*  Discourse  on  Satire^


368  THE  STUDY  OF  LITERATURE

perused  not  only  the  ^neid  but  also  Paradise  Lost,  is
manifestly  fatal  to  the  whole  conception  of  finality  in
literature,  and  therefore  to  the  fundamental  assumptions
on  which  Addison's  criticism  rests.^

Johnson's  criticism  is  equally  instructive.  As
Macaulay  says,  he  *'  took  it  for  granted  that
the  kind  of  poetry  which  flourished  in  his  own
time,  which  he  had  been  accustomed  to  hear  praised
from  his  childhood,  and  which  he  had  himself  written
with  success,  was  the  best  kind  of  poetry."  ^  So  far
as  he  depended  at  all  upon  criteria  or  precedents  for
his  judgments,  it  was  in  this  poetry  that  he  sought
them.  Tacitly,  if  not  expressly,  it  was  to  this  poetry
that  he  always  appealed.  The  result  was  that  he  could
see  little  meaning  or  merit  in  any  poetry  belonging  to
a  different  class.  He  thus  failed  to  rise  to  the  greatness
of  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  was  grossly  unjust  to  Gray,
and  almost  consistently  opposed  and  ridiculed  every
movement  in  literature  in  which — as  in  the  ballad
revival  of  the  later  eighteenth  century — he  detected
any  signs  of  revolt  against  what  was  for  him  the
orthodox  literary  creed.
