the very learned Dr. Birch, for no other rea son but because he was so candid as to express his disbelief of a tradition unsupported by evidence."

Were it requisite to give new force to the many proofs of that malignant prejudice against Milton in a late writer, which I have had too frequent occasion to examine and regret, such force might be drawn from the words just cited from Dr. Douglas. That gentleman here informs us, that Lauder directed his intemperate zeal against Dr. Birch, for rejecting the ill-supported story that represented Milton as an impostor, concerned in forging the remarkable prayer of the king. Yet Johnson ungenerously laboured to fix this suspicion of dishonesty on the great character whose life he delineated, by insinuating that Dr. Birch believed the very story, which Lauder reviled him for having candidly rejected. Is it not too evident from this circumstance, that Lauder's intemperate hatred of Milton had in some degree infected his noble coadjutor? though he very justly discarded that impostor, when con

victed of forgery, after writing for him a supplicatory confession of his fraud, for which he was afterwards censured by the half-frantic offender, who, finding that it procured him no favor from the public, declared it infinitely too general and too abject for the

occasion.

The malevolence of Johnson towards the great poet has been represented as a mere fiction of party rage, acrimoniously reviling an illustrious biographer: but instead of being an injurious fiction of that evil spirit, it is a reality universally felt, and sincerely lamented by those lovers of literature, who, being exempt from all party rage themselves would willingly annihilate the influence of that insidious foe to truth and justice in the republic of letters. It should afford us an antidote against the poison of party rage in all literary discussions, to observe, that by indulging it, a very strong and a very devout mind was hurried into the want of clear and moral perception, and of true christian charity, in describing the conduct and scrutinizing the motives, of Milton. It seems as

if the good angel of this extraordinary poet, had determined that his poetical renown should pass (like his virtue and his genius) through trials most wonderfully adapted to give it lustre; and hence (as imagination at least may please itself in supposing) hence might such enemies be combined against him, as the world, perhaps, never saw before in a similar confederacy. A base artificer of falsehood, and a magnanimous teacher of moral philosophy, united in a wild endeavour to diminish his reputation; but, like the rash assailants of Jupiter, in the fables of paganism, they only confirmed the preeminence they attacked with preposterous temerity. The philosopher, indeed, made an honorable retreat, and no candid mind will severely censure him for an ill-starred alliance, which, however clouded by prejudice, he might originally form in compassion to indigence, and which he certainly ended by rejection of imposture.

The miserable Lauder was punished by events so calamitous, that even those admirers of Milton, who are most offended by

the enormity of the fraud, must wish that penitence and amendment had secured to this unhappy being, who seems to have possessed considerable scholarship, a milder destiny. Finding himself unable to struggle with public odium in this country, he sought an asylum in the West Indies, and there died, an indigent outcast, and a memorable example, how dangerous it is to incur the indignation of mankind, by base devices to blast the reputation of departed genius.May his wretched catastrophe preserve the literary world from being dishonored again by artifice so detestable!

I have said, that the collection he published of Latin poets is entitled to some regard as a literary curiosity: and it may here be proper to enumerate the authors comprized in that collection. The first volume. contains the Poemata Sacra of Andrew Ramsay, from a copy printed at Edinburgh, 1633; and the Adamus Exul of Grotius, from the edition of the Hague, 1601. In the second volume we have the Sarcotis of Masenius, from the edition of Cologne, 1644,

omitting the fourth and fifth books, which may be found in a copy of the Sarcotis printed at Paris, by Barbou, 1771: the first book of Dæmonomachia, a poem by Odoricus Valmarana, printed at Vienna in twenty-five books, 1627: Paradisus Jacobi Catsii, a celebrated Dutch poet-the Paradise of Catsius is a spirited and graceful epithalamium on the nuptials of Adam and Eve, originally written in the native language of the author; this Latin version of it was executed by the learned Barlæus, and first printed in 1643 : Bellum Angelicum, Auctore Frederico Taubmanno; a poem, consisting of two books, and a fragment of a third, originally printed in 1604.

Lauder, in publishing this collection of curious Latin verse, has occasionally seasoned it with remarks of his own, both in Latin and English-the tenor of which has a great tendency to confirm the apology, with which Johnson excused the implicit and hasty credit that he gave to the gross forgeries of the impostor: "He thought the man too frantic to be fraudulent." The