Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/205

 ��* This (said he) is true ; but remember that taking the com positions of Young in general, they are but like bright stepping- stones over a miry road : Young froths, and foams, and bubbles sometimes very vigorously ; but we must not compare the noise made by your tea-kettle here with the roaring of the ocean V

Somebody was praising Corneille one day in opposition to Shakespeare : * Corneille is to Shakespeare (replied Mr. Johnson) as a clipped hedge is to a forest.' When we talked of Steele's Essays, ' They are too thin (says our Critic) for an Englishman's taste : mere superficial observations on life and manners, without erudition enough to make them keep, like the light French wines, which turn sour with standing a while for want of body, as we call it.'

Of a much admired poem, when extolled as beautiful (he replied), 'That it had indeed the beauty of a bubble: the colours are gay (said he), but the substance slight.' Of James Harris's Dedication to his Hermes I have heard him observe, that, though but fourteen lines long, there were six grammatical faults in it 2. A friend was praising the style of Dr. Swift ; Mr. Johnson did not find himself in the humour to agree with

Works, vii. 249. 'Rymer at that to guide him, are throughout false

time [1694],' says Dr. Warton, 'gave and contradictory. The verses of

the Law to all writers, and was ap- Uryden, once highly celebrated, are

pealed to as a supreme judge of all forgotten ; those of Pope still retain

works of Taste and Genius.' Pope's their hold upon public estimation.'

Works, ed. 1822, v. 173. Wordsworth's Works, ed. 1857, vi.

Wordsworth, writing of ' the poetry 370.

of the period intervening between x 'Dr. Johnson said that there

the publication of the Paradise Lost were very fine things in Young's

and the Seasons,' says : * To what Night Thoughts, though you could

a low state knowledge of the most not find twenty lines together without

obvious and important phenomena some extravagance.' Life, v. 269.

had sunk is evident from the style in 2 ' I looked into Harris's book,'

which Dryden has executed a de- said Johnson, 'and thought he did

scription of Night in one of his not understand his own system.' Id.

tragedies, and Pope his translation iii. 245. The Dedication as given in

of the celebrated moonlight scene in the second edition is more than thirty

the Iliad. . . . Dryden's lines are lines long. The chief fault in it

vague, bombastic and senseless ; seems to be the mixed use of ' Your

those of Pope, though he had Homer Lordship ' and ' you.'

him

�� �