is ’of no relation to the purpose; if what glistered had been gold, the cat would not have gone into the water; and, if she had, would not less have been drowned.’  Could anything be more ingenious, or more neatly put, or more obviously true?  But then, to use Johnson’s own phrase, could anything be of less ‘relation to the purpose’?  It is his wit—­and we are speaking, of course, of wit in its widest sense—­that has sanctified Johnson’s peversities and errors, that has embalmed them for ever, and that has put his book, with all its mass of antiquated doctrine, beyond the reach of time.

For it is not only in particular details that Johnson’s criticism fails to convince us; his entire point of view is patently out of date.  Our judgments differ from his, not only because our tastes are different, but because our whole method of judging has changed.  Thus, to the historian of letters, the Lives have a special interest, for they afford a standing example of a great dead tradition—­a tradition whose characteristics throw more than one curious light upon the literary feelings and ways which have become habitual to ourselves.  Perhaps the most striking difference between the critical methods of the eighteenth century and those of the present day, is the difference in sympathy.  The most cursory glance at Johnson’s book is enough to show that he judged authors as if they were criminals in the dock, answerable for every infraction of the rules and regulations laid down by the laws of art, which it was his business to administer without fear or favour.  Johnson never inquired what poets were trying to do; he merely aimed at discovering whether what they had done complied with the canons of poetry.  Such a system of criticism was clearly unexceptionable, upon one condition—­that the critic was quite certain what the canons of poetry were; but the moment that it became obvious that the only way of arriving at a conclusion upon the subject was by consulting the poets themselves, the whole situation completely changed.  The judge had to bow to the prisoner’s ruling.  In other words, the critic discovered that his first duty was, not to criticise, but to understand the object of his criticism.