Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett. Thomas Parnell

own. In "London," satire seems swelling out of itself into something stronger and statelier—it is the apotheosis of that kind of poetry. You see in it a mind purer and sterner than Dryden's, or Pope's, or Churchill's, or even Juvenal's; "doing well to be angry" with a degenerate age, and a false, cowardly country, of which he deems himself unworthy to be a citizen. If there is rather too much of the saeva indignatio, which Swift speaks of as lacerating his heart, it is a nobler and less selfish ire than his, and the language and verse which it inspires are full of the very soul of dignity. In the "Vanity of Human Wishes," he becomes one of those "hunters whose game is man" (to use the language of Soame Jenyns, in that essay on "The Origin of Evil," which Johnson, in the Literary Review, so mercilessly lashed); and from assailing premiers, parliaments, and the vices of London and England, he passes, in a very solemn spirit, to expose the vain hopes, wishes, and efforts of humanity at large. Parts of this poem are written more in sorrow than in anger, and parts more in anger than in sorrow. The portraits of Wolsey, Bacon, and Charles the Twelfth, are admirable in their execution, and in their adaptation to the argument of the piece; and the last paragraph, for truth and masculine energy is unsurpassed, we believe, in the whole compass of ethical poetry. We are far from assenting to the statement we once heard ably and elaborately advocated, "that there had been no strong poetry in Britain since the two satires of Johnson;" and we are still further from classing their author with the Shakspeares, Miltons, Wordsworths, and Coleridges of song; but we are nevertheless prepared, not only for the sake of these two satires, of his prologue, and of some other pieces in verse, but on account of the general spirit of much of his prose, to pronounce him potentially, if not actually, a great poet.

      * * * * *

      JOHNSON'S POEMS.

      LONDON:

      A POEM IN IMITATION OF THE THIRD SATIRE OF JUVENAL, 1738.

      "—Quis ineptæ

       Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat se?"

      —JUVENAL.

      Though grief and fondness in my breast rebel

       When injured Thales[1] bids the town farewell,

       Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend;

       I praise the hermit, but regret the friend;

       Resolved, 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, unbribed, Hibernia's land,

       Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand? 10

       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, 20

       On Thames's bank in silent thought we stood,

       Where Greenwich smiles upon the silver flood;

       Struck with the seat that gave Eliza[2] birth,

       We kneel and kiss the consecrated earth;

       In pleasing dreams the blissful age renew,

       And call Britannia's glories back to view;

       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 honour grew a standing jest. 30

      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 neighbouring town.

       Since worth, he cries, in these degenerate days,

       Wants e'en the cheap reward of empty praise;

       In those cursed walls, devote to vice and gain,

       Since unrewarded science toils in vain;

       Since hope but soothes to double my distress,

       And every moment leaves my little less; 40

       While yet my steady steps no staff sustains,

       And life, still vigorous, 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, defied his foes:

       Some secret cell, ye Powers indulgent! give;

       Let—live here, for—has learn'd to live. 50

       Here let those reign whom pensions can incite

       To vote a patriot black, a courtier white;

       Explain their country's dear-bought rights away,

       And plead for pirates[3] in the face of day;

       With slavish tenets taint our poison'd youth,

       And lend a lie the confidence of truth.

       Let such raise palaces, and manors buy,

       Collect a tax, or farm a lottery;

       With warbling eunuchs fill our silenced stage,

       And lull to servitude a thoughtless age. 60

       Heroes, proceed! what bounds your pride shall hold?

       What check restrain your thirst of power and gold?

       Behold rebellious virtue quite o'erthrown;

       Behold our fame, our wealth, our lives your own!

      To such the plunder of a land is given,

       When public crimes inflame the wrath of Heaven.

       But what, my friend, what hope remains for me,

       Who start at theft, and blush at perjury,

       Who scarce forbear, though Britain's court he sing,

       To pluck a titled poet's borrow'd wing; 70

       A statesman's logic unconvinced can hear,

       And dare to slumber o'er the Gazetteer;[4]

       Despise a fool in half his pension dress'd,

       And strive in vain to laugh at Clodio's jest?

      Others, with softer smiles, and subtler art,

       Can sap the principles, or taint the heart;

       With more address a lover's note convey,

       Or bribe a virgin's innocence away.

       Well may they rise, while I, whose rustic tongue

       Ne'er knew to puzzle right, or varnish wrong, 80

       Spurn'd as a beggar, dreaded as a spy,

       Live unregarded, unlamented die.

      For what but social guilt the friend endears?

       Who shares Orgilio's crimes, his fortune shares.

       But thou, should tempting