JOHN SONESE POETRY.

ONE of the Universities having chosen Dr. Johnson's Satires as their English subject for the local examination, those brilliant recasts of Juvenal's Third and Tenth Satires,—in the

form partly of free translations, more frequently of original verse moulded in the moulds of Juvenal's thought, on the vices of the London Johnson loved so well, and on "the vanity of human wishes,"—have received more general attention during the last

few months than probably during any year since their first appear- ance, in 1738 and 1749. And certainly they deserve this atten- tion. It is but seldom in the present day that one hears any hearty appreciation of Dr. Johnson's poetry. The modern school of poetry runs in a completely different groove,—so different, that theories of poetry are constructed, not perhaps intentionally, but

still, by the very materials from which they are generalised, necessarily, to exclude the sonorous and often grandiose verse of the eighteenth century's omnivorous student and knock-down wit. And yet it seems clear to us that no theory of poetry can be good at all which does not keep room for Dr. John- son's best efforts. We take it that there are but two abso- lute essentials of poetry,—first, the resonance of feeling which finds its natural expression in the cadences of verse and in the subtle sweetnesses of rhyme ; and next, enough, at least, of special genius for the selection of words, to give the power either of charming by their felicity or of riveting us by their pent-up force. Of course, these two gifts may range over a very wide or be confined to a very narrow surface. In Dr. Johnson's case there was assuredly but a very limited region within which his mind seemed to need the help of rhythm and rhyme, in order to convey perfectly what was in it ; nor was the empire which he wielded over words either a very varied or uniformly a very happy one. But within the limits of his special range, we doubt whether either Pope or Dryden ever entirely equalled, or whether any English writer ever surpassed his verse. He was, no doubt, often pompous, and always a little ponderous. His manner is sometimes stately beyond the level of his feeling, and re- minds us of stage thunder. There is little flexibility and no variety of movement in his verse. As Goldsmith said, he makes his little fishes talk like whales ; and even his whales are sometimes

clumsy in their wrath, as well as always clumsy in their sport. Still, Johnson had bigger thoughts and feelings of a kind which invited to stately verse, than most literary men of any age, and at least as great a faculty for choosing words with a certain spell of power in them, as many who have written a great deal more,— probably only because they have had more leisure to gratify their taste. Take, for instance, the well-known lines on Shakespeare, written for Garrick to repeat on the re-opening of Drury Lane Theatre:—

"Each change of many-coloured life he drew, Exhausted worlds and then imagined new; Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toiled after him in vain.

We doubt if any English poet ever expressed so powerfully or so pithily the inexhaustible force of creative genius, or the flight of imagination into regions where it was always possible that nature might yet follow with slower step, as Johnson expressed it in those four grand as well as grandiose lines. It is true, we think, that Johnson can hardly be called a great satirist, in the sense in which we apply that term either to Juvenal, after whom he moulded his satires, or to Thackeray, for example, to whose lighter shafts of scorn the present age is better accustomed. Johnson was not light enough for satire,—of which a certain negligence, whether real or skilfully simulated, is the very essence. For such negligence he was too much in earnest. Juvenal him- self, indeed, is often too earnest for the genius of satire, but where he is earnest, his earnestness is the earnestness of dis- gust; while Johnson is apt to throw in a drop of genuine compassion. Thus Juvenal describes old age with a sort of loathing ; here, for instance, is the least scornful part of his sickening picture :—

" Da spatium vitm, multos da, Jupiter, annos

Hoc recto vulto, solnm hoe et pallidus optas.

Sed quam continuis et quantis longs. senectue Plena malls I deformem et tetrum ante omnia vultum, Disaimilemque sni deformem pro cute pellem, Pendentesque genes, et tales aspice rugas,

Quales, nmbriferos ubi pandit Thabraea Banns, In vetula scalpit jam meter simia buses." But Johnson is touched with pity :— " Enlarge my life with multitude of days!' In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays ; Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know That life protracted is protracted woe.

Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy.

In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour, The fruit autumnal and the vernal flower ; With listless eyes the dotard views the store, He views and wonders that they please no more ; Now pall the tasteless meats and joyless wines, And luxury with sighs her slave resigns."

That is not bad verse of its sort, but it must be admitted that it does not paint the vanity of the wish for long life with anything approaching to the deadly scorn of Juvenal ; there is far too much pity in it. But admit that Johnson does not write true satire, and then observe that wherever a vein of moral indignation, of generous contempt, can be brought into his theme, Johnson rises at once above his model. There is hardly any passage in Juvenal's terrible satire to compare in poetical fire with that in which Johnson depicts the pains of the severe literary life, as he himself, with his own deep vein of constitutional melancholy, had known them, of its high instincts, its ascetic impulses, its weariness, its poverty, its insolent patrons, and its glory reaped too late : —

"Yet should thy soul indulge the gen'rons heat Till captive Science yields her last retreat; Should Reason guide thee with her brightest ray, And pour on misty Doubt resistless day; Should no false kindness lure to loose delight, Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright ; Should tempting Novelty thy cell refrain, And Sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain; Should Beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart, Nor claim the triumph of a letter'd heart ; Should no disease thy torpid veins invade, Nor Melancholy's phantoms haunt thy shade ; Yet hope not life from grief or danger free, Nor think the doom of man revers'd for the.: Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause awhile from letters to be wise ; There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail. See nations, slowly wise, and meanly just, To buried merit raise the tardy bust. If dreams yet flatter, once again attend, Hear Lydiat's life, and Galileo's end."

This brief inclusion of "the patron" in the list of the almost unendurable evils of the literary struggle,—" Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail,"—is a touch of scorn which only true genius could have conceived. And at least an equal power of eoncentrating a whole world of lofty feeling in a touch is illus- trated in by far the beat-quoted of all Johnson's lines, the close of his picture of the career of Charles XII.,—the lines in which he observes, with a half-smile, on the paradox that the best pur- pose left to which to turn so terrible a name should be the purpose of the moralist or the romance-writer :—

" The vanquish'd hero leaves his broken bands, And shows his miseries in distant lands ; Condemn'd a needy supplicant to wait, While ladies interpose, and slaves debate. But did not Chance at length her error mend? Did no subverted empire mark his end? Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound ? Or hostile millions press him to the ground ? His fall was dostin'd to a barren strand, A petty fortress, and a dubious hand; He loft the name, at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale."

But after all, Johnson's poetry was at its best when employed in giving expression to the vigorous piety of his ardent, though somewhat elephantine mind. No one ever realised more deeply than he, that life is disappointment; no one ever realised more deeply, that disappointment itself may be life, and a noble life, too. The verses in which he turns Juvenal's rather dry and languid admonitions to pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body, into a passionate protest against the 'agnostic' theory that because we never really know what will be for our benefit, we should not pray at all, are full of the concentrated lightning as well as the thunder of his noblest work. No doubt one is always a little sensible, in reading Johnson's poetry, that it appears to assume for human nature more mass and dignity in general than is quite consistent with our knowledge either of ourselves or of our fellow-creatures ; and sometimes we are just a little ashamed of having so sonorous a voice given even to our deepest and most passionate feelings. There is in his noblest verse a sound which seems to be borrowed from the trumpet through which the Athenian actors conveyed their voice to the

utmost limits of their great open-air theatre. But then, if ours were a world of human beings cast on the scale of Johnson, we do not know that this rolling thunder would even seem too grandiose. At all events, what can have more of the intense compression which marks a vivid inward fire than the fine close to his "Vanity of Human Wishes ?"— " Where then shall Hope and Fear their objeots find?

Must dull suspense corrupt the stagnant mind ?

Must helpless man in ignorance sedate, Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?

Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise No cries invoke the mercies of the skies?

Inquirer, cease ; petitions yet remain Which Heav'n may hear, nor deem religion vain.

Still raise for good the supplicating voice, But leave to Heav'n the measure and the ohoice : Safe in his power, whose eyes discern afar The secret ambush of a specious pray'r I Implore his aid, in his decisions rest, Secure, whate'er he gives, he gives the best.

Yet, when the sense of sacred presence fires, And strong devotion to the skies aspires,

Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind,

Obedient passions, and a will resign'd; For love, which scarce collective man can fill; For patience, sov'reign o'er transmuted ill ; For faith, that, panting for a happier seat, Counts death kind Nature's signal of retreat : These goods for man the laws of Heav'ti ordain,

These goods he grants, who grants the pow'r to gain ;

With these celestial Wisdom calms the mind, And makes the happiness she does not find?!

It would be hardly possible to find a truer and yet a more caustic expression for the true agnostic theory of life than that contained in the couplet,—

" Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,

Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate ?"

' Sedate ' ignorance is the very attitude of mind in which clearly "the Unknown and Unknowable" ought to be approached, and yet it expresses, as it would be otherwise difficult to express, the revolt of human nature against the creed it implies. Again, what can express more grandly the helplessness and the dreariness of the "stream of tendency" of which, on that theory, we are the sport, than the line in which those "darkling" rapids are described?

On the whole, though there is no flexibility in Johnson's poetry, and no variety, though the monotony which often wearies us in Pope and Dryden would have wearied us still more in Johnson if Johnson had been anything like as voluminous a poet as Pope or Dryden, yet no poetry of that order, neither Pope's nor Dry-den's, seems to us to contain so much that is really majestic in it,_ so much that portrays for us a great mind and a glowing heart, groping its way painfully through the darkness of the world, by the help of a vivid but distant gleam of supernatural light, and intent on 'making '—by that aid—' the happiness it could not find.' Johnson was too intent on great ends for a satirist; his mind was too stiff for the poetry of ordinary sentiment or ordinary re- flection; but for the rare occasions on which you want in poetry what we may call the concentrated pressure of many atmospheres, —whether for the purpose of expressing the vastness of Shake- speare's genius, or the sorely hampered life of human short- sightedness and want, or the secret store of power to be found in human self-abnegation,—we know of no English poet like Dr. Johnson.