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[5] contempt of the unities. It provokes me to see these critics with their pens “dipped in scorpion's gall,” blighting the embryo buds of native genius. Neal must be condemned forsooth, without mercy, because his poem was one of genius' wildest, most erratic flights. Were every one as devout a worshipper at the shrine of genius as I am, they would admire him, even in his wanderings. I have been looking over the “Spectator.” I do not think Addison so good a writer as Johnson, though a more polished one. The style of the latter is more vigorous, there is more nerve, if I may so express it, than in the former. Indeed, Johnson is my favorite among all his contemporaries. I know of no author in the English language that writes like him.

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