one could have been pleased with such fantastical stuff. Mrs. Thrale stood to her gun with great courage, in defence of amorous ditties, which Johnson despised, till he at last silenced her by saying, "My dear lady, talk no more of this: nonsense can be defended but by nonsense."

Mrs. Thrale then praised Garrick's talents for light gay poetry; and, as a specimen, repeated his song in Florizel and Perdita, and dwelt with peculiar pleasure on this line :

I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the poor.

JOHNSON. "Nay, my dear lady, this will never do. Poor David! Smile with the simple;-what folly is that! And who would feed with the poor, that can help it? No, no; let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich." Boswell repeated this sally to Garrick, and wondered to find his sensibility as a writer not a little irritated by it. To soothe him, he observed, that Johnson spared nobody; and quoted the passage in Horace, in which he compares one who attacks his friends for the sake of a laugh, to a pushing ox, that is marked by a bunch of hay put upon his horns: fœnum habet in cornu. 66 Ay," ," said Garrick vehemently," he has a whole mow of it."

Speaking of Homer, whom he venerated as the prince of poets, Johnson remarked, that the advice given to Glaucus by his father, when he sent him to the Trojan war, was the noblest exhortation that could be instanced in any heathen writer, and comprised in a single line :

Διεν αριστεύειν, και ύπεροχον εμμενα ειν ;

which is translated by Dr. Clarke thus:-" Ut semper fortissime rem gererem, et superior virtute essem aliis."

A proposition which had been agitated, that monuments to eminent persons should, for the time to come, be erected in St. Paul's church as well as in Westminster-abbey, was mentioned; and it was asked, who should be honoured by having his monument first erected there. Somebody suggested Pope. JOHNSON. "Why, sir, as Pope was a Roman Catholic, I would not have his to be first. I think, Milton's rather should have the precedence. I think more highly of him now than I did at twenty. There is more thinking in him and in Butler, than in any of our poets."

He spoke slightingly of Dyer's Fleece." The subject, sir, cannot be made poetical. How can a man write poetically of serges and druggets ? Yet you will hear many people talk to you gravely of that excellent poem, The Fleece." Having talked of Grainger's Sugar Cane, Boswell mentioned to him Mr. Langton's having told him that this poem, being read in manuscript at sir Joshua Reynolds's, had made all the assembled wits burst into a laugh, when, after much blank verse pomp, the poet began a new paragraph thus :

Now, Muse, let's sing of rats.

And what increased the ridicule was, that one of the company, who slyly overlooked the reader, perceived that the word had been originally mice, and had been altered to rats, as more dignified.*

Such is this little laughable incident, which has been often related, Dr. Percy, the bishop of Dromore, who was

This passage does not appear in the printed work; Dr. Grainger, or some of his friends, it should seem, having become sensible that introducing even rats, in a grave poem, might be liable to banter. He however, could not bring himself to relinquish the idea; for they are thus periphrastically exhibited in his poem, as it now stands:

Nor with less waste the whisker'd vermin race,
A countless clan, despoil the lowland cane.

Johnson said, that Dr. Grainger was an agreeable man; a man who would do any good that was in his power. His translation of Tibullus, he thought, was very well done; but The Sugar Cane, a poem,

an intimate friend of Dr. Grainger, and has a particular regard for his memory, gave the following explanation:

"The passage in question was originally not liable to such a perversion: for the author, having occasion in that part of his work to mention the havock made by rats and mice, had introduced the subject in a kind of mock heroic, and a parody of Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice, invoking the Muse of the old Grecian bard, in an elegant and well turned manner. In this state I had seen it; but afterwards, unknown to me and other friends, he had been persuaded, contrary to his own better judgment, to alter it, so as to produce the unlucky effect above mentioned."

The above was written by the bishop when he had not the poem itself to recur to: and though the account given was true of it at one period, yet, as Dr. Grainger afterwards altered the passage in question, the remarks in the text do not now apply to the printed poem.

The bishop gives this character of Dr. Grainger :-" He was not only a man of genius and learning, but had many excellent virtues; being one of the most generous, friendly, and benevolent men I ever knew."

did not please him ;* for he exclaimed, "What could he make of a sugar-cane? One might as well write the Parsley-bed, a poem; or, the Cabbagegarden, a poem." BOSWELL." You must then pickle your cabbage with the sal Atticum." JOHNSON. "You know there is already the Hop-Garden, a poem; and, I think, one could say a great deal about cabbage. The poem might begin with the advantages of civilised society over a rude state, exemplified by the Scotch, who had no cabbages till Oliver Cromwell's soldiers introduced them; and one might thus show how arts are propagated by conquest, as they were by the Roman arms."

Sir Joshua Reynolds mentioned Mr. Cumberland's Odes, which were just published. JOHNSON. Why, sir, they would have been thought as good as odes commonly are, if Cumberland had not put his name to them; but a name immediately draws censure, unless it be a name that bears down every thing before it. Nay, Cumberland has made his odes subsidiary to the fame of another man. They might have run well enough by themselves; but he has not only loaded them with a name, but has made them carry double."

Johnson said of Chatterton, "This is the most extraordinary young man that has encountered my knowledge. It is wonderful how the whelp has written such things."

• Dr. Johnson said to Boswell, "Percy, sir, was angry with me for laughing at the Sugar-cane; for he had a mind to make a great thing of Grainger's rats,"

No. V.

DRAMA.

THE Beggar's Opera, and the common question, whether it was pernicious in its effects, having been introduced in conversation;-JOHNSON. "As to this matter, which has been very much contested, I myself am of opinion, that more influence has been ascribed to The Beggar's Opera, than it, in reality, ever had; for, I do not believe, that any man was ever made a rogue by being present at its representation. At the same time, I do not deny, that it may have some influence, by making the character of a rogue familiar, and in some degree pleasing."* Then, collecting himself, as it were, to give a heavy stroke-"There is in it such a labefactation of all principles, as may be injurious to morality."

While he pronounced this response, the company sat in a comical sort of restraint, smothering a laugh

• A very eminent physician, whose discernment is as acute and penetrating in judging of the human character as it is in his own profession, remarked once at a club, that a lively young man, fond of pleasure, and without money, would hardly resist a solicitation from his mistress to go upon the highway, immediately after being present at the representation of the Beggar's Opera. It was observed by Mr. Gibbon," that the Beggar's Opera may, perhaps, have sometimes increased the number of highwaymen; but it has had a beneficial effect in refining that class of men, making them less ferocious, more polite; in short, more like gentlemen." Upon this, Mr. Courtenay said, that "Gay was the Orpheus of highwaymen."