About the middle of
the eighteenth century, when Whig popularity was already beginning to
wane, a desperate attempt was made by a rising Tory pamphleteer to
crush the new Liberal idol. Dr. Johnson, the most vigorous writer
of the day, conspired with one William Lauder, a native of Scotland
seeking fortune in London, to stamp out Milton's credit by proving him
to be a wholesale plagiarist. Milton's imitations--he had gathered
pearls wherever they were to be found--were thus to be turned into an
indictment against him. One of the beauties of _Paradise Lost_ is, as
has been already said, the scholar's flavour of literary reminiscence
which hangs about its words and images. This Virgilian art, in which
Milton has surpassed his master, was represented by this pair of
literary bandits as theft, and held to prove at once moral obliquity
and intellectual feebleness. This line of criticism was well chosen;
It was, in fact, an appeal to the many from the few. Unluckily for the
plot, Lauder was not satisfied with the amount of resemblance shown
by real parallel passages. He ventured upon the bold step of forging
verses, closely resembling lines in _Paradise Lost_, and ascribing
these verses to older poets.
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