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Johnson was buried, as he had hoped to be, in Westminster Abbey, with the recognition due to his high merit; and a statue representing "a halfnaked muscularathlete," was raised to his memory in St. Paul's, under which is a Latin inscription by Dr. Parr. There are statues in St. Paul's which serve as a memorial of men who would otherwise be forgotten, but no Englishman requires to visit the great Cathedral in which he so often worshipped, to be reminded of Samuel Johnson.

HIS WORKS

"THAT book is good in vain which the reader throws away; he only is the master who keeps the mind in pleasing captivity, whose pages are perused with eagerness, and in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow such as the traveller casts upon departing day."

This fine passage occurs in the "Life of Dryden:" and the question arises whether Johnson's works, or any one of them, will stand this test. It is interesting to remember that on the day when Pope brought out his "Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-eight, a dialogue something like Horace," Johnson published his "London," (an imitation of the third Satire of Juvenal,) in which Pope was so much interested, that he made inquiries about the author, and on hearing that he was an obscure writer, observed, "He will soon be déterré." Pope tried, but without success, to assist him, and on hearing that he had written on his behalf to Lord Gower, Johnson exclaimed, "Who would not be proud to have such a man as Pope solicitous in inquiring about him." "London," as Mr. Courthope points out, "was received by the public with even more favour than

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Pope's satire." It is a forcible piece of rhetoric, but, unlike any other work of Johnson's, based on insincerity. Juvenal's argument, of course, forced him to applaud the country at the expense of the town, a praise which at no period of his life could the writer have honestly given. In "The Vanity of Human Wishes," on the contrary, written in imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal, and published eleven years later, Johnson had a congenial theme upon which he was ever ready to expatiate. The profound sincerity of this Satire lifts it into a higher atmosphere and suffices to prove that he who knew so much about the poets belonged himself to the fraternity.

The revolt at the close of the eighteenth century against the classical school of poetry, serious and significant though it be, was not wholly productive of good; and Wordsworth, the supreme poet of his age, was chiefly great when forgetting his own theory that the language of the common people sufficed for the poet. But Wordsworth and Coleridge were amply justified in protesting against the poetic diction, which captivated even a true poet like Gray, and led him to call a cat "a hapless nymph," and to translate the trundling of a hoop into "chasing the rolling circle's speed." The error of Johnson's age was to mistake good sense expressed in conventional language, for poetry; perhaps in the p present day we have fallen into the opposite extreme, and sought for the highest gift of the poet in the music of his words. To such music Johnson was utterly insensible, and the impression left by his verse is due to the passionate fervour which caused Byron to pronounce "The Vanity of Human Wishes" "a grand poem;" and Scott to write that "its deep and pathetic morality has often extracted tears from those whose eyes wander dry over pages professedly sentimental." Scott indeed professed his admiration for Johnson's poetry even more strongly, and said he had greater pleasure in reading it than any other poetical composition. The amount of verse composed by Johnson is very small. "London" consists of 263 lines, and "The Vanity of Human Wishes" of 368, yet these short poems, with a prologue on the opening of Drury Lane Theatre, contain golden words that belong to the current coin of literature. Is there any reader or book-lover who does not recognize the following couplets and lines?

He left a name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral or adorn a tale.

From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow,
And Swift expires a driveller and a show.

Each change of many-coloured life he drew,
Exhausted worlds and then imagined new.

Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage.
This mournful truth is everywhere confessed,
Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol.

There are greater poets than Johnson who have left fewer lines universally familiar, and in

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