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Johnson and Milton Author(s): J. R. Brink Reviewed work(s): Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 20, No. 3, Restoration and Eighteenth Century (Summer, 1980), pp. 493-503 Published by: Rice University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/450293 . Accessed: 28/03/2012 14:07
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SEL 20 (1980) ISSN 0039-3657

Johnson and Milton

J. R. BRINK
The assumption that Samuel Johnson had little admiration for John Milton and even that he was "deeply antagonistic to him as a person" has become a commonplace of literary history.' In a study of "Johnson's Milton Criticism in Context," Vereen M. Bell concludes that "Johnson was clearly out of his element in judging Milton."2 Other commentators have suggested thatJohnson's critical judgment was affected by political prejudice or even by a religious sensibility which caused him to react negatively to religious verse.3 Recent studies ofJohnson's political milieu and of his approach to the role of literary biographer, however, have supplied a more accurate perspective from which to assess Johnson's attitude toward John Milton.4 In his Life of Pope Johnson remarks that he is writing for the general public as well as for poets and philosophers. This popular approach to literary biography causes him to consider the needs of his audience as well as the requirements of his subject. Since Johnson believed that "[c]riticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at a very small expence," he attempts to be humane and fair in his judgment of poets and poetry.5 His Life of Savage is
Jeanie R. Brink, Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University, has recently published articles on Malory and SirJohn Davies and edited a collection of essays on female scholars. Associate Editor ofJRMMRA, she is currently investigating the development of the philosophical poem in the Renaissance. ed. 'Johnson as Crz'tzic, John Wain, The Routledge Critics Series (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 30. See also Mzilton. The Crz'tzical Herztage, ed. John T. Shawcross (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), pp. 12-13, 28--30; Jean Hagstrum, SamuelJohnson's LziteraryCri'ticism (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1952), p. 152; and W.Jackson Bate, SamuelJohnson (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977), pp. 535-38. 2Vereen M. Bell, "Johnson's Milton Criticism in Context," ES, 49 (April 1968):127 32. 3Hagstrum, pp. 149-52. 4For an essential study ofJohnson's attitudes toward the Civil War and Puritanism, see Donald Greene, The Polz'tzics SamuelJohnson (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1960), of pp. 22-34. See also Robert De Maria, Jr., "Johnson's Form of Evaluation," SEL, 19 (Summer 1979):501 -14, and Mark W. Booth, "Proportion and Value inJohnson's Li'ves of the Poets," SAB, 43 (January 1979):49-57. 5Idler No. 60, 9 June 1759. Works of SamuelJohnson, ed. W. J. Bate et al., 14 vols.

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frequently cited as an example of sympathetic and perceptive judgment, qualities not attributed to his Life of Milton. Johnson, however, writes not only as an objective scholar, but also as an eighteenth century man of letters interested in supplying the public with useful instruction and in correcting the tastes of his own age. Because his aim is to reach a wide audience with pleasing instruction, his style of utterance is more personal and deliberately provocative than what we find in modern literary biography.6 The tradition thatJohnson had little esteem for Milton seems to have originated in the eighteenth century because of his unfortunate involvement with William Lauder. In an article written for the January issue of Gentleman's Magazzne (1747), Lauder claimed that he had discovered modern sources and analogues for Paradise Lost, and by 1749 he was insisting that Milton had deliberately plagiarized Paradise Lost from modern authors; in 1750 his evidence was exposed as forged. Although there remain unanswered bibliographical questions concerning the nature and extent of Johnson's connection with Lauder, James L. Clifford has recently shown that Johnson was deceived by the fraud and that he was instrumental in forcing Lauder to confess his forgeries.7 Even so, appearances were against Johnson, and his opponents convinced themselves that he shared Lauder's malice. When Lauder's An Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns in His Paradise Lost appeared on 14 December 1749, it contained a Preface that Johnson had written two years earlier to advertise subscriptions for Lauder's projected new edition of Grotius's A dam us Exsul. The Grotius edition was to include an English translation of Adamus Exsul and "lines imitated from it by Milton subjoined to the pages."8 We do not know if Lauder had Johnson's permission to reprint his Preface and add two new paragraphs to it for the Essay on Milton in 1749, but it seems likely that if Johnson gave his permission, he was unaware of Lauder's scheme to discredit Milton. The Postscript to Lauder's Essay was also written by Johnson, and it suggests that even if he accepted

(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1963), 2:184. All further references to The Idler will be to the Yale edition; volume and page numbers will be given in parentheses. 6For a discussion of style, see T. S. Eliot, "Johnson as Critic and Poet" in On Poetry and Poets (London: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957), pp. 162 92. 7See James L. Clifford, "Johnson and Lauder," PQ, 54 (Winter 1975):342-56 and Michael J. Marcuse, "The Pre-Publication History of William Lauder's Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns in his Paradise Lost," PBSA, 72 (January 1978):37-57. 8Allen T. Hazen, SamuelJohnson's Prefaces and Dedications (1937; rpt. Ann Arbor: Univ. Microfilms, 1968), p. 78. All further references to Johnson's Preface and Postscript to Lauder's Essay on Milton will be to this edition; page numbers will be cited in parentheses.

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Lauder's forged evidence that Milton had borrowed from modern poets, he did not regard the identification of these sources as proof that Milton was a dishonest plagiarist. In fact, the Postscript reveals the depth ofJohnson's personal esteem for Milton. He begins by calling attention to the extreme poverty of Elizabeth Foster, Milton's granddaughter. The scholar Dr. Thomas Newton, Johnson's source of information, was content to discuss this ironic conclusion of Milton's line as evidence of "the caprice of fortune" (p. 83). Concern for Elizabeth Foster, a sixty-year-old woman who had lost seven children and who operated a green grocer's shop with her husband, seems to have awakened Johnson's sympathy, but his intense admiration for Milton underlies his insistence that the British public support a subscription fund for the relief of his granddaughter. He passionately urges that the poverty of the granddaughter of the author of Paradise Lost must be relieved so that the "living remains of Milton will be no longer suffered to languish in distress" (p. 83). In ringing tones he describes Milton as "that poet, whose works may possibly be read when every other monument of British greatness shall be obliterated" (p. 83). Johnson's Postscript strongly suggests that he did not share Lauder's malevolence toward Milton. Johnson's Life of Milton appeared more than thirty years after the Lauder affair was settled, but because he had assisted the man identified as "Milton's Zoilus," his contemporaries continued to regard him as hostile toward Milton and interpreted his biography in the context of this supposed hostility. The body of Johnson's work, however, supplies sufficient evidence that he admired Milton, while disapproving of Milton idolators, to warrant a re-examination of his supposed antagonism. In Rambler No. 14, Johnson discusses writers whose works are admirable, but whose private characters are not, and mentions Milton as an exception to the "striking contrariety between the life of an author and his writings."9 He concludes that Milton congratulated himself with reason "upon the consciousness of being found equal to his own character, and having preserved in a private and familiar interview that reputation which his works had procured him" (3:74). Johnson's tribute to Milton's private character appeared on 5 May 1750, prior to the exposure of Lauder's forgeries, but in spite of this evidence that Johnson never questioned Milton's personal integrity, his high praise of Milton was obscured by public indignation over the Lauder fraud and his association with it. Johnson was himself aware that his respect for Milton had increased as he grew older. When he suggested that Milton's statue rather than Pope's be erected in St. Paul's Church, he remarked, "I think more
9Rambler No. 14, 5 May 1750. Works, 3:74. All further references to The Rambler will be to the Yale edition; volume and page numbers will be cited in parentheses.

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highly of him now than I did at twenty. There is more thinking in him and in Butler, than in any of our poets."'0 A more intimate illustration of his appreciation of Milton occurs in his letters to Mrs. Thrale where he observes that "Harry will be happier now he goes to school and reads Milton."" Since Harry was only seven years old at the time, the remark suggests that one of the benefits of learning to read is that a person can then read Milton. In his biography ofJohnson, William Cooke (?) wrote in 1785: "Amongst the poets of his own country, next to Shakespeare, he
admired Milton. ... I am happy to add another eulogium, which I

heard from him in conversation a few months before his death: 'Milton (said he) had that which rarely fell to the lot of any man-an unbounded imagination, with a store of knowledge equal to all its calls.' "12 There are other remarks from the Miscellanies which illustrate Johnson's admiration for Milton, but possibly the best example of respect - even sentimental affection - is that Johnson cherished a lock of Milton's hair which at one time was in Addison's possession.'3 When Johnson left Lichfield for Oxford, although he did not have a collection of Shakespeare, Milton was part of his personal library.'4 WhenJohnson agreed to write the Lives of the Poets, he regarded this assignment in part as a charge to "promote piety" and in part as an opportunity to correct what he regarded as a particularly fatuous and inaccurate commonplace of his own day.'5 Nearly two decades earlier, in Idler No. 61, Johnson had written an essay satirizing sentimental tendencies in Milton criticism. After Dick Minim, Johnson's example of an ignorant critic, reaches the "chair" of criticism, "[f)rom blank verse he makes an easy transition to Milton, whom he produces as an example of the slow advance of lasting reputation" (2:191). This particular literary commonplace was frequently used as evidence that the reading public lacked critical discernment. Early in the century, John Dennis, for example, caustically wrote to "Judas Iscariot, Esq.," citing Milton's unpopularity as evidence of the "Degeneracy of the Publick Taste":

'0Friday, 30 April 1773. Boswell's Lzfe of Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman. Oxford Standard Authors (1953; rpt. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1957), p. 529. "Letters of SamuelJohnson, L.L.D., ed. G. B. Hill, 2 vols. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1892), 1:214. "The Early Biographies of Samuel Johnson, ed. 0. M. Brack, Jr. and Robert E. Kelley (Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1974), p. 129. '3Bibliography of Johnson, ed. William Courtney, Oxford Historical and Literary Studies (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1915), 4:38. "James L. Clifford, Young Sam Johnson (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), p. 126. "Joseph E. Brown, Critical Opinions of SamuelJohnson (1926; rpt. New York: Russell and Russell, 1961), p. 380.

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There is not one great Poet appear'd in France since the beginning of Cardinal Richlieu's Ministry, but he has been protected and encourag'd, and his Merit, as fast as it could be spread, has been generally acknowledg'd. I wish I could as truly affirm the same thing of England. The great Qualities of Milton were not generally known among his Countrymen till the Paradise Lost had been publish'd more than thirty Years.'6 Disgusted with sentimental accounts of Milton's dejection at his poetry's lack of popularity and with sneers at the reading public, Johnson seems to have relished the opportunity which his Life of Milton afforded to defend the public and to silence Dick Minim. In a passage clearly aimed at his contemporaries, Johnson systematically analyzes the sale and popularity of Paradise Lost, using arguments which demonstrate his keen historical perspective: The sale, if it be considered, will justify the publick. Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions. The call for books was not in
Milton's age what it is in the present. .
.

. Those, indeed,

who

professed learning, were not less learned than at any other time; but of that middle race of students who read for pleasure or accomplishment and who buy the numerous products of modern typography, the number was then comparatively small. 17 Johnson proves the "paucity of readers" by mentioning that from 1623 to 1664, for forty-one years, the public has been content with only two editions of Shakespeare printing approximately 1000 copies. He concludes that the sale of 1300 copies of Paradise Lost in two years "in opposition to so much recent enmity [political pamphlets] and to a style of versification new to all and disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius" (1:144). Dick Minim would in the future find it more difficult to use Milton as an illustration of "the slow advance of lasting reputation," and Johnson had successfully justified the public taste. Another aspect of Milton scholarship and criticism which evidently irritated Johnson was lyrical commentary on Milton's "unpremeditated verse." In Idler No. 61 Dick Minim tells a promising poet "not to read

'6The Critical Works of John Dennis, ed. Edward Niles Hooker, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1943), 2:170. For evidence thatJohnson knew the criticism of Dennis, see Brown, Critical Opinions, pp. 326-27. '7Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birbeck Hill, 3 vols. (1905; rpt. New York: Octagon Books, 1967), 1:143. All further references toJohnson's Lives of the English Poets will be to this edition; volume and page numbers will be given in parentheses.

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more than he can digest

. . . not to confuse

his mind by pursuing

studies" (2:193). Johnson concludes with magnificent irony: "The boy retires illuminated, resolves to follow his genius, and to think how Milton would have thought; and Minim feasts upon his own beneficence till another day brings in another pupil" (2:193). Like Milton, Johnson thought that a promising poet should devote himself to study. Weak imitations, particularly of Milton's minor verse, flourished in the eighteenth century, and Johnson seems to have felt, like T. S. Eliot in our own century, that Milton was an undesirable model for young poets.'8 In his Rambler Nos. 86, 88, and 94, he seriously discusses the dangers of trying to imitate Milton's metrics, diction, and blank verse. Less seriously, he has Dick Minim in the Idler say that Milton is the only writer whose books he can "read for ever without weariness." Later, in The Ltfe of Milton, Johnson replies to Dick Minim, announcing: "The want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is" (1:183). However muchJohnson enjoys making disparaging remarks about the length of Paradise Lost, he still takes care to balance his own heretical comments. He also observes that "there is no poem of the same length from which so little can be taken without apparent mutilation" (1:175). Even though he tells us that "[t]he want of human interest is always felt" (1:183), he also comments: "It is justly remarked by Addison that this poem has, by the nature of its subject, the advantage above all others, that it is universally and perpetually interesting" (1:174). The two observations are only superficially contradictory. Although the characters and situations do not afford opportunities for identification and participation on the reader's part, the subject matter of Paradise Lost has a universal significance. Finally, he concludes that anyone who can put the faults in balance with the beauties of Paradise Lost should be considered dull rather than nice and "pitied for want of sensibility" (1:188). This is not faint praise; Johnson was not given to grudging praise. He enjoyed controversy far too much to resist any opportunity to express an unpopular view which he felt had some rational justification. In addition to correcting the excesses of Dick Minim, Johnson seems to have quite consciously used the criticism of Addison and Dryden as a point of departure for his own observations. Addison or Dryden proposes a thesis; Johnson counters that thesis, and an antithesis is established which allows the reader to arrive at a balanced view. In Spectator No. 297 Addison censures Milton for unnecessary ostentation of

'8T. S. Eliot, "Milton I" (1936) and "Milton II" (1947), On Poetry and Poets (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1943), pp. 156-83.

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learning. Johnson, in The Lzfe of Milton, counters this observation by remarking: "The heat of Milton's mind might be said to sublimate his learning, to throw off into his work the spirit of science, unmingled with its grosser parts" (1:177). Addison rejects allusions to heathen fables which do not suit Milton's divine subject. Johnson does not mention Addison, but he defends Milton's use of mythological allusions even though they are an apparent violation of decorum: "The mythological allusions have been justly censured, as not being always used with notice of their vanity; but they contribute variety to the narration, and produce an alternate exercise of the memory and the fancy" (1:178-79). In his Preface to Sylvae Dryden observes that Milton has some flat parts among his elevations. Johnson notes this remark and then replies: "It is no more to be required that wit should always be blazing than that the sun should always stand at noon. In a great work there is a vicissitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the world a succession of day and night" (1:187). Even when Johnson is not dealing with previous literary criticism, he still uses an antithetical framework of praise and blame which invites the reader to arrive at a balanced assessment of Paradise Lost. Johnson's rhetorical method of establishing a thesis and countering it, in part, explains the ostensible contradictions in The Lzfe of Milton, contradictions attributed to Johnson's supposed religious fears. It is true that Johnson clearly states that Paradise Lost is a visionary epic: Pleasure and terrour are indeed the genuine sources of poetry; but poetical pleasure must be such as human imagination can at least conceive, and poetical terrour such as human strength and fortitude may combat. The good and evil of Eternity are too ponderous for the wings of wit; the mind sinks under them in passive helplessness, content with calm belief and humble adoration. (1:182) Milton does indeed write about sin and death which are the universal experiences of men, but he writes eschatologically about their origins and ultimate significance, not about how they affect real human beings in realistic situations. As Johnson observes: "The man and woman who act and suffer are in a state which no other man and woman can ever know" (1:181). Because he was keenly aware of the difference between Paradise Lost, a Christian epic based upon an essentially visionary myth, and the classical epics, Johnson's recognition of the visionary thrust of the poem anticipates modern commentary on its mythic structure and rhetorical strategy.'9 The rationality of Johnson's approach is
'9See Isabel MacCaffrey, Paradise Lost as Myth (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1959), p. 53, and esp. Stanley E. Fish, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise

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also worth noting. Addison, in Spectator No. 297, mentions the allegory of sin and death as a defect in Paradise Lost because it does not have sufficient probability for an epic poem. Johnson also objects to the allegory, not because it is inappropriate for an epic poem, but because the allegory is faulty when Sin and Death stop Satan's journey and Death offers him battle. Johnson feels that to give Sin and Death "any real employment or ascribe to them any material agency is to make them allegorical no longer, but to shock the mind by ascribing effects to nonentity" (1:185). Even if we disagree with his judgment, it is still important to observe that Johnson supplies a rational argument to justify his critical observation. Although Johnson's criticism of Paradise Lost is balanced and judicious, his assessment of "Lycidas" has enlisted few supporters.20 He finds nothing about the poem praiseworthy and remarks: "Surely no man could have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure had he not known its author" (1:165). Johnson's Rambler articles discuss the pastoral at some length, and in No. 36, he comments that it is a reasonable conjecture that the first poems were pastoral hymns, "like those which Milton introduces the original pair singing, in the day of innocence, to the praise of their Maker" (3:196). It is interesting that Johnson refers to the lovely pastoral verse in Paradise Lost with tacit approval but that he unmistakably scorns "Lycidas" in No. 37. In this instance, he seems to reject "Lycidas" because the pastoral, satirical, and elegiacal modes are mixed together in one poem. However, as Oliver Sigworth has shown, Johnson, as he grew older, became increasingly unsympathetic with conventional verse.2' In Rambler No. 154 he affirms that poetry which "hopes for the veneration of mankind must have invention in the design or the execution" (5:59). Johnson concludes that highly imitative poetry like the pastoral and the love sonnet will not endure because they are not "rooted in nature, and manured by art," and in an equally unfortunate image tells us that borrowed details and sentiments "may spread for a while, like ivy on the rind of antiquity, but will be torn away by accident or contempt, and suffered to rot unheeded on the ground" (5:59).

Lost (1967; rpt. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1971), p. 310: "Paradise Lost is not a microcosm of the human condition, but an instrument for seeing through it to something more substantial." '0For a sympathetic study of Johnson's views of "Lycidas" and of Milton's prosody, see Warren Fleischauer, "Johnson, 'Lycidas,' and the Norms of Criticism," Johnsonian Studies, ed. Magdi Wahba (Cairo: Societe orientale de publicite, 1962), pp. 235-56. See also Oliver F. Sigworth, "Johnson's' Lycidas': The End of Renaissance Criticism," ECS, 1 (Winter 1967): 159-68. "Sigworth, pp. 160-61.

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In the more controversial biographical section ofJohnson's Lzfe of Milton, three central issues are discussed: Milton's religion, his domestic relations, and his politics. Religion is a problematical subject for Johnsonian scholarship sinceJohnson believed that he had a Christian duty to set a good example. When Johnson defends Milton's orthodoxy in religious doctrine and then observes that "to be of no church is dangerous," it is difficult to know whether Johnson thought it was dangerous for Milton or whether he was conscientiously advocating church membership to the reading public. He notes, for example, that Milton omitted public prayers. Of this omission the reason has been sought, upon a supposition which ought never to be made, that men live with their own
approbation, and justify their conduct to themselves. . . That

he lived without prayer can hardly be affirmed; his studies and meditations were an habitual prayer. The neglect of it in his family was probably a fault for which he condemned himself, and which he intended to correct, but that death, as too often happens, intercepted his reformation. (1:156) Raleigh interprets the latter remarks asJohnson's willingness "to believe that Milton, like himself, was continually making vows of self reformation."22 It is difficult to believe that Johnson was quite so naive; from the context it seems likely that Johnson did not want the reading public "to justify their conduct to themselves" and to use Milton's example as a justification for not attending church.23 He concludes his discussion with an unequivocal assertion of Milton's orthodoxy and of his piety:
"Milton . . . appears to have had full conviction of the truth of Chris-

tianity, and to have regarded the Holy Scriptures with the profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by any heretical peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the immediate and occasional agency of Providence" (1:155-56). Although Johnson's discussions of Milton's religion and politics are likely to be influenced by his conviction that he has a duty to instruct his

22Walter Raleigh, Six Essays onJohnson (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1910), p. 135. 23Johnson'sown church attendance was irregular. He remarked to George Steevens, "I am convinced I ought to be present at divine service more frequently than I am; but the provocations given by ignorant and affected preachers too often disturb the mental calm which otherwise would succeed to prayer." Cited in Maurice Quinlan, SamuelJohnson. A Layman's Relzgion (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin, 1964), p. xii.

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readers, we should expect him to be quite straightforward in his commentary on Milton's domestic relations. It is, consequently, quite significant that at this point he becomes Milton's defender. The charge that Milton was severe and arbitrary in his domestic relations obviously disturbed Johnson. He accepts the evidence that Milton did not teach his daughters to write, but he vigorously attacks the "publick mention" that Deborah knew the first lines of Homer, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Euripides because she was so frequently compelled to read these works to her father. No idolator could wish for a better defense of John Milton. Johnson observes that many repetitions are necessary to fix foreign languages in one's memory and then questions why Milton, the learned classical scholar, would want to hear the beginnings of these poems so frequently since these of all poems would be familiar to him. Johnson then announces that "here incredulity is ready to make a stand" (1:159). His conviction that, although severe, Milton would not have abused his daughters is no less impressive than his confidence in Milton's integrity. About Milton's brief imprisonment, Johnson comments that the reason is not known. Milton refused the fees demanded of him and was called before the House. Johnson adds that "Milton would hardly have contended, but that he knew himself to have right on his side" (1:130). In spite of his personal admiration for Milton and his respect for the author of Paradise Lost, Johnson could not admire Milton's politics. He was distinctly pessimistic about revolution and regicide leading to the dawn of a new era. In his Life of Butler he mentions that during the hysteria of the Civil War in one of the parliaments summoned by Cromwell, "it was seriously proposed that all the records in the Tower should be burnt, that all memory of things past should be effaced, and that the whole system of life should commence anew" (1:215). Johnson was admittedly horrified by civil war and by revolution in which the alternative to anarchy may become dictatorship. His own historical perspective led him to question the cost of a civil war which set out to depose a king and ended by elevating a dictator. He clearly censures Milton for a lack of political judgment, and he pointedly quotes Milton's own adulation of Cromwell to suggest the inconsistency of a lover of liberty espousing dictatorship: "Nothing is more pleasing to God, or agreeable to reason, than that the highest mind should have the sovereign power. Such, Sir, are you by general confession" (1:118). Since the Restoration does indeed make the Puritan Rebellion seem a tragic waste of human life, Johnson's skepticism about Cromwell's being the highest mind "by general confession" seems just, even if we are inclined to view Milton's politics in a more sympathetic light than Johnson did. Modern research on Johnson's political views has shown that he supported the monarchy for economic reasons as well as traditional sentiment. Donald Green has demonstrated that he supported the monar-

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chy, strong central government, as a means of restraining the commercial interests from further oppressing the poor.24 He persistently opposed the popular Seven Years' War and the policies of British Imperialism, and he was quite capable of proposing a toast to the next insurrection of the Negro slaves in the West Indies-to the alarm of the Oxford dons. SirJohn Hawkins was horrified that Johnson left his entire estate to Francis Barber, the Negro "servant" whom Johnson had educated and treated like a son. It is remarkable that modern scholarship would convict of political prejudice a man who had such rational and humane political and social convictions. Unlike Milton, Johnson was tolerant of Roman Catholicism. His comments in The Lafe of Thomas Browne indicate that he believed Christian charity involved religious tolerance: "Men may differ from each other in many religious opinions, and yet all may retain the essentials of christianity; men may sometimes eagerly dispute, and yet not differ much from one another: the rigorous persecutors of errour should, therefore, enlighten their zeal with knowledge, and temper their orthodoxy with charity; that charity, without which orthodoxy is vain."25 The belligerent stance which Milton frequently assumes in his prose, particularly when discussing religious and political matters, may very well have antagonized Johnson who felt that in regard to religion little was to be gained by zealous controversy. Milton's revolutionary politics developed out of his visionary idealism and his tendency to regard society as an aggregate of individuals rather like himself. Johnson, on the other hand, was a social realist, acquainted with people at every level of the social scale; his theories about government and the church were empirically based. It is not surprising that Milton the individualistic idealist and Johnson the social realist would arrive at different conclusions about revolution, regicide, and political organization. Moreover, Johnson's view of the literary biographer as a guardian of public taste and morals helps to explain his critical stance toward Milton. When we recognize that Johnson set out not only to weigh Milton's weaknesses and strengths, but also to instruct his audience and promote piety, his final assessment of Paradise Lost becomes more significant: It is "not the greatest of heroick poems, only because it is not the first" (1:194). Johnson deliberately concludes his Life with this tribute to Milton. Arizona State University

24Greene, Politics of Samuel Johnson, pp. 22-34. of Samuel Johnson, Oxford English Classics, 9 vols. (Oxford: Talboys and 25Works Wheeler; and W. Pickering, 1825), 6:502.