Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/299

Rh of Milton, as accident has paralleled in far inferior poems, he might have produced a curious though not very edifying book : and, indeed, he has given us a sufficient number of such genuine passages, to make us wonder at his industry, and admire the ingenuity with which he has adapted them to the words of Milton; but when he produces masses of matter, the literal translations of which exactly coincide with the poem unequalled in the eyes of all mankind, we express that astonishment at the audacity of the author, which we would have felt regarding the conduct of Milton, had the attempt remained undetected. As he spreads a deeper train of forgery and fraud round the memory of his victim, the author's indignation and passion increase, and from the simple accusation of copying a few ideas and sentences from others, passion and prejudice rouse him to accuse Milton of the most black and despicable designs, in such terms as these: "I cannot omit observing here, that Milton's contrivance of teaching his daughters to read, but to read only, several learned languages, plainly points the same way, as Mr Phillips' secreting and suppressing the books to which his uncle was most obliged. Milton well knew the loquacious and incontinent spirit of the sex, and the danger, on that account, of entrusting them with so important a secret as his unbounded plagiarism: he, therefore, wisely confined them to the knowledge of the words and pronunciation only, but kept the sense and meaning to himself." It is generally believed that a character for probity is so dear to every man, that nothing but the temptation of gain, mingled generally with a prospect of concealment, will prompt a man to dishonesty. Here, however, was a man whose object could not be gain, courting that which depends more than any other acquisition upon probity of mind real or assumed fame; and doing so by a bold act of dishonesty, which could not escape discovery, and which, in proportion as he had traduced others, would be revisited upon himself. "As I am sensible," he solemnly says at the conclusion, " this will be deemed most outrageous usage of the divine, the immortal Milton, the prince of English poets, and the incomparable author of Paradise Lost, I take this opportunity to declare, in the most solemn manner, that a strict regard to TRUTH alone, and to do justice to those authors whom Milton has so liberally gleaned, without making the least distant acknowledgment to whom he stood indebted: I declare, I say, that these motives, and these only, have induced me to make this attack upon the reputation and memory of a person, hitherto universally applauded and admired for his uncommon poetical genius: and not any difference of country, or of sentiments in political or religious matters, as some weak and ignorant minds may imagine, or some malicious persons may be disposed to suggest." The violence of party spirit to which Lauder here alludes, has been alleged as a partial excuse, or rather motive, for his audacious act : but it may be more charitably, if not more naturally presumed, that the accidental discovery of a few of the parallel passages we have alluded to above, had prompted him to form a theory of universal plagiarism on the part of Milton, which a more than ordinary perverseness in favour of the creation of his own mind prompted him rather to support by falsehood, than resign; while, as he afterwards partially admitted, spleen and disappointment may have sufficiently blackened his heart, to make him scruple at no means of gaining celebrity, and triumphing over the world that had oppressed him. Add to this the angry feelings which may have been roused, and the real injury done to his interest, by a ludicrous contrast of his favourite author Johnston, with Milton, in that passage of the Dunciad which is levelled at the literary predilections of Benson: