and humour in verse, and yet no poetry. Hudibras has a profusion of these; yet it is not to be reckoned a poem. The Spleen, in Dodsley's collection, on which you say he chiefly rested, is not poetry." BOSWELL." Does not Gray's poetry, sir, tower above the common mark?" JOHNSON. "Yes, sir; but we must attend to the difference between what men in general cannot do if they would, and what every man may do if he would. Sixteen-string

Jack towered above the common mark." BOSWELL. "Then, sir, what is poetry ?" JOHNSON. "Why, sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is, but it is not easy to tell what it is."

No. IV.

POETS.

BOSWELL. "You have read Cibber's Apology, sir?" JOHNSON. "Yes, it is very entertaining; but, as for Cibber himself, taking from his conversation all that he ought not to have said, he was a poor creature. I remember, when he brought me one of his odes, to have my opinion of it, I could not bear such nonsense, and would not let him read it to the end; so little respect had I for that great man! (laughing.) Yet, I remember Richardson wondering that I could treat him with familiarity."

Another time: "Colley Cibber, sir, was by no means a blockhead; but, by arrogating to himself too much, he was in danger of losing that degree

of estimation to which he was entitled. His friends gave out that he intended his Birth-day Odes should be bad; but that was not the case, sir; for he kept them many months by him, and, a few years before he died, he showed me one of them, with great solicitude to render it as perfect as might be; and I made some corrections, to which he was not very willing to submit. I remember the following couplet, in allusion to the king and himself:

Ferch'd on the eagle's soaring wing,
The lowly linnet loves to sing.

Sir, he had heard something of the fabulous tale of the wren sitting upon the eagle's wing, and he had applied it to a linnet. Cibber's familiar style, however, was better than that which Whitehead has assumed. Grand nonsense is insupportable. Whitehead is but a little man to inscribe verses to players.

"Sir, I do not think Gray a first-rate poet. He has not a bold imagination, nor much command of words. The obscurity in which he has involved himself will not persuade us that he is sublime. His Elegy in a Church-Yard has a happy selection of images, but I don't like what are called his great things. His ode, which begins

Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!

Confusion on thy banners wait!

has been celebrated for its abruptness, and plunging into the subject all at once. But such arts as these have no merit, unless when they are original. We admire them only once; and this abruptness,

has nothing new in it: nay, we have it in the old song of Johnny Armstrong:

Is there ever a man in all Scotland,

From the highest estate to the lowest degree, &c.

And then, sir,

Yes, there is a man in Westmoreland,

And Johnny Armstrong they do him call.

There now, you plunge at once into the subject.
You have no previous narration to lead you to it.-
The two next lines in that ode are, I think, very
good:

Though, fann'd by conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state."

Bonnell Thornton had just published a burlesque Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, adapted to the ancient British music, viz. the salt-box, the Jew's harp, the marrow-bones and cleaver, the humstrum or hurdygurdy, &c. Johnson praised its humour, and seemed much diverted with it. He repeated the following passage:

In strains more exalted the salt-box shall join,

And clattering, and battering, and clapping combine;
With a rap and a tap while the hollow side sounds,
Up and down leaps the flap, and with rattling rebounds.*

* In 1769, I set for Smart and Newbury, Thornton's burlesque Ode on St. Cecilia's day. It was performed at Ranelagh in masks, to a very crowded audience, as I was told; for I then resided in Norfolk. Beard sung the saltbox song, which was admirably accompanied on that in

He told Boswell he had often looked into the poems of a pretty voluminous writer, Mr. (now Dr.) John Ogilvie, one of the Presbyterian ministers of Scotland, which had lately come out, but could find no thinking in them. BOSWELL." Is there not imagination in them, sir? JOHNSON. "Why, sir, there is in them what was imagination; but it is no more imagination in him, than sound is sound in the echo and his diction too is not his own. We have long ago seen white-robed innocence, and flower-bespangled meads."

He said: "Thomson, I think, had as much of the poet about him as most writers. Every thing appeared to him through the medium of his favourite pursuit. He could not have viewed those two candles burning but with a poetical eye."

Another time: "Thomson had a true poetical genius, the power of viewing every thing in a poetical light. His fault is such a cloud of words sometimes, that the sense can hardly peep through."

Buchanan, he said, was a very fine poet; and observed, that he was the first who complimented a lady, by ascribing to her the different perfections of the heathen goddesses; but that Johnston im. proved upon this, by making his lady at the same time free from their defects. He dwelt upon Buchanan's elegant verses to Mary queen of Scots,

strument by Brent, the fencing-master, and father of Miss Brent, the celebrated singer; Skeggs on the broomstick, as bassoon; and a remarkable performer on the Jew's-harp.—

Buzzing twangs the iron lyre.' Cleavers were cast in bellmetal for this entertainment. All the performers of the old woman's oratory, employed by Foote, were, I believe, employed at Ranelagh on this occasion.”—Burney.

Nympha Caledoniæ, &c. and spoke with enthusiasm of the beauty of Latin verse. "All the languages," said he, 66 cannot furnish so melodious a line as

Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas."

"Buchanan," he observed, has fewer centoes than any modern Latin poet. He not only had great knowledge of the Latin language, but was a great poetical genius. Both the Scaligers praise him."

Boswell told him, that Voltaire, in a conversation with him, had distinguished Pope and Dryden thus:

Pope drives a handsome chariot, with a couple of neat trim nags; Dryden a coach, and six stately horses." JOHNSON. "Why, sir, the truth is, they both drive coaches and six; but Dryden's horses are either galloping or stumbling; Pope's go at a steady even trot." He said of Goldsmith's Traveller, which had been published in Boswell's absence, "There has not been so fine a poem since Pope's time."

After dinner, where the conversation first turned upon Pope Johnson said, his characters of men were admirably drawn ; those of women, not so well. He repeated, in his forcible melodious manner, the concluding lines of the Dunciad. While he was talking loudly in praise of these lines, one of the company ventured to say, "Too fine for such a poema poem on what 2" JOHNSON. (with a disdainful look,) "Why, on dunces. It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah, sir, hadst thou lived in those days!-It is not worth while being a dunce now, when there are no wits." Bickerstaff ob