PREFATORY NOTE ON LONDON

Johnson's London was written in 1738, before he was twenty-nine. He had first come to town the preceding year, and meanwhile had nearly starved as an obscure hack-writer in the service of Cave and his Gentleman's Magazine. London helped him to emerge from this obscurity.

Johnson wrote it rapidly, and offered it to Cave as the work of a man whose name he would not give. I cannot help taking notice,' he wrote, 'that besides what the author may hope for on account of his abilities, he has likewise another claim to your regard, as he lies at present under very disadvantageous circumstances of fortune.' The poem was finally sold with all rights for ten guineas -neither a high nor a low price for the times.

It was published anonymously on the same day as Pope's 1738, and promptly made a sensation in the literary world of London. It reached a second edition within a week. Pope said of the unknown poet: 'He will soon be deterré.' He learned Johnson's name, and took part in an unsuccessful attempt to get him the degree of Master of Arts from Dublin.

As an imitation of Juvenal it follows the details of the original more closely than The Vanity of Human Wishes; many a line is a bit of brilliant translation. But too close an imitation has led the poet sometimes to describe a state of things more true of Rome than of London.

The poem is rather a brilliant academic performance than a serious satire, yet it expresses with much vigor, Johnson's hatred of insincerity and servile meanness, and his sense of public danger which lies in forgetting the simplicity and ideals of an earlier period in England. On the other hand, some of the sentiments seem quite unJohnsonian. He suspects the government, and fears tyr

anny; he talks in the 'patriotic' strain which he afterwards condemned; he commends the 'pleasing banks,' and 'peaceful vales' of the country as better than the dark and swarming life of the city; and 'Hibernia's land' and 'the rocks of Scotland,' which he scorned in later life, he now prefers to the Strand. He even glorifies poverty, which he came to regard as an unqualified evil.

But these sentiments are not central in the poem, nor inconsistent with later opinion. They are due chiefly to his imitation of Juvenal, and partly to his great hardships at the time. After all his muse does not 'snarl,' but appears in a mood of lively abandon.

London: a poem

IN IMITATION OF THE THIRD SATIRE

OF JUVENAL

-Quis iniquæ

Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat se?-JUV. 1. 30, 1.

THOUGH grief and fondness in my breast rebel,
When injur'd THALES bids the town farewell,
Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend,
(I praise the hermit, but regret the friend)
Resolv'd at length, from vice and London far,
To breathe in distant fields a purer air,
And, fix'd on Cambria's solitary shore,
Give to St. David one true Briton more.

For who would leave, unbrib'd, Hibernia's land,
Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?
There none are swept by sudden fate away,
But all whom hunger spares with age decay:
Here malice, rapine, accident, conspire,
And now a rabble rages, now a fire;
Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay,
And here the fell attorney prowls for prey;
Here falling houses thunder on your head,
And here a female atheist talks you dead.

While Thales waits the wherry that contains

Of dissipated wealth the small remains,
On Thames's banks in silent thought we stood,
Where Greenwich smiles upon the silver flood;
Struck with the seat that gave Eliza birth,
We kneel, and kiss the consecrated earth;
In pleasing dreams the blissful age renew,
And call Britannia's glories back to view;

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Behold her cross triumphant on the main,
The guard of Commerce and the dread of Spain,
Ere masquerades debauch'd, excise oppress'd,
Or English honor grew a standing jest.

A transient calm the happy scenes bestow,
And for a moment lull the sense of woe.
At length awaking, with contemptuous frown
Indignant Thales eyes the neighb'ring town.

Since worth, he cries, in these degen'rate days
Wants ev'n the cheap reward of empty praise;
In those curs'd walls, devote to vice and gain,
Since unrewarded science toils in vain;
Since hope but soothes to double my distress,
And ev'ry moment leaves my little less;
While yet my steady steps no staff sustains,
And life still vig'rous revels in my veins,
¡Grant me,
kind heaven, to find some happier place,
Where honesty and sense are no disgrace;
Some pleasing bank where verdant osiers play,
Some peaceful vale with nature's paintings gay,
Where once the harass'd Briton found repose,
And safe in poverty defy'd his foes;

Some secret cell, ye Pow'rs, indulgent give.
has learn'd to live.

live here, for

Let
Here let those reign, whom pensions can incite
To vote a patriot black, a courtier white;
Explain their country's dea-bought rights away,
And plead for pirates in face of day;
With slavish tenets taint or poison'd youth,
And lend a lie the confidence of truth.

Collect a tax, or farm a lottery;

! Let such raise palaces, and 'manors buy,

With warbling eunuchs fill a licens'd stage.

And lull to servitude a thoughtless age.

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Heroes, proceed! what bounds your pride shall hold?

What check restrain your thirst of pow'r and gold?

Behold rebellious virtue quite o'erthrown,

Behold our fame, our wealth, our lives your own.
To such the plunder of land is giv'n,
When public crimes inflame the wrath of Heav'n;
But what, my friend, what hope remains for me,

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