History, mentioning their several shares in that work. It has, according to his direction, been deposited in POETRY AND WORKS OF IMAGINATION 'Hymn to Ignorance. 'The Palace of Sloth,-a vision. 'Coluthus, to be translated. 'Prejudice, a poetical essay. 'The Palace of Nonsense,-a vision.' Johnson's extraordinary facility of composition, when he shook off his constitutional indolence, and resolutely sat down to write, is admirably described by Mr. Courtenay, in his Poetical Review, which I have several times quoted: While through life's maze he sent a piercing view, His mind expansive to the object grew. With various stores of erudition fraught, The lively image, the deep-searching thought, Slept in repose:--but when the moment press'd, We shall in vain endeavour to know with exact precision every production of Johnson's pen. He owned to me that he had written about forty sermons; but as I understood that he had given or sold them to different persons, who were to preach them as their own, he did not consider himself at liberty to acknowledge them. Would those who were thus aided by him, who are still alive, and the friends of those who are dead, fairly inform the world, it would be obligingly gratifying a reasonable curiosity, to which there should, I think, now be no objection. Two volumes of them, published since his death, are sufficiently ascertained: see vol. iv. p. 183. I have before me, in his handwriting, a fragment of twenty quarto leaves, of a translation into English of Sallust, De Bello Catilinario. When it was done I have no notion, but it seems to have no very superior merit to mark it as his. Besides the publications heretofore mentioned, I am satisfied, from internal evidence, to admit also as genuine the following, which, notwithstanding all my chronological care, escaped me in the course of this work: Considerations on the Case of Dr. Trapp's Sermons, published in 1739 in the Gentleman's Magazine. It is a very ingenious defence of the right of abridging an author's work without being held as infringing his property. This is one of the nicest questions in the Law of Literature; and I cannot help thinking that the indulgence of abridging is often exceedingly injurious to authors and booksellers, and should in very few cases be permitted. At any rate, to prevent difficult and uncertain discussion, and give an absolute security to authors in the property of their labours, no abridgment whatever should be permitted till after the expiration of such a number of years as the Legislature may be pleased to fix. But, though it has been confidently ascribed to him, I cannot allow the British Museum, and is printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for December 1784.1 During his sleepless nights he amused himself by translating into Latin verse, from the Greek, many of the epigrams in the Anthologia. These translations, with some other poems by him in Latin, he gave to his friend Mr. Langton, who, having added a few notes, sold them to the booksellers for a small sum to be given to some of Johnson's relations, which was that he wrote a Dedication to both Houses of Parliament of a book entitled The Evangelical History Harmonised. He was no croaker, no declaimer against the times. He would not have written, That we are fallen upon an age in which corruption is not barely universal, is universally confessed.' Nor, 'Rapine preys on the public without opposition, and perjury betrays it without inquiry.' Nor would he, to excite a speedy reformation, have conjured up such phantoms of terror as these: A few years longer, and perhaps all endeavours will be in vain. We may be swallowed by an earthquake: we may be delivered to our enemies.' This is not Johnsonian. There are, indeed, in this Dedication_several sentences constructed upon the model of those of Johnson. But the imitation of the form, without the spirit of his style, has been so general, that this of itself is not sufficient evidence. Even our newspaper writers aspire to it. In an account of the funeral of Edwin, the comedian, in the Diary of Nov. 9, 1793, that son of drollery is thus described: 'A man who had so often cheered the sullenness of vacancy and suspended the approaches of sorrow.' And in the Dublin Evening Post, August 16, 1791, there is the following paragraph: 'It is a singular circumstance that in a city like this, containing 200,000 people, there are three months in the year during which no place of public amusement is open. Long vacation is here a vacation from pleasure as well as business: nor is there any mode of passing the listless evenings of declining summer but in the riots of a tavern or the stupidity of a coffee-house.' I have not thought it necessary to specify every copy of verses written by Johnson, it being my intention to publish an authentic edition of all his poetry, with notes. As the letter accompanying the list (which fully supports the observation in the text) was written but a week before Dr. Johnson's death, the reader may not be displeased to find it here preserved : TO MR. NICHOLS 'The late learned Mr. Swinton, haring one day remarked that one man, meaning, I suppose, no man but himself, could assign all the parts of the Ancient Universal History to their proper authors, at the request of Sir Robert Chambers, or of myself, gave the account which I now transmit to you in his own hand; being willing that of so great a work the history should be known, and that each writer should receive his due proportion of praise from posterity. 'I recommend to you to preserve this scrap of literary intelligence in accordingly done; and they are printed in the collection of his works. A very erroneous notion has circulated as to Johnson's deficiency in the knowledge of the Greek language, partly owing to the modesty with which, from knowing how much there was to be learned, he used to mention his own comparative acquisitions. When Mr. Cumberland1 talked to him of the Greek fragments which are so well illustrated in the Observer, and of the Greek dramatists in general, he candidly acknowledged his insufficiency in that particular branch of Greek literature. Yet it may be said that Mr. Swinton's own hand, or to deposit it in the Museum, that the veracity of this account may never be doubted.—I am, sir, your most humble servant, SAM. JOHNSON. 'Dec. 6, 1784. Mr. S―n independency of the Arabs. The Cosmogony, and a small part of the History immediately following, by Mr. Sale. To the birth of Abraham, chiefly by Mr. Shelvock. History of the Jews, Gauls, and Spaniards, by Mr. Psalmanazar. History of the Persians and the Constantinopolitan Empire, by Dr. Campbell. History of the Romans, by Mr. Bower.] 1 Mr. Cumberland assures me that he was always treated with great courtesy by Dr. Johnson, who, in his Letters to Mrs. Thrale, vol. ii. p. 68, thus speaks of that learned, ingenious, and accomplished gentle. man: The want of company is an inconvenience, but Mr. Cumberland is a million.' though not a great, he was a good Greek scholar. Dr. Charles Burney, the younger, who is universally acknowledged by the best judges to be one of the few men of this age who are very eminent for their skill in that noble language, has assured me that Johnson could give a Greek word for almost every English one; and that, although not sufficiently conversant in the niceties of the language, he upon some occasions discovered, even in these, a considerable degree of critical acumen. Mr. Dalzel, Professor of Greek at Edinburgh, whose skill in it is unquestionable, mentioned to me, in very liberal terms, the impression which was made upon him by Johnson in a conversation which they had in London concerning that language. As Johnson, therefore, was undoubtedly one of the first Latin scholars in modern times, let us not deny to his fame some additional splendour from Greek. I shall now fulfil my promise of exhibiting specimens of various sorts of imitation of Johnson's style. In the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 1787, there is an Essay on the Style of Dr. Samuel Johnson,' by the Reverend Robert Burrowes, whose respect for the great object of his criticism 1 is thus evinced in the concluding paragraph: 'I have singled him out. from the great body of the English writers because his universally acknowledged beauties would be most. apt to induce imitation; and I have treated rather on 1 We must smile at a little inaccuracy of metaphor in the Preface to the Transactions, which is written by Mr. Burrowes. The critic of the style of Johnson having, with a just zeal for literature, observed that the whole nation are called on to exert themselves, afterwards says: 'They are called on by every tie which can have a laudable influence on the heart of man.' his faults than his perfections, because an essay might comprise all the observations I could make upon his faults, while volumes would not be sufficient for a treatise on his perfections.' Mr. Burrowes has analysed the composition of Johnson, and pointed out its peculiarities with much acuteness; and I would recommend a careful perusal of his essay to those who, being captivated by the union of perspicuity and splendour which the writings of Johnson contain, without having a sufficient portion of his vigour of mind, may be in danger of becoming bad copyists of his manner. I, however, cannot but observe, and I observe it to his credit, that this learned gentleman has himself caught no mean degree of the expansion and harmony, which, independent of all other circumstances, characterise the sentences of Johnson. Thus, in the Preface to the volume in which the essay appears we find, 'If it be said that in societies of this sort too much attention is frequently bestowed on subjects barren and speculative, it may be answered that no one science is so little connected with the rest as not to afford many principles whose use may extend considerably beyond the science to which they primarily belong; and that no proposition is so purely theoretical as to be totally incapable of being applied to practical purposes. There is no apparent connection between duration and the cycloidal arch, the properties of which, duly attended to, have furnished us with our best regulated methods of measuring time: and he who has made himself master of the nature and affections of the logarithmic curve, is not aware that he has advanced considerably towards ascertaining the proportionable density of the |