62 Johnson's youthful compositions. Nor my brave brothers, that have bit the ground, As the sad thought of your impending fate: . Tears, at my name, shall drown those beauteous eyes, To a YOUNG LADY on her BIRTH-DAY1. Thy form more lovely, more adorn'd thy mind; May powerful nature join with grateful art, To point each glance, and force it to the heart! Those sovereign charms with strictest care employ ; THE YOUNG AUTHOUR'. WHEN first the peasant, long inclin'd to roam, 1 Mr. Hector informs me, that this was made almost impromptu, in his presence. BOSWELL. 2 This he inserted, with many alterations, in the Gentleman's Maga Pleas'd Johnson's youthful compositions. Pleas'd with the scene the smiling ocean yields, While the breeze whispers, and the streamers play : This thought once form'd, all council comes too late, 63 zine, 1743 [p. 378]. BOSWELL. The alterations are not always for the better. into Thus he alters 'And the long honours of a lasting name' 'And fir'd with pleasing hope of endless fame.' • Settle was the last of the city-poets; post, May 15, 1776. ''Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the great.' 141. Dunciad, 1. EPILOGUE, 64 Johnson's youthful compositions. (A.D. 1728. EPILOGUE, intended to have been spoken by a LADY who was to personate the Ghost of HERMIONE'. YE blooming train, who give despair or joy, And scents ambrosial breathe in every gale : 1 Some young ladies at Lichfield having proposed to act The Distressed Mother, Johnson wrote this, and gave it to Mr. Hector to convey it privately to them. Boswell. See post, 1747, for The Distressed Mother. And Aetat. 19.] Johnson two years at home. And every beauty withers at the blast: Where e'er they fly their lovers' ghosts pursue, Vex ev'ry eye, and every bosom tear; With pity soften every awful grace, And beauty smile auspicious in each face; So shall you guiltless reign, and all mankind adore.' 65 The two years which he spent at home, after his return from Stourbridge, he passed in what he thought idleness', and was scolded by his father for his want of steady application'. He had no settled plan of life, nor looked forward at all, but merely lived from day to day. Yet he read a great deal in a desultory manner, without any scheme of study, as chance threw books in his way, and inclination directed him through them. He used to mention one curious instance of his casual reading, when but a boy. Having imagined that his brother had hid some apples behind a large folio upon an upper shelf in his father's shop, he climbed up to search for them. There were no apples; but 1 Yet he said to Boswell :- Sir, in my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now' (post, July 21, 1763). He told Mr. Langton, that 'his great period of study was from the age of twelve to that of eighteen' (Ib. note). He told the King that his reading had later on been hindered by ill-health (post, Feb. 1767). 2 Hawkins (Life, p. 9) says that 'his father took him home, probably with a view to bring him up to his own trade; for I have heard Johnson say that he himself was able to bind a book.' It were better bind books again,' wrote Mrs. Thrale to him on Sept. 18, 1777, ‘as you did one year in our thatched summer-house.' Piozzi Letters, i. 375. It was most likely at this time that he refused to attend his father to Uttoxeter market, for which fault he made atonement in his old age (post, November 1784). I.-5 the 66 His wide reading. [A.D. 1728. the large folio proved to be Petrarch, whom he had seen mentioned in some preface, as one of the restorers of learning. His curiosity having been thus excited, he sat down with avidity, and read a great part of the book. What he read during these two years he told me, was not works of mere amusement, 'not voyages and travels, but all literature, Sir, all ancient writers, all manly: though but little Greek, only some of Anacreon and Hesiod; but in this irregular manner (added he) I had looked into a great many books, which were not commonly known at the Universities, where they seldom read any books but what are put into their hands by their tutors; so that when I came to Oxford, Dr. Adams, now master of Pembroke College, told me I was the best qualified for the University that he had ever known come there'.' In estimating the progress of his mind during these two years, as well as in future periods of his life, we must not regard his own hasty confession of idleness; for we see, when he explains himself, that he was acquiring various stores; and, indeed he himself concluded the account with saying, 'I would not have you think I was doing nothing then.' He might, perhaps, have studied more assiduously; but it may be doubted whether such a mind as his was not more enriched by roaming at large in the fields of literature than if it had been confined to any single spot. The analogy between body and mind is very general, and the parallel will hold as to their food, as well as any other particular. The flesh of animals who feed excursively, is allowed to have a higher flavour than that of those who are cooped up. May there not be the same difference between Perhaps Johnson had his own early reading in mind when he thus describes Pope's reading at about the same age. 'During this period of his life he was indefatigably diligent and insatiably curious; wanting health for violent, and money for expensive pleasures, and having excited in himself very strong desires of intellectual eminence, he spent much of his time over his books; but he read only to store his mind with facts and images, seizing all that his authors presented with undistinguishing voracity, and with an appetite for knowledge too eager to be nice.' Johnson's Works, viii. 239. men |