Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/302

 ��A necdotes.

��in any common book, was Jane Shore's exclamation in the

last act,

Forgive me ! but forgive me T !

It was not however from the want of a susceptible heart that he hated to cite tender expressions, for he was more strongly and more violently affected by' the force of words representing ideas capable of affecting him at all, than any other man in the world I believe ; and when he would try to repeat the celebrated Prosa Ecclesiastica pro Morttti-s*, as it is called, beginning Dies irce, Dies ilia, he could never pass the stanza ending thus, Tanttis labor non sit cassus 3, without bursting into a flood of tears ; which sensibility I used to quote against him when he would inveigh against devotional poetry, and protest that all religious verses were cold and feeble, and unworthy the subject, which ought to be treated with higher reverence, he said, than either poets or painters could presume to excite or bestow 4. Nor can any thing be a stronger proof of Dr. Johnson's piety than such an expression ; for his idea of poetfy was magnificent indeed,

3 'Quaerens me sedisti lassus.

Redemisti crucem passus : Tantus labor non sit cassus.'

4 ' Watts's devotional poetry is, like that of others, unsatisfactory. The paucity of its topics enforces per petual repetition, and the sanctity of the matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction. It is sufficient for Watts to have done better than others what no man has done well.' Works, viii. 386. See also ib. vii.

��1 ' What she answers to her hus band when he asks her movingly,

" Why dost thou fix thy dying eyes

upon me With such an earnest, such a

piteous look, As if thy heart was full of some

sad meaning

Thou couldst not speak!" is pathetic to a great degree.

" Forgive me ! but forgive me ! " These few words far exceed the most pompous declamations of Cato.' J. Warton's Essay on Pope, ed. 1762, i. 273.

' Johnson says of Rowe's Jane Shore : " This play, consisting chiefly of domestic scenes and pri vate distress, lays hold upon the heart."' Works, vii. 410. See ante, p. 252, n. 3.

2 In Daniel's Thesaurus, ii. 103, the Dies Irae is called Prosa de Mortuis.

��213 (The Life of Waller], where Johnson explains why ' poetical de votion cannot often please.'

' Moses Browne published in verse a series of devout contemplations called Sunday Thoughts. Johnson, who for the purpose of religious me ditation seemed to think one day as proper as another, read them with cold approbation, and said he had a great mind to write and publish Monday Thoughts. 1 Nichols's Lit. Anec. v. 51.

and

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