[911]
A still stronger proof of his patriotick spirit appears in his review of
an 'Essay on Waters, by Dr. Lucas;' of whom, after describing him as a
man well known to the world for his daring defiance of power, when he
thought it exerted on the side of wrong, he thus speaks:
'The Irish ministers drove him from his native country by a
proclamation, in which they charged him with crimes of which they never
intended to be called to the proof, and oppressed by methods equally
irresistible by guilt and innocence.
'Let the man thus driven into exile, for having been the friend of his
country, be received in every other place as a confessor of liberty; and
let the tools of power be taught in time, that they may rob, but cannot
impoverish[912].'
Some of his reviews in this _Magazine_ are very short accounts of the
pieces noticed, and I mention them only that Dr. Johnson's opinion of
the works may be known; but many of them are examples of elaborate
criticism, in the most masterly style. In his review of the 'Memoirs of
the Court of Augustus,' he has the resolution to think and speak from
his own mind, regardless of the cant transmitted from age to age, in
praise of the ancient Romans[913]. Thus,
'I know not why any one but a school-boy in his declamation should whine
over the Common-wealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of
the rest of mankind.
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