“’So various that he seem’d to be,
  Not one, but all mankind’s epitome.’”

After quoting the sentence printed in italics, the reviewer says:  “On this hint Mr. Hayward enlarges, nothing loth.”  I quoted the entire letter without a word of comment, and what is given as my “enlarging” is an olla podrida of sentences torn from the context in three different and unconnected passages of this Introduction.  The only one of them which has any bearing on the point shews, though garbled, that, in attributing motives, I distinguished between Johnson and his set.

Having thus laid the ground for fixing on me opinions I had nowhere professed, the reviewer asks, “Had Mr. Hayward, when he passed such slighting judgment on the motives of the venerable sage who awes us still, no fear before his eyes of the anathema aimed by Carlyle at Croker for similar disparagement?  ’As neediness, and greediness, and vain glory are the chief qualities of most men, so no man, not even a Johnson, acts, or can think of acting, on any other principle.  Whatever, therefore, cannot be referred to the two former categories, Need and Greed, is without scruple ranged under the latter.’"[1]

[Footnote 1:  Edinb, Review, No. 230, p. 511.]

This style of criticism is as loose as it is unjust; for one main ingredient in Miss Seward’s mixture is Platonic love, which cannot be referred to either of the three categories.  Her error lay in not adding a fourth ingredient,—­the admiration which Johnson undoubtedly felt for the admitted good qualities of Mrs. Thrale.  But the lady was nearer the truth than the reviewer, when he proceeds in this strain: 

“We take an entirely different view at once of the character and the feelings of Johnson.  Rude, uncouth, arrogant as he was—­spoilt as he was, which is far worse, by flattery and toadying and the silly homage of inferior worshippers—­selfish as he was in his eagerness for small enjoyments and disregard of small attentions—­that which lay at the very bottom of his character, that which constitutes the great source of his power in life, and connects him after death with the hearts of all of us, is his spirit of imaginative romance.  He was romantic in almost all things—­in politics, in religion, in his musings on the supernatural world, in friendship for men, and in love for women.”

* * * * *

“Such was his fancied ‘padrona,’ his ‘mistress,’ his ’Thralia dulcis,’ a compound of the bright lady of fashion and the ideal Urania who rapt his soul into spheres of perfection.”