Hawkins adds, "that he wished well to the argument must be inferred from
the preface, which, indubitably, was written by him." The preface, it is
well known, was written by Johnson, and for that reason is inserted in
this edition. But if Johnson approved of the argument, it was no longer
than while he believed it founded in truth. Let us advert to his own
words in that very preface. "Among the inquiries to which the ardour of
criticism has naturally given occasion, none is more obscure in itself,
or more worthy of rational curiosity, than a retrospection of the
progress of this mighty genius in the construction of his work; a view
of the fabrick gradually rising, perhaps from small beginnings, till its
foundation rests in the centre, and its turrets sparkle in the skies; to
trace back the structure, through all its varieties, to the simplicity
of the first plan; to find what was projected, whence the scheme was
taken, how it was improved, by what assistance it was executed, and from
what stores the materials were collected; whether its founder dug them
from the quarries of nature, or demolished other buildings to embellish
his own." These were the motives that induced Johnson to assist Lauder
with a preface; and are not these the motives of a critic and a scholar?
What reader of taste, what man of real knowledge, would not think his
time well employed in an enquiry so curious, so interesting, and
instructive? If Lauder's facts were really true, who would not be glad,
without the smallest tincture of malevolence, to receive real
information? It is painful to be thus obliged to vindicate a man who, in
his heart, towered above the petty arts of fraud and imposition, against
an injudicious biographer, who undertook to be his editor, and the
protector of his memory. Another writer, Dr. Towers, in an Essay on the
Life and Character of Dr. Johnson, seems to countenance this calumny. He
says: "It can hardly be doubted, but that Johnson's aversion to
Milton's politics was the cause of that alacrity, with which he joined
with Lauder in his infamous attack on our great epic poet, and which