74 JOHNSON. 



point. There is nothing in Johnson to be compared 

 with the proud, insulting scorn of 



I demens curre per Alpes, 



Ut pueris placeas, et declamatio fias, 



not lowered in the tone by Dryden's exquisite and literal 



verse, 



Go, climb the rugged Alps, ambitious fool, 

 To please the boys, and be a theme at school ! 



The Xerxes, too, of Juvenal is finer than the Xerxes 

 of Johnson, who has, however, added his Bold Bavarian, 

 one of the best passages of the kind in his poems. 



Were I to name the lines that please me most in 

 these two pieces I should venture to give those in which 

 there are both an unusual mixture of pathos and a 

 happy play of imagination, as rare in Johnson's verse 

 I mean the lines on Human Life. 



" Now Sorrow rises as the day returns, 

 A sister sickens, or a daughter mourns. 

 Now kindred merit fills the sable bier, 

 Now lacerated friendship claims a tear; 

 Year chases year, decay pursues decay, 

 Still drops some joy from withering life away. 

 New forms arise and different views engage, 

 Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage, 

 Till pitying nature signs the last release, 

 And bids afflicted worth retire to peace." 



Nothing, with perhaps the exception of the last 

 couplet but one, can be finer : and the couplet imme- 

 diately preceding ^that more doubtful one is most 

 admirable, giving an image at once lively, beautiful, and 

 appropriate. It is recorded of Johnson that he often 

 would repeat, with much emotion, those lines of the 

 Georgics, in a similar vein, and which probably he had 

 in his mind when he composed this beautiful passage. 



