his criticism on the dramas of Rowe without opening the book to refresh the memories of his reading of thirty years before. This indolence, which would be a sin in an archaeologist or an historian, is almost a virtue in Johnson. His Lives make a single great treatise, defining and illustrating the critical system which he had built up during long years of reading and writing. He writes at ease, in the plenitude of his power, and with a full consciousness of his acknowledged authority. His work closes an age; it is the Temple of Immortality of the great Augustans, and, when it was published, already Burns and Blake, Crabbe and Cowper, were beginning to write. With them came in new ideals, destined to affect both criticism and biography. So that the mention of Johnson’s Lives, which demand a separate essay for their proper appreciation, may fitly close this catalogue.
