AGE 60.]

CRITICISM. HARDYKNUTE.

73

Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness,-inspissated gloom."

Politicks being mentioned, he said, "This petitioning is a new mode of distressing government, and a mighty easy one. I will undertake to get petitions either against quarter guineas or half guineas, with the help of a little hot wine. There must be no yielding to encourage this. The object is not important enough. We are not to blow up half a dozen palaces, because one cottage is burning."

The conversation then took another turn. JOHNSON. "It is amazing what ignorance of certain points one sometimes finds in men of eminence. A wit about town, who wrote Latin bawdy verses, asked me, how it happened that England and Scotland, which were once two kingdoms, were now one :— and Sir Fletcher Norton did not seem to know that there were such publications as the Reviews."

"The ballad of Hardyknute has no great merit, if it be really ancient. People talk of nature. But mere obvious nature may be exhibited with very little power of mind."

1 [Hardyknute was first printed by subscription in 1719, in a folio of twelve pages as Hardyknute: A Fragment. In 1724 it was printed in Allan Ramsay's Evergreen, with its language more antique, and three verses inserted. In 1740 it was re-published in modern English as "The First Canto of an Epic Poem, with General Remarks and Notes." One of the remarks was, "Far be it from me to compare Hardyknute with the matchless Iliad, but I will venture to say that our author was undoubtedly blest with a large portion of the fiery genius of Homer." The editor, probably John Moncrieff, said that there was in Hardyknute a grandeur, a majesty of sentiment diffused through the whole -a true sublime, which nothing can surpass. In 1748 Hardyknute was reprinted at the Foulis press; and in 1756 it was included in a collection of Scots poems. Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry appeared in 1765, and in the second edition, published in 1767, Percy identified the modern author of the poem as Lady Wardlaw, who was born Elizabeth Halket, in 1677, second daughter of Sir Charles Halket of Pitferran, married Sir Henry Wardlaw in 1696, and died in 1727 after fifteen years of widowhood. It was she who first produced the poem, which she said she had found written on shreds of paper used for the bottoms of clues. Afterwards she gave up that fiction. John Pinkerton, in the second edition of his Select Scotch Ballads, published in 1783, ascribed Hardyknute to Sir John Hope Bruce of Kinross, who had married Sir Charles Halket's younger daughter. Pinkerton rested his statement on the authority of Lord Hailes. Lord Hailes wrote to Pinkerton in 1785, "You mistook, if you suppose that I reckoned Sir John Bruce to be the author of Hardyknute. It was his sister-in-law, Lady Wardlaw, who is said to be the author. All that I know

But

On Thursday, October 19th, I passed the evening with him at his house. He advised me to complete a Dictionary of words peculiar to Scotland, of which I shewed him a specimen. "Sir, (said he,) Ray has made a collection of north-country words.1 By collecting those of your country, you will do a useful thing towards the history of the language." He bade ine also go on with collections which I was making upon the antiquities of Scotland. "Make a large book; a folio." BOSWELL. “But of what use will it be, Sir?" JOHNSON. "Never mind the use: do it."

I complained that he had not mentioned Garrick in his Preface to Shakspeare; and asked him if he did not admire him. JOHNSON. "Yes, as 'a poor player, who frets and struts his hour upon the stage ;'-as a shadow." BOSWELL. "But has he not brought Shakspeare into notice?" JOHNSON. "Sir, to allow that, would be to lampoon the age. Many of Shakspeare's plays are the worse for being acted: Macbeth, for instance." BOSWELL. "What, Sir, is nothing gained by decoration and action? Indeed, I do wish that you had mentioned Garrick." JOHNSON. "My dear Sir, had I mentioned him, I must have mentioned many more; Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Cibber, -nay, and Mr. Cibber too; he too altered Shakspeare." BOSWELL. "You have read his 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

on the subject is mentioned in Bishop Percy's collection." It was the question of antiquity discussed in Percy's second edition, then a recent book, that gave rise to the conversation from which Boswell quotes Johnson's opinion. Sir Walter Scott wrote on a fly-leaf of Allan Ramsay's Evergreen, "Hardyknute is the first poem I ever learnt-the last that I shall forget."]

[A Collection of English Words not Generally Used, published in 1674 by John Ray. Ray was a blacksmith's son, who was sent to Cambridge, obtained a fellowship at Trinity, became Greek reader and mathematical lecturer of his college, had a mind active in many directions, and became the chief botanist of his time.]

This book, An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian, with an Historical View of the Stage during his own Time, was first published in 4to in 1740. There was an 8vo edition in the same year. This was two years after Johnson came to London. Colley Cibber died in 1757, at the age of eighty-six.