steady attention of a numerous circle of friends, and was attended by the most eminent of the faculty without fees. He now prepared for death by many little acts of retribution, and by destroying most of his MS. papers, among which were two quarto volumes, containing a full and most particular account of his own life; the loss of which cannot sufficiently be regretted.

His last days seem to have been unclouded by those gloomy apprehensions which had so long oppressed him. He was resigned, calm, and full of Christian hope and faith. He died on the thirteenth of December, 1785, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, and was interred in Westminster Abbey; his funeral was attended by a large and respectable body of men of distinction, who had honoured him with their friendship. A monument has since been erected to his memory, by subscription, in St. Paul's Cathedral

6

The fame of Dr Johnson would not have been less widely diffused if the few poetical productions contained in the following pages had never been written ; and yet the Two Satires,' and the Prologue for the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre,' are noble productions; and would have been sufficient to throw no mean lustre on the reputation of an ordinary writer. He, like Pope, chose to be the poet of reason; not because he was deficient in imagination, for his Oriental fictions contain much of the elements of the most fanciful poetry, but his mind was so constituted that he contemned all that had not a direct practical tendency? That he knew how to appreciate the creative faculty of the poet is evident from the character he has drawn of Shakspeare; and he would have done justice to Milton, if his prejudices against the man had not blinded his judgment to the merits of the poet. He had diligently studied the works of Dryden and Pope, and

has caught the spirit, vigour, and terseness of his great models. I have already mentioned the exquisitely pathetic Verses on the Death of Levett.'

The wonderful powers of Johnson (says Dr. Drake) were never shown to greater advantage than on this occasion, where the subject, from its obscurity and mediocrity, seemed to bid defiance to poetical efforts; it is in fact warm from the heart, and is the only poem from the pen of Johnson that has been bathed with tears.'

Of his lyric effusions much cannot be said: they want the enthusiasm and feeling which is the soul of such compositions. When we recollect the imperfection of two of the senses, sight and hearing, in Johnson, we shall not be surprised that he had not a keen perception of the beauties of nature, or of the powers of harmony; his want of relish for descriptive poetry, and pastoral, cannot therefore be wondered at; nor his want of success in his 'Odes on the Seasons.' He does not paint from nature, but from books.

With a rough exterior, overbearing manners, and many odd peculiarities and habits, Johnson possessed almost all the virtues which grace and dignify human nature. He was bumane, charitable, affectionate, and generous; and even his sallies of temper were the effect of a morbid irritability of system. Goldsmith used to say that he had nothing of the bear but his skin. To a strong and steady judgment he united a vigorous and excursive imagination, his apprehension was remarkably quick and acute, his memory extraordinarily tenacious. With some early prejudices his reason struggled in vain, and the habitual weaknesses of his mind form a singular contrast to the vigour of his understanding. He was superstitious, and credulous in no slight degree; and these aberrations from mental rectitude

can only be accounted for by recollecting the influence of his melancholic temperament, which had ever a tendency to insanity. As a philologer, a critic, a biographer, and a moralist, his works have had such a beneficial effect upon the literature of his country that his life and writings must ever form a principal feature in the literary history of the last century.

ENCOMIUMS.

ELEGY.

THE moon, reposing on yon pine tree tops,
With a soft radiance silvers all the copse;
Nor aught is heard above, nor aught below;
No flood to murmur, and no gale to blow;
But dove-wing'd Silence, hovering o'er the scene,
Sheds a mild grandeur and a dead serene.
Now, Fancy, loveliest of the cherubs! guide
To where old Thames surveys his Gothic pride;
There let me range the statue-glimmering pile,
Down the long horrors of the midnight aisle;
Join the sad band that clasp their Johnson's urn,
With Science, praise him; and with Virtue, mourn.
E'en there he lies! the greatest and the best;
By Genius flatter'd, and by Power caress'd;
His merits flown to Him from whom they came,
And all his honours shrunk into a name!

Yet fell he not by fortune's sudden rage,
But the slow waste of all consuming age;
And the same Heaven,that, in his well tried youth,
With misery's clouds o'erhung the paths of truth,
Bade his declining years from struggling cease,
In the smooth vale of competence and peace.

I How full of sadness was the morn that gave His mortal part for ever to the grave!

1 IMITATION.

Can I forget the dismal night that gave
My soul's best part for ever to the grave.
Tickell on the Death of Addison.

With what deep awe the sable pomp roll'd slow, Through walks of gazers, and through streets of woe!

E'en dull Indifference melted at the view,
As Friendship took a long and last adieu;
While from the priest the solemn sentence falls,
That adds a guest to Britain's dearest walls;
Mid chiefs, for arms; for justice, statesmen prized;
And bards, by him again immortalized!

But the lost sage, for whom his country mourns,
A laurel, fairer than a bard's, adorns.
Why droops the sufferer his loved name to hear,
Eyes the faint babe, and sheds the desperate tear?
Is 't, that proud Genius hail'd him as his own?
Or Science placed him on her loftiest throne?
That Wit's keen breath the living line inspires,
And all the Muses warm with all their fires?-
In want himself, he wept a friend's distress;
His little still was charitably less;
And, ere a Johnson's appetite was fed,
A starving Savage shared the' untasted bread.
O Pity, parent of each bliss refined-

Wealth can but sooth, not humanize, the mind;
Not the light graces of the dancer's bound,
Or soft Italia's magic-warbling sound,
Can bid the wounded heart forget to bleed,
Or pay the raptures of one generous deed.
In that dire hour, when Falsehood shrinks
with dread,

To see destruction tottering o'er her head,
Applauding Conscience breathed a sacred calm,
And Resignation shed her heavenly balm ;
Faith cheer'd his soul with brightest ray serene,
And wondering angels eyed the pious scene: