Johnson encouraged the work, and, perhaps, imbibed those early prejudices, which adhered to him to the end of his life.  He shuddered at the idea of irreligion.  Hence, we are told, in the life of Pope, “Never were penury of knowledge, and vulgarity of sentiment, so happily disguised; Pope, in the chair of wisdom, tells much that every man knows, and much that he did not know himself; and gives us comfort in the position, that though man’s a fool, yet God is wise; that human advantages are unstable; that our true honour is, not to have a great part, but to act it well; that virtue only is our own, and that happiness is always in our power.”  The reader, when he meets all this in its new array, no longer knows the talk of his mother and his nurse.  But, may it not be said, that every system of ethics must, or ought, to terminate, in plain and general maxims for the use of life? and, though in such anxioms no discovery is made, does not the beauty of the moral theory consist in the premises, and the chain of reasoning that leads to the conclusion?  May not truth, as Johnson himself says, be conveyed to the mind by a new train of intermediate images?  Pope’s doctrine, about the ruling passion, does not seem to be refuted, though it is called, in harsh terms, pernicious, as well as false, tending to establish a kind of moral predestination, or overruling principle, which cannot be resisted.  But Johnson was too easily alarmed in the cause of religion.  Organized as the human race is, individuals have different inlets of perception, different powers of mind, and different sensations of pleasure and pain.

  “All spread their charms, but charm not all alike,
  On different senses different objects strike: 
  Hence different passions more or less inflame,
  As strong or weak the organs of the frame. 
  And hence one master-passion in the breast,
  Like Aaron’s serpent, swallows up the rest.”

Brumoy says, Pascal, from his infancy, felt himself a geometrician; and Vandyke, in like manner, was a painter.  Shakespeare, who, of all poets, had the deepest insight into human nature, was aware of a prevailing bias in the operations of every mind.  By him we are told, “Masterless passion sways us to the mood of what it likes or loathes.”

It remains to inquire, whether, in the lives before us, the characters are partial, and too often drawn with malignity of misrepresentation?  To prove this, it is alleged, that Johnson has misrepresented the circumstances relative to the translation of the first Iliad, and maliciously ascribed that performance to Addison, instead of Tickell, with too much reliance on the testimony of Pope, taken from the account in the papers left by Mr. Spence.  For a refutation of the fallacy imputed to Addison, we are referred to a note in the Biographia Britannica, written by the late judge Blackstone, who, it is said, examined the whole matter with accuracy, and found, that the first regular statement of the accusation against Addison, was published by Ruffhead, in his life of Pope, from the materials which he received from Dr. Warburton.  But, with all due deference to the learned judge, whose talents deserve all praise, this account is by no means accurate.