Johnson, who was not concerned in the cheat, and
was only guilty of indolence and party spirit, saved himself by
sacrificing his comrade. He afterwards took ample revenge for the
mortification of this exposure, in his _Lives of the Poets_, in which
he employed all his vigorous powers and consummate skill to write down
Milton. He undoubtedly dealt a heavy blow at the poet's reputation,
and succeeded in damaging it for at least two generations of readers.
He did for Milton what Aristophanes did for Socrates, effaced the real
man and replaced him by a distorted and degrading caricature.
It was again a clergyman to whom Milton owed his vindication from
Lauder's onslaught. John Douglas, afterwards bishop of Salisbury,
brought Bowle's materials before the public. But the high Anglican
section of English life has never thoroughly accepted Milton. R.S.
Hawker, vicar of Morwenstow, himself a poet of real feeling, gave
expression, in rabid abuse of Milton, to the antipathy which more
judicious churchmen suppress. Even the calm and gentle author of
the _Christian Year_, wide heart ill-sorted with a narrow creed,
deliberately framed a theory of Poetic for the express purpose, as it
would seem, of excluding the author of _Paradise Lost_ from the first
class of poets.
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