vades his descriptions of life and his references to his own history command our willing admiration. That he wanted enthusiasm and creative imagination and lofty sentiment was not his fault. We do not blame him for not being Milton. We would even treat what we deem the faults of Johnson with a tenderness approaching respect; for they were results to a degree which man can not estimate of a diseased, irritable, nervous, unhappy, physical temperament, and belonged to the body more than to the mind." So far the great American. Would that all critics had his charity! In none of Dr. Channing's praises of Johnson do I join more cordially than in the admiration with which he speaks of his occasional references to his own history. I subjoin the letter to Lord Chesterfield which comprises so many of the distinguishing characteristics of his style, together with a pungency, a truth, and a pathos which belong even more to personal character than to literary power. It explains itself: "My Lord, "I have lately been informed by the proprietor of 'The World,' that two papers in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public were written by your Lordship. To be so distinguished is an honor which, being very little accustomed to favors from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge. "When upon some slight encouragement I first visited your Lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address; and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself Le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre, that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. 'Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before. "The Shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks. 66 Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and can not enjoy it; till I am solitary, and can not impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. "Having carried on my work, therefore, with so little obligation to any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, My concluding extract is of a very different description-as different as the character and situation of the two persons to whom the letter and the stanzas relate, These verses again tell their own story, though they do not tell the whole, for Johnson, poor himself, was to the poor apothecary a generous patron and an unfailing friend. The poem has much of the homely pathos, the graphic truth of Crabbe, and is so free from manner, that it might rather pass for his than for Dr. Johnson's. ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT LEVETT. Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blast or slow decline Well tried through many a varying year, Of every friendless name the friend. Yet still he fills Affection's eye Thy praise to merit undefined. When fainting Nature called for aid, His vigorous remedy displayed The power of Art without the show. In misery's darkest caverns known, No summons mocked by chill delay, His virtues walked their narrow round, The busy day, the peaceful night, His frame was firm, his powers were bright, Then with no throbs of fiery pain, And freed his soul the nearest way. XII. OLD POETS. ROBERT HERRICK-GEORGE WITHER. NOTHING seems stranger in the critics of the last century than their ignorance of the charming lyrical poetry of the times of the early Stuarts and the Commonwealth. One should think that the songs of the great dramatists, whose genius they did acknowledge-Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ben Jonsonmight have prepared them to recognize the kindred melodies of such versifiers as Marlowe, and Raleigh, and Withers, and Marvell. His Jacobite prejudices might have predisposed Dr. Johnson, in particular, to find some harmonious stanzas in the minstrels of the cavaliers, Lovelace and the Marquis of Montrose. But so complete is the silence in which the writers of that day pass over these glorious songsters, that it seems only charitable to suppose that these arbiters of taste had never met with their works. With the honorable exceptions of Thomas Wharton and Bishop Percy, there is not a critic from Johnson downward who does not cite Waller as the first poet who smoothed our rugged tongue into harmonious verse. And the prejudice lingers still in places where one does not expect to find it. The parish clerk of Beaconsfield is by no means the only, although by far the most excusable authority who, standing bare-headed before his pyramidal tomb in the church-yard, assured me with the most honest conviction, that Waller was the earliest and finest versifier in the language. Herrick is one of the many whose lyrics might be called into court to overturn this verdict. Originally bred to the bar, he took orders at a comparatively late period, and obtained a living in Devonshire, from which he fled during the strict rule of the Lord Protector, concealing himself under a lay habit in London, and returning to his parsonage with the return of the monarch, whose birth had formed the subject of one of his earliest pastorals. More than any eminent writer of that day, Herrick's collection requires careful sifting; but there is so much fancy, so much delicacy, so much grace, that a good selection would well repay the publisher. Bits there are that are exquisite: as when in enumerating the cates composing" Oberon's Feast," in his "Fairyland," he includes, among a strange farrago of unimaginable dishes, "The broke heart of a nightingale O'ercome in music." Some of his pieces, too, contain curious illustrations of the customs, manners, and prejudices of our ancestors. I shall quote one or two from the division of the Hesperides, that he calls "charms and ceremonies,” beginning with the motto: DIVINATION BY A DAFFODIL. When a daffodil I see, Hanging down his head toward me, The adorning the houses with evergreens seems then to have been as common as our own habit of decking them with flowers. CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMAS EVE. Down with rosemary and bays, The holly hitherto did sway; Or Easter's Eve appear. Then youthful box, which now has grace Your houses to renew, Grown old, surrender must his place Unto the crisped yew. |