tunate adventurer, whom a furious temper, considerable learning, and greater indigence converted into an audacious imposter, attacked the originality of the chief English poet. Having asserted, in a periodical miscellany, that Milton had borrowed all his ideas from the juvenile work of Grotius, or from other less known writers of Latin verse, and finding the novelty of his charge attract the attention of the public, he endeavoured to enforce it in a pamphlet, intitled, "An Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns," printed in 1750, and addressed to the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In the close of this essay he scrupled not to say of Milton: "His industrious concealment of his helps, his peremptory disclaiming all manner of assistance, is highly ungenerous, nay criminal to the last degree, and absolutely unworthy of any man of common probity and honor. By this mean practice, indeed, he has acquired the title of the British Homer, nay, has been preferred to Homer and

Virgil both, and consequently to every other poet, of every age or nation. Cowley, Waller, Denham, Dryden, Prior, Pope, in comparison with Milton, have borne no greater proportion, than that of dwarfs to a giant, who, now he is reduced to his true standard, appears mortal and uninspired, and in ability little superior to the poets above-mentioned, but in honesty and open dealing, the best quality of the human mind, not inferior, perhaps, to the most unlicensed plagiary that every wrote."

In a publication, containing such language, Lauder was able to engage the great critic and moralist, Samuel Johnson, as his confederate; for the preface and postscript to the Essay, from which the preceding paragraph is cited, are confessedly the composition of that elaborate and nervous writer.

This confederacy, unbecoming as it may at first appear, will, on candid reflection, seem rather a credit than a disgrace to Johnson; for we certainly ought to believe

that the primary motive, which prompted him to the assistance of Lauder, was that true and noble compassion for indigence, which made him through life so generously willing to afford all the aid in his power to literary mendicants; but in rendering justice to that laudable charity, which he constantly exercised to the. necessitous, we cannot fail to observe, that his malevolent prejudices against Milton were equally visible on this signal occasion. Had he not been under the influence of such prejudice, could his strong understanding have failed to point out to his associate, what a liberal monitor very justly observed to Lauder, in convicting him of a fraud and falsehood, that allowing his facts to have been true, his inference from them was unfair. Lauder, with an unexampled audacity of imposture, had corrupted the test of the poets, whom he produced as evidence against Milton, by interpolating several verses, which he had taken from a neglected Latin translation of the Paradise Lost. Expecting probably to escape both discovery and suspicion by the

daring novelty of his deception, and the mental dignity of his patron and coadjutor, he exulted in the idea of blasting the laurels of Milton; but those laurels were proof, indeed, against the furious and repeated flashes of malevolence and hostility. More than one defence of the injured poet appeared; the first, I believe, was a pamphlet by Mr. Richardson, of Clare Hall, printed in 1747, and entitled Zoilomastix, or a Vindication of Milton, consisting of letters inserted in the miscellany, where the charge of Lauder had made its first appearance; but the complete overthrow of that impostor was accomplished by Dr. Douglas, who, as he advanced in life, became Bishop of Salisbury, and did honor to his station, by his episcopal character. In 1750, he published a Letter, addressed to Lord Bath, with the title of "Milton vindicated from the Charge of Plagiarism;" a perform ance that, in many points of view, may be regarded as a real honor to literature-it. unites what we find very rarely united in literary contention, great modesty with great

fervor; and magnanimous moderation with the severity of vindictive justice. The author speaks with amiable liberality of Mr. Bowle, in saying, "that gentleman had first collected materials for an answer to Lauder," and, "and has the justest claim to the honor of being the original detector of this ungenerous critic." The writer of this valuable pamphlet, gave also an admonition to Johnson, which breathes the manly spirit of intelligence, of justice, and of candour. "It is to be hoped (he said) nay it is to be expected, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious sentiments and inimitable style point out the author of Lauder's preface and postscript, will no longer allow one to plume himself with his feathers, who appeareth so little to have deserved his assistance which, I am persuased, would never have been communicated had there been the least suspicion of those facts, which I have been the instrument of conveying to the world in these sheets, a perusal of which will satisfy our critic, who was pleased to submit his book to the judgment of the