'
'The slip of paper and the other pieces of Johnson's hand-writing' have
been lost. At all events they are not in the Bodleian.
[1067] Johnson (_Works_, vii. 76), criticising Milton's scheme of
education, says:--'Those authors therefore are to be read at schools
that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and
most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by
poets, orators, and historians. Let me not be censured for this
digression as pedantic or paradoxical; for if I have Milton against me,
I have Socrates on my side. It was his labour to turn philosophy from
the study of nature to speculations upon life; but the innovators whom I
oppose are turning off attention from life to nature. They seem to think
that we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of
the stars. Socrates was rather of opinion that what we had to learn was
how to do good and avoid evil. "[Greek: hotti toi en megaroisi kakon t
agathon te tetuktai]."'
[1068] 'His ear was well-tuned, and his diction was elegant and copious,
but his devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. The
paucity of its topicks enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity
of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction.
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