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

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СКАЧАТЬ the "Byronic Energy," from a sense of his exceeding power. The author of "Rasselas" was the "Johnsonian Energy;" and the demon within him, if not so ethereal and terrible as Byron's, was far more massive, equally strong, and in conversation, at least, much more ready to do his work. First-rate conversation generally springs from a desire to shine, or from the effort of a full mind to relieve itself, or from exuberant animal spirits, or from deep-seated misery. In Johnson it sprang from a combination of all these causes. He went to conversation as to an arena—his mind was richly-stored, even to overflowing—in company his spirits uniformly rose—and yet there was always at his heart a burden of wretchedness, seeking solace, not in silence, but in speech. Hence, with the exception of Burke, no one ever matched him in talk; and Burke, we imagine, although profounder in thought, more varied in learning, and more brilliant in imagination, seldom fairly pitted himself against Johnson. He was a younger man, and held the sage in too much reverence to encounter him often with any deliberate and determined purpose of contest. He frequently touched the shield of the general challenger, not with the sharp, but with the butt-end of his lance. He said, on one occasion, when asked why he had not talked more in Johnson's company, "Oh! it is enough for me to have rung the bell to him!"

      In all Johnson's works you see the traces of the triumphant conversationalist—of one who has met with few to contradict, and scarcely one to rival him. Hence the dogmatic strength and certainty, and hence, too, the one-sidedness and limitation of much of his writings. He does not "allow for the wind." He seems to anticipate no reply, and to defy all criticism. One is tempted to quote the words of Solomon, "He that is first in his own cause seemeth just, but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him." No such searching seems ever to have entered into Johnson's apprehensions. His sentences roll forth like the laws of the Medes and Persians; his praise alights with the authoritativeness of a sun-burst on a mountain; summit; and when he blames, he seems to add, like an ancient doomster, the words, "I pronounce for doom." With Burke, it was very different. Accustomed to parliamentary debate in its vicissitudes and interchange—gifted, too, with a prophetic insight into coming objections, which "cast their shadows before," and with an almost diseased subtlety of thinking, he binds up his answers to opponents with every thesis he propounds; and his paragraphs sometimes remind you of the plan of generals in great emergencies, putting foot soldiers on the same saddles with cavalry—they seem to ride double.

      This is not the place, nor have we room, to dilate on Johnson's obvious merits and faults—his straight-forward sincerity—his strong manly sense—the masterly force with which he grasps all his subjects—the measured fervour of his style—the precision and vivacity of his shorter sentences—the grand swell and sonorousness of his longer; on his frequent monotony—his sesguipedalia verba—the "timorous meaning" which sometimes lurks under his "boldest words;" or on the deep chiaroscuro which discolours all his pictures of man, nature, society, and human life. We have now only to speak of his poetry. That is, unfortunately, small in amount, although its quality is so excellent as to excite keen regret that he had not, as he once intended, written many more pieces in the style of "London," and the "Vanity of Human Wishes." In these, the model of his mere manner is Pope, although coloured by Juvenal, his Latin original; but the matter and spirit are intensely his 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.

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      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

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