Lives of the Poets, vol 1 | Page 3

delight in detecting and
exposing the frailties of his fellow men, but from a belief that, in so
doing, he was promoting the good of mankind. "It is particularly the
duty," says he, "of those who consign illustrious names to posterity, to
take care lest their readers be misled by ambiguous examples. That
writer may justly be condemned as an enemy to goodness, who suffers
fondness or interest to confound right with wrong, or to shelter the
faults, which even the wisest and the best have committed, from that
ignominy which guilt ought always to suffer, and with which it should
be more deeply stigmatized, when dignified by its neighbourhood to
uncommon worth: since we shall be in danger of beholding it without
abhorrence, unless its turpitude be laid open, and the eye secured from
the deception of surrounding splendour[3]." "If nothing but the bright
side of characters should be shown," he once remarked to Malone, "we
should sit down in despondency, and think it utterly impossible to
imitate them in any thing[4]." It was this conscientious freedom, we
believe, that has, more than any other cause, subjected the Lives of the
Poets to severe censure. We readily avow this our belief, since we are
persuaded that it is now generally admitted by all, but those who are
influenced by an irreligious or a party spirit. We might diffuse these
remarks to a wide extent, by allusions to the opinions of different
authors on the Lives, and by critiques on the separate memoirs

themselves; but we will not longer occupy our readers, since the
literary history of the Lives has been elsewhere so fully detailed, and is
now so almost universally known[5].
What we have already advanced, has chiefly been with a view to invite
to the perusal of a work, which, for sound criticism, instructive memoir,
pleasing diction, and pure morality, must constitute the most lasting
monument of Johnson's fame.
[Footnote 1: See sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poetry.]
[Footnote 2: See vol. vi. 153.]
[Footnote 3: Rambler, 164.]
[Footnote 4: See Malone's letter, in Boswell, iv. 55.]
[Footnote 5: See Boswell; Dr. Drake's Literary Life of Johnson; and,
since we dread not examination, Potter's Inquiry into some Passages in
Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets; Graves's Recollections of Shenstone;
Mitford's preface to Gray's works; Roscoe's preface to Pope's works,
&c.]
COWLEY
The life of Cowley, notwithstanding the penury of English biography,
has been written by Dr. Sprat, an author whose pregnancy of
imagination and elegance of language have deservedly set him high in
the ranks of literature; but his zeal of friendship, or ambition of
eloquence, has produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has
given the character, not the life, of Cowley; for he writes with so little
detail, that scarcely any thing is distinctly known, but all is shown
confused and enlarged through the mist of panegyrick.
Abraham Cowley was born in the year one thousand six hundred and
eighteen. His father was a grocer, whose condition Dr. Sprat conceals
under the general appellation of a citizen; and, what would probably
not have been less carefully suppressed, the omission of his name in the

register of St. Dunstan's parish gives reason to suspect that his father
was a sectary. Whoever he was, he died before the birth of his son, and,
consequently, left him to the care of his mother; whom Wood
represents as struggling earnestly to procure him a literary education,
and who, as she lived to the age of eighty, had her solicitude rewarded,
by seeing her son eminent, and, I hope, by seeing him fortunate, and
partaking his prosperity. We know, at least, from Sprat's account, that
he always acknowledged her care, and justly paid the dues of filial
gratitude.
In the window of his mother's apartment lay Spenser's Fairy Queen; in
which he very early took delight to read, till, by feeling the charms of
verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are the
accidents which, sometimes remembered, and, perhaps, sometimes
forgotten, produce that particular designation of mind, and propensity
for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called
genius. The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally
determined to some particular direction. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great
painter of the present age, had the first fondness for his art excited by
the perusal of Richardson's treatise.
By his mother's solicitation he was admitted into Westminster school,
where he was soon distinguished. He was wont, says Sprat, to relate,
"that he had this defect in his memory at that time, that his teachers
never could bring it to retain the ordinary rules of grammar."
This is an instance of the natural desire of man to propagate a wonder.
It is, surely, very difficult to tell