is a sweet flexibility, particularly, To his worthy friend Dr. Laurence'; on himself at the theatre, March 8, 17712; the Ode in the isle of Sky 3; and that to Mrs. Thrale from the same place*. 6 His English poetry is such as leaves room to think, if he had devoted himself to the Muses, that he would have been the rival of Pope. His first production in this kind was LONDON 5, a poem in imitation of the third satire of Juvenal. The vices of the metropolis are placed in the room of antient manners. The author had heated his mind with the ardour of Juvenal, and, having the skill to polish his numbers, he became a sharp accuser of the times. The VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES is an imitation of the tenth satire of the same author. Though it is translated by Dryden, Johnson's imitation approaches nearest to the spirit of the original. The subject is taken from the ALCIBIADES of PLATO, and has an intermixture of the sentiments of SOCRATES concerning the object of prayers offered up to the Deity. The general proposition is, that good and evil are so little understood by mankind, that their wishes when granted are always destructive. This is exemplified in a variety of instances, such as riches, state-preferment, eloquence, military glory, long life, and the advantages of form and beauty. Juvenal's conclusion is worthy of a Christian poet, and such a pen Isaid there is no such word as variabilis in any classical writer. "Surely," said the other; "in Virgil; variabile semper femina." "You forget," said the opponent; "it is varium et mutabile.”' Warton's Pope's Works, ed. 1822, i. 159. It is not unlikely that the two disputants were either Dr. Warton himself or his brother, and Burke. 'As we were leaving Pembroke College' (writes Thomas Warton) 'Johnson said, "Here I translated Pope's Messiah. Which do you think is the best line in it?-My own favourite is, 'Vallis aromaticas fundit Saronica nubes?" as Johnson's. 'Let us,' he says, 'leave it to the Gods to judge what is fittest for us. Man is dearer to his Creator than to himself. If we must pray for special favour, let it be for a sound mind in a sound body. Let us pray for fortitude, that we may think the labours of Hercules and all his sufferings preferable to a life of luxury and the soft repose of SARDANAPALUS. This is a blessing within the reach of every man; this we can give ourselves. It is virtue, and virtue only, that can make us happy.' In the translation the zeal of the Christian conspired with the warmth and energy of the poet; but Juvenal is not eclipsed'. For the various characters in the original the reader is pleased, in the English poem, to meet with Cardinal Wolsey, Buckingham stabbed by Felton, Lord Strafford, Clarendon, Charles XII. of Sweden; and for Tully and Demosthenes, Lydiat, Galileo, and Archbishop Laud. It is owing to Johnson's delight in biography that the name of LYDIAT is called forth from obscurity. It may, therefore, not be useless to tell, that LYDIAT was a learned divine and mathematician in the beginning of the last century. He attacked the doctrine of Aristotle and Scaliger, and wrote a number of sermons on the harmony of the Evangelists. With all his merit, he lay in the prison of Bocardo at Oxford, till Bishop Usher, Laud, and others, paid his debts. He petitioned Charles I. to be sent to Ethiopia to procure manuscripts. Having spoken in favour of monarchy and bishops, he was plundered by the Puritans, and twice carried away a prisoner from his rectory. He died very poor in 1646 2. The Tragedy of Irene3 is founded on a passage in KNOLLES'S ''It is in truth not easy to say whether the palm belongs to the ancient or to the modern poet. ... It must be owned that in the concluding passage the Christian moralist has not made the most of his advantages, and has fallen decidedly short of the sublimity of his Pagan model. On the other hand, Juvenal's Hannibal must yield to Johnson's Charles; and Johnson's vigorous and pathetic enumeration of the miseries of a literary life must be allowed to be superior to Juvenal's lamentation over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero.' Macaulay's Misc. Works, ed. 1871, p. 379. 2 Murphy follows the account given as a note in the Supplement to the Gentleman's Magazine for 1748, quoted in the Life, i. 194, n. 2. 3A manuscript page of Macaulay's History, thickly scored with dashes and erasures-it is the passage History History of the Turks; an author highly commended in the Rambler, No. 122. An incident in the Life of Mahomet the Great, first emperor of the Turks, is the hinge on which the fable is made to move. The substance of the story is shortly this. In 1453 Mahomet laid siege to Constantinople, and, having reduced the place, became enamoured of a fair Greek, whose name was IRENE. The sultan invited her to embrace the law of the Prophet, and to grace his throne. Enraged at this intended marriage, the Janizaries formed a conspiracy to dethrone the emperor. To avert the impending danger, Mahomet, in a full assembly of the grandees, 'Catching with one hand,' as KNOLLES relates it, 'the fair Greek by the hair of her head, and drawing his falchion with the other, he, at one blow, struck off her head, to the great terror of them all; and, having so done, said unto them, Now, by this, judge whether your emperor is able to bridle his affections or not?.' The story is simple, and it remained for the author to amplify it with proper episodes, and give it complication and variety. The catastrophe is changed, and horror gives place to terror and pity. But, after all, the fable is cold and languid. There is not, throughout the piece, a single situation to excite curiosity, and raise a conflict of passions. The diction is nervous, rich, and elegant; but splendid language, and melodious numbers, will make a fine poem, not a tragedy. The sentiments are beautiful, always happily expressed, but seldom appropriated to the character, and generally too philosophic. What Johnson has said of the Tragedy of Cato may be applied to Irene: 'it is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama; rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language, than a representation of natural affections. . . . Nothing here "excites or assuages emotion." . . . The events are expected without solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we have no care; we consider not what they are doing, or what they are suffering; we wish only to know what they have to say. . . . It is unaffecting elegance, and chill philosophy. The following speech, in the mouth of a Turk, who is supposed to have heard of the British constitution, has been often selected from the numberless beauties with which IRENE abounds: 'If there be any land, as fame reports, Where common laws restrain the prince and subject; Flows through each member of th' embodied state; Her grateful sons shine bright with ev'ry virtue; These are British sentiments. Above forty years ago they found an echo in the breast of applauding audiences, and to this hour they are the voice of the people, in defiance of the metaphysics and the new lights of certain politicians, who would gladly find their private advantage in the disasters of their country*; a race of men, quibus nulla ex honesto spes. The Prologue to Irene is written with elegance, and, in a peculiar strain, shews the literary pride and lofty spirit of the authors. The Epilogue, we are told in a late publication, was written by Sir William Young. This is a new discovery, but by no means probable'. When the appendages to a Dramatic Performance are not assigned to a friend, or an unknown hand, or a person of fashion, they are always supposed to be written by the author of the Play. It is to be wished, however, that the Epilogue in question could be transferred to any other writer. It is the worst Feu d'Esprit that ever fell from Johnson's pen2. An account of the various pieces contained in this edition, such as miscellaneous tracts, and philological dissertations, would lead beyond the intended limits of this essay. It will suffice to say, that they are the productions of a man who never wanted decorations of language, and always taught his reader to think. The life of the late king of Prussia, as far as it extends3, is a model of the biographical style. The Review of THE ORIGIN OF EVIL was, perhaps, written with asperity; but the angry epitaph, which it provoked from SOAME JENYNS, was an illtimed resentment, unworthy of the genius of that amiable author *. Boswell in the first edition of the Life says:-'The Epilogue was written by Sir William Yonge.' To the second edition he added, no doubt in answer to Murphy, as Johnson informed me.' Ib. i. 197, n. 4. 2 The wonder is that Johnson accepted this Epilogue, which is a little coarse and a little profane. Chesterfield writes of Yonge as a man 'with a most sullied, not to say blasted character.' Letters, iv. 53. 3 It ends with the year 1745. It was published in 1756 in The Literary Magazine. Life, i. 308; Works, vi. 435. Carlyle, in his Frederick the Great (ed. 1862, iii. 276), has the following about the English Lives of that king: One Dilworth, an innocent English soul, writing on the spot some years after Voltaire, has this useful passage:-"It is the great failing of a strong imagination to catch greedily at wonders. Vol taire was misinformed, and would It is strange Carlyle did not see |