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 If this were true, it is no wonder if he was an unknown, or uninquired after for a long time :

' Slow rises worth by poverty depressed V

When once distinguished, as he observes of Ascham, he gained admirers 58. He was fitted by nature for a critic. His Lives of the Poets (like all his biographical pieces) are well written. He gives us the pulp without the husks. He has told their personal history very well. But every thing is not new. Perhaps what Mr. Steevens helped him to, has increased the number of the best anecdotes 3. But his criticisms of their works are of the most worth, and the greatest novelty. His perspicacity was very extraordinary. He was able to take measure of every intellectual object, and to see all round it. If he chose to plume himself as an author, he might on account of the gift of intuition,

'The brightest feather in the eagle's wing.'

He has been censured for want of taste or good nature in what he says of Prior 4, Gray 5 , Lyttelton 6 , Hammond 7 , and others, and to have praised some pieces that nobody thought highly of. It was a fault in our critic too often to take occasion to show him self superior to his subject, and also to trample upon it. There is no talking about taste. Perhaps Johnson, who spoke from his last feelings, forgot those of his youth. The love verses of Waller and others have no charms for old age. Even Prior's Henry and Emma, which pleased the old and surly Dennis 8 ,

1 Johnson's London, 1. 121. 4 Cowper wrote soon after the Goldsmith wrote to his brother publication of the Lives : ' Prior's

Henry in 1759: ' The greatest merit reputation as an author, who, with

in a state of poverty would only serve much labour indeed, but with ad-

to make the possessor ridiculous mirable success, has embellished all

may distress but cannot relieve him. his poems with the most charming

Frugality, and even avarice, in the verse, stood unshaken till Johnson

lower orders of mankind, are true thrust his head against it.' Cowper's

ambition.' Prior's Goldsmith, i. 300, Works, ed. 1836, iv. 175.

2 ' A man once distinguished soon s Ante, i. 479.

gains admirers.' Works, vi. 512. 6 Ante, i. 257 ; ii. 193.

3 ' Mr. Steevens appears, from the 7 Life, v. 268.

papers in my possession, to have 8 Dennis was only seven years supplied him with some anecdotes older than Prior, and quotations.' Life, iv. 37. ' Mrs. Thrale disputed with Dr.

B b 2, had

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