The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes, Volume 08. Samuel Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ syllables, with few of those redundant terminations which the drama not only admits, but requires, as more nearly approaching to real dialogue. The tenour of his verse is so uniform that it cannot be thought casual; and yet upon what principle he so constructed it, is difficult to discover.

      The mention of his play brings to my mind a very trifling occurrence. Fenton was one day in the company of Broome, his associate, and Ford, a clergyman25, at that time too well known, whose abilities, instead of furnishing convivial merriment to the voluptuous and dissolute, might have enabled him to excel among the virtuous and the wise. They determined all to see the Merry Wives of Windsor, which was acted that night; and Fenton, as a dramatick poet, took them to the stage-door; where the door-keeper, inquiring who they were, was told that they were three very necessary men, Ford, Broome, and Fenton. The name in the play, which Pope restored to Brook, was then Broome.

      It was, perhaps, after his play that he undertook to revise the punctuation of Milton’s poems, which, as the author neither wrote the original copy, nor corrected the press, was supposed capable of amendment. To this edition he prefixed a short and elegant account of Milton’s life, written, at once, with tenderness and integrity.

      He published, likewise, 1729, a very splendid edition of Waller, with notes often useful, often entertaining, but too much extended by long quotations from Clarendon. Illustrations drawn from a book so easily consulted, should be made by reference rather than transcription.

      The latter part of his life was calm and pleasant. The relict of sir William Trumbull invited him, by Pope’s recommendation, to educate her son; whom he first instructed at home, and then attended to Cambridge. The lady afterwards detained him with her as the auditor of her accounts. He often wandered to London, and amused himself with the conversation of his friends.

      He died in 173026, at East Hampstead, in Berkshire, the seat of lady Trumbal; and Pope, who had been always his friend, honoured him with an epitaph, of which he borrowed the two first lines from Crashaw.

      Fenton was tall and bulky, inclined to corpulence, which he did not lessen by much exercise; for he was very sluggish and sedentary, rose late, and when he had risen, sat down to his books or papers. A woman that once waited on him in a lodging, told him, as she said, that he would “lie a-bed, and be fed with a spoon.” This, however, was not the worst that might have been prognosticated; for Pope says, in his letters, that “he died of indolence;” but his immediate distemper was the gout.

      Of his morals and his conversation the account is uniform: he was never named but with praise and fondness, as a man in the highest degree amiable and excellent. Such was the character given him by the earl of Orrery, his pupil; such is the testimony of Pope27; and such were the suffrages of all who could boast of his acquaintance.

      By a former writer of his life28, a story is told, which ought not to be forgotten. He used, in the latter part of his time, to pay his relations in the country a yearly visit. At an entertainment made for the family by his elder brother, he observed, that one of his sisters, who had married unfortunately, was absent, and found, upon inquiry, that distress had made her thought unworthy of invitation. As she was at no great distance, he refused to sit at the table till she was called, and, when she had taken her place, was careful to show her particular attention.

      His collection of poems is now to be considered. The ode to the Sun is written upon a common plan, without uncommon sentiments; but its greatest fault is its length.

      No poem should be long of which the purpose is only to strike the fancy, without enlightening the understanding by precept, ratiocination, or narrative. A blaze first pleases, and then tires the sight.

      Of Florelio it is sufficient to say, that it is an occasional pastoral, which implies something neither natural nor artificial, neither comick nor serious.

      The next ode is irregular, and, therefore, defective. As the sentiments are pious, they cannot easily be new; for what can be added to topicks on which successive ages have been employed!

      Of the Paraphrase on Isaiah nothing very favourable can be said. Sublime and solemn prose gains little by a change to blank verse; and the paraphrast has deserted his original, by admitting images not Asiatick, at least not Judaical:

      Returning peace,

      Dove-ey’d, and rob’d in white.

      Of his petty poems, some are very trifling, without any thing to be praised, either in the thought or expression. He is unlucky in his competitions; he tells the same idle tale with Congreve, and does not tell it so well. He translates from Ovid the same epistle as Pope; but, I am afraid, not with equal happiness.

      To examine his performances, one by one, would be tedious. His translation from Homer into blank verse will find few readers, while another can be had in rhyme. The piece addressed to Lambarde is no disagreeable specimen of epistolary poetry; and his ode to the lord Gower was pronounced, by Pope, the next ode in the English language to Dryden’s Cecilia. Fenton may be justly styled an excellent versifier and a good poet.

      Whatever I have said of Fenton is confirmed by Pope in a letter, by which he communicated to Broome an account of his death:

toThe Rev^d. Mr. BROOME,At Pulham, near HarlestoneNor Suffolke[By Beccles Bag.]

      D^r Sir,

      I intended to write to you on this melancholy subject, the death of Mr. Fenton, before y’rs came; but stay’d to have inform’d myself & you of y’e circumstances of it. All I hear is, that he felt a Gradual Decay, tho’ so early in Life, & was declining for 5 or 6 months. It was not, as I apprehended, the Gout in his Stomach, but I believe rather a Complication first of Gross Humours, as he was naturally corpulent, not discharging themselves, as he used no sort of Exercise. No man better bore y’e approaches of his Dissolution (as I am told) or with less ostentation yielded up his Being. The great modesty w’ch you know was natural to him, and y’e great Contempt he had for all Sorts of Vanity and Parade, never appeared more than in his last moments: He had a conscious Satisfaction (no doubt) in acting right, in feeling himself honest, true, & unpretending to more than was his own. So he dyed, as he lived, with that secret, yet sufficient, Contentment.

      As to any Papers left behind him, I dare say they can be but few; for this reason: He never wrote out of Vanity, or thought much of the Applause of Men. I know an Instance where he did his utmost to conceal his own merit that way; and if we join to this his natural Love of Ease, I fancy we must expect little of this sort: at least I hear of none except some few further remarks on Waller (w’ch his cautious integrity made him leave an order to be given to Mr. Tonson) and perhaps, tho’ ’tis many years since I saw it, a Translation of ye first Book of Oppian. He had begun a Tragedy of Dion, but made small progress in it.

      As to his other affairs, he died poor, but honest, leaving no Debts, or Legacies; except of a few p’ds to Mr. Trumbull and my Lady, in token of respect, Gratefulness, and mutual Esteem.

      I shall with pleasure take upon me to draw this amiable, quiet, deserving, unpretending, Christian and Philosophical character, in his Epitaph. There Truth may be spoken in a few words: as for Flourish, & Oratory, & Poetry, I leave them to younger and more lively Writers, such as love writing for writing sake, & w^d rather show their own Fine Parts, yⁿ Report the valuable ones of any other man. So the Elegy I renounce.

      I condole with you from my heart, on the loss of so worthy a man, and a Friend to us both. Now he is gone, I must tell you he has done you many a good office, and set your character in y^e fairest light, СКАЧАТЬ