72 JOHNSON. 



who first attempts the ' Abyssinian Candide' feels that 

 he has imposed on himself a task rather than found a 

 pleasure or even a relaxation. The manner is heavy, 

 and little suited to the occasion ; the matter is of a very 

 ordinary fabric, if it is safe and wholesome ; there is 

 nothing that shines except the author's facility of writing 

 in a very artificial style, as soon as we are informed, by 

 external evidence, of the whole having been written in a 

 few nights. He, perhaps, had some kind of misgiving 

 that it was not a successful effort, for he had never 

 looked at it till two and twenty years after it was 

 written, when a friend happening to have it who was 

 travelling with him, Johnson read it with some eager- 

 ness. 



But his Poetry belongs to a different rank. That his 

 Tragedy was a great failure on the stage has been already 

 related ; that it is of extreme dulness, of a monotony 

 altogether insufferable, and therefore tires out the reader's 

 patience quite as much as it did the auditors, is true ; 

 that most of his lesser pieces are only things of easy and 

 of fairly successful execution is likewise certain, with 

 perhaps the exception of his verses on Robert Levett's 

 death, which have a sweetness and a tenderness seldom 

 found in any of his compositions. But had he never 

 written anything after the 'Imitations of Juvenal/ his 

 name would have gone down to posterity as a poet of 

 great excellence one who only did not reach equal 

 celebrity with Pope, because he came after him, and did 

 not assiduously court the muse. 



In truth, these two pieces are admirable, both for their 

 matter, their diction, and their versification. In close- 

 ness of imitation, indeed, they have a moderate degree 



