While the world in general was filled with admiration of Johnson's
Lives of the Poets, there were narrow circles in which prejudice and
resentment were fostered, and from which attacks of different sorts
issued against him. By some violent Whigs he was arraigned of injustice
to Milton; by some Cambridge men of depreciating Gray; and his
expressing with a dignified freedom what he really thought of George,
Lord Lyttelton, gave offence to some of the friends of that nobleman,
and particularly produced a declaration of war against him from Mrs.
Montagu, the ingenious Essayist on Shakspeare, between whom and his
Lordship a commerce of reciprocal compliments had long been carried on.
In this war the smaller powers in alliance with him were of course led
to engage, at least on the defensive, and thus I for one was excluded
from the enjoyment of 'A Feast of Reason,' such as Mr. Cumberland has
described, with a keen, yet just and delicate pen, in his Observer.
These minute inconveniences gave not the least disturbance to Johnson.
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