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personal acquaintance. With Collins, the rival of Gray, if not his superior as a lyric poet, Johnson was familiar, and after describing a few incidents in his sad life, he adds, "he was a man with whom I once delighted to converse, and still remember with tenderness." Of the high position of Collins among the poets of his country he does not seem to have a perception, and concludes his critical estimate with the fellowing decision:

His diction was often harsh, unskilfully laboured and injudiciously selected. He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry. His lines commonly are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants. As men are often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise when it gives little pleasure.

The elaborate biography of Savage, written, as already stated, many years before, fills a space wholly out of proportion to his claims as a poet. Why, it might be asked, should as many pages be allotted to a contemptible versifier as to John Milton? But Savage had been Johnson's comrade, and it may be hoped that his friendship, and not his judgement, led him to write that the prevailing beauty of that writer's style was sublimity. Strange, too, is the lenity with which the moral character of the poetaster is treated, for the vices of Savage were such as in another man would have won no tolerance from the biographer. In the greatest stress of his London life Johnson preserved his integrity; Savage at no period of his career displayed a sense of honour, and was ready to cheat friend and foe alike. An adept in making promises, it never occurred to him to keep them; and those who sympathized most with his strange lot, found at last that to help him was impossible. Johnson admits that he was "the slave of every passion that happened to be excited by the presence of its object; that he appeared to think himself born to be supported by others, and that his friendship was of little value as it was always dangerous to trust him." In his final paragraph Johnson points a moral; but surely no man so contemptible was ever deemed worthy of an admirably written biography to enforce it.

In his criticisms of the poets Johnson's praise and blame are somewhat strangely awarded. The assertion which excited the wrath of John Wesley, that Prior's "Solomon" is a tedious poem, will not be contested by the modern reader, for that pretentious work is now as dead as Sir Richard Blackmore's epics; but Johnson failed to discover the charm of Prior as a writer of occasional verses, and even asserts that "his numbers commonly want airiness, lightness and felicity;" the very qualities for which his genius is distinguished.

The "Lives" exhibit more vividly, perhaps, than any other work of the century, the vanity, if not the glory, of literature. Already it has been asked with Pope: "Who now reads Cowley?" "The name of the great author of 'Hudibras," says Johnson, "can only perish with the language;" but "Hudibras" has now few readers who are not also students. "Perhaps," he writes again, "no composition of our language has been oftener perused than Pomfret's 'Choice;'" but that poem, which carried the author's volume through several editions, can no longer claim a reader. And what do we know of Roscommon, with his "spritely verses?" of Dorset, whom Dryden called superior to the ancients in satire? of Walsh, who lives, if he have life at all, in the praise of Pope? of Blackmore, who can at least claim to be one of the most voluminous versemakers in the language? of King, and Duke; of Mallet and Hughes? or even of that great work, "The Pleasures of Imagination?" Time spares neither poets nor prose writers; and a rare genius is now needed to carry a man's name bravely for even half a century.

"The house" (of fame), says Swift, "is so full that there is no room for above one or two, at most, in an age, through the whole world." This, however, is not the final word; the thoughts of great writers live after their works are forgotten, and the world, while neglecting its masters, grows the better by their teaching.

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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.

I. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS.

Voyage to Abyssinia, 1735.
London; A Poem, 1738.

Life of Richard Savage, 1744.

The Plan of a Dictionary of the English language, addressed to the Earl of Chesterfield, 1747

The Vanity of Human Wishes, 1749.

Irene; a Tragedy, 1749.

The Rambler. 2 vols. 1750-52.

A Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols.

1755.

Rasselas. 2 vols. 1759.
The Idler. 2 vols. 1761.

Preface to his edition of Shakespeare, 1765.

A False Alarm, 1770.

Taxation no Tyranny, 1775.

A Journey to the Western Highlands of Scotland, 1775.

Lives of the most eminent English Poets. 4 vols. 1781.

Prayers and Meditations, 1785.
Poetical Works, collected in 1 vol. 1785.

Debates in Parliament. 2 vols. 1787.

II. COLLECTED AND MODERN

EDITIONS.

Works of Samuel Johnson. Edited by Arthur Murphy. 12 vols. London, 1792.

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