But a Rambler, Adventurer, or Idler, of Johnson, would fall into any classical or European language, as easily as if it had been originally conceived in it. BURNEY. Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 125) recounts how Johnson recommended Addison's works as a model for imitation to Mr. Woodhouse, a poetical shoemaker. '"Give nights and days, Sir, (said he) to the study of Addison, if you mean either to be a good writer, or, what is more worth, an honest man." When I saw something like the same expression in his criticism on that author, I put him in mind of his past injunctions to the young poet, to which he replied, "That he wished the shoemaker might have remembered them as well."' Yet he says in his Life of Pope ( Works, viii. 284), 'He that has once studiously formed a style rarely writes afterwards with complete easc.'
[664] I shall probably, in another work, maintain the merit of Addison's poetry, which has been very unjustly depreciated. BOSWELL. He proposed also to publish an edition of Johnson's poems (ante, p. 16), an account of his own travels (post, April 17, 1778), a collection, with notes, of old tenures and charters of Scotland (post, Oct. 27, 1779), and a History of James IV. of Scotland, 'the patron,' as he said, 'of my family' (Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 23, 1773).
[665] Lewis thus happily translates the lines in Martial,--
'Diligat ilia senem quondam: sed et ipsa marito, Tunc quoque cum fuerit, non videatur, anus. 'Wrinkled with age, may mutual love and truth To their dim eyes recall the bloom of youth.'
Rambler, No. 167.
Some of Johnson's own translations are happy, as:--
'Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem Aut, gelidas hibernus aquas quum fuderit auster, Securum somnos, imbre juvante, sequi! 'How sweet in sleep to pass the careless hours, Lull'd by the beating winds and dashing show'rs.'
Ib. No. 117.
[666] [Greek: Augon ek makaron antaxios eiae amoibae.]
'Celestial powers! that piety regard, From you my labours wait their last reward.'
A modification of the Greek line is engraved on the scroll in Johnson's monument in St. Paul's (post, Dec. 1784).
[667] 'The essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my own intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity.... I therefore look back on this part of my work with pleasure, which no blame or praise of man shall diminish or augment.' Rambler, No. 208.
[668] I have little doubt that this attack on the concluding verse is an indirect blow at Hawkins, who had quoted the whole passage, and had clearly thought it the more 'awful' on account of the couplet. See Hawkins's Johnson, p. 291.
[669] In the original Raleigh's.
[670] The italics are Boswell's.
[671] Mrs. Williams is probably the person meant. BOSWELL.
[672] 'In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had so little acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what was intended when a benefit was theatre was offered her. The profits of the night were only L130, though Dr. Newton brought a large contribution; and L20 were given by Tonson, a man who is to be praised as often as he is named.... This was the greatest benefaction that Paradise Lost ever procured the author's descendants; and to this he who has now attempted to relate his life had the honour of contributing a Prologue.' Johnson's Works, vii. 118. In the Gent. Mag. (xx. 152) we read that, as on 'April 4, the night first appointed, many in convenient circumstances happened to disappoint the hopes of success, the managers generously quitted the profits of another night, in which the theatre was expected to be fuller. Mr. Samuel Johnson's prologue was afterwards printed for Mrs. Foster's benefit.'
[673] Johnson is thinking of Pope's lines--
'But still the great have kindness in reserve, He helped to bury whom he helped to starve.'
Prologue to the Satires, 1. 247. In the Life of Milton he writes:--'In our time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey To the author of Paradise Lost by Mr. Benson, who has in the inscription bestowed more words upon himself than upon Milton.' Johnson's Works, vii. 112. Pope has a hit at Benson in the Dunciad, iii. 325:--
'On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ!'
Moore, describing Sheridan's funeral, says:--'It was well remarked by a French Journal, in contrasting the penury of Sheridan's latter years with the splendour of his funeral, that "France is the place for a man of letters to live in, and England the place for him to die in."' Moore himself wrote:--
'How proud they can press to the funeral array Of him whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow-- How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day, Whose pall shall be held up by Nobles to-morrow.'
Moore's Sheridan, ii. 460-2.
[674] Johnson's Works, i. 115.
[675] Among the advertisements in the Gent. Mag. for February of this year is the following:--'An elegy wrote in a country churchyard, 6d.'
[676] See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 17, 1773.
[677] 'Lest there should be any person, at any future period, absurd enough to suspect that Johnson was a partaker in Lauder's fraud, or had any knowledge of it, when he assisted him with his masterly pen, it is proper here to quote the words of Dr.