technical phrases are clear, neat, and exact. The illustrations
at once adorn and elucidate the reasoning. The sparkling
epigrams of Cowley, and the simple garrulity of the burlesque
poets of Italy, are alternately employed, in the happiest manner,
to give effect to what is obvious or clearness to what is
obscure.

His literary creed was catholic, even to latitudinarianism; not
from any want of acuteness, but from a disposition to be easily
satisfied. He was quick to discern the smallest glimpse of
merit; he was indulgent even to gross improprieties, when
accompanied by any redeeming talent. When he said a severe
thing, it was to serve a temporary purpose,--to support an
argument, or to tease a rival. Never was so able a critic so
free from fastidiousness. He loved the old poets, especially
Shakspeare. He admired the ingenuity which Donne and Cowley had
so wildly abused. He did justice, amidst the general silence, to
the memory of Milton. He praised to the skies the school-boy
lines of Addison. Always looking on the fair side of every
object, he admired extravagance on account of the invention which
he supposed it to indicate; he excused affectation in favour of
wit; he tolerated even tameness for the sake of the correctness
which was its concomitant.

It was probably to this turn of mind, rather than to the more
disgraceful causes which Johnson has assigned, that we are to
attribute the exaggeration which disfigures the panegyrics of
Dryden. No writer, it must be owned, has carried the flattery of
dedication to a greater length. But this was not, we suspect,
merely interested servility: it was the overflowing of a mind