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 314 Anecdotes by George Steevens.

composed before I threw a single couplet on paper. The same method I pursued in regard to the Prologue on opening Drury- Lane Theatre. I did not afterwards change more than a word in it, and that was done at the remonstrance of Garrick. I did not think his criticism just ; but it was necessary he should be satisfied with what he was to utter V

To a Gentleman who expressed himself in disrespectful terms of Blackmore 2, one of whose poetic bulls he happened just then to recollect, Dr. Johnson answered, ' I hope a blunder, after you have heard what I shall relate, will not be reckoned decisive against a poet's reputation. When I was a young man, I trans lated Addison's Latin poem on the Battle of the Cranes and Pygmies, and must plead guilty to the following couplet :

' Down from the guardian boughs the nests they flung, And kilVd the yet unanimated young 3 : '

And yet, I trust, I am no blockhead. I afterwards changed the the word kiltd into crush'd.'

When Dr. Percy first published his Collection of Ancient English Ballads, perhaps he was too lavish in commendation of the beautiful simplicity and poetic merit he supposed himself to discover in them. This circumstance provoked Johnson to observe one evening at Miss Reynolds^ tea table, that he could rhyme as well, and as elegantly, in common narrative and con versation 4. For instance, says he,

he apparently wishes to show that enmity of the wits whom he provoked

it was there that Johnson told him more by his virtue than his dulness,

this fact. has been exposed to worse treatment

1 Life, i. 1 8 1. See ante, ii. 6n. than he deserved.' Works, viii. 49.

2 ' I defended Blackmore's sup- For Locke's admiration of Blackmore posed lines, which have been ridiculed see Warton's Pope's Works, ed. 1822, as absolute nonsense : iv. 62 n.

"A painted vest Prince Voltiger 3 ' Omnia vastaret miles, foetusque

had on, necaret

Which from a naked Pict his Immeritos, vitamque abrumperet

grandsire won.'" imperfectam.'

Life, ii. 108. Addison's Works, ed. 1862, i. 240.

'Blackmore, by the unremitted 4 Life, ii. 212 ; Hi. 158.

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