tley is known to have written.' I shall here insert them, and hope my readers will apply them.
'Who strives to mount Parnassus' hill, And thence poetick laurels bring, Must first acquire due force and skill, Must fly with swan's or eagle's wing.
Who Nature's treasures would explore, Her mysteries and arcana know; Must high as lofty Newton soar, Must stoop as delving Woodward low.
Who studies ancient laws and rites, Tongues, arts, and arms, and history; Must drudge, like Selden, days and nights, And in the endless labour die.
Who travels in religious jars, (Truth mixt with errour, shades with rays;) Like Whiston, wanting pyx or stars, In ocean wide or sinks or strays.
But grant our hero's hope, long toil And comprehensive genius crown, All sciences, all arts his spoil, Yet what reward, or what renown?
Envy, innate in vulgar souls, Envy steps in and stops his rise, Envy with poison'd tarnish fouls His lustre, and his worth decries.
He lives inglorious or in want, To college and old books confin'd; Instead of learn'd he's call'd pedant, Dunces advanc'd, he's left behind: Yet left content a genuine Stoick he, Great without patron, rich without South Sea.' BOSWELL.
In Mr. Croker's octavo editions, arts in the fifth stanza is changed into hearts. J. Boswell, jun., gives the following reading of the first four lines of the last stanza, not from Dodsley's Collection, but from an earlier one, called The Grove.
'Inglorious or by wants inthralled, To college and old books confined, A pedant from his learning called, Dunces advanced, he's left behind.'
[80] Bentley, in the preface to his edition of Paradise Lost, says:--
'Sunt et mihi carmina; me quoque dicunt Vatem pastores: sed non ego credulus illis.'
[81] The difference between Johnson and Smith is apparent even in this slight instance. Smith was a man of extraordinary application, and had his mind crowded with all manner of subjects; but the force, acuteness, and vivacity of Johnson were not to be found there. He had book-making so much in his thoughts, and was so chary of what might be turned to account in that way, that he once said to Sir Joshua Reynolds, that he made it a rule, when in company, never to talk of what he understood. Beauclerk had for a short time a pretty high opinion of Smith's conversation. Garrick, after listening to him for a while, as to one of whom his expectations had been raised, turned slyly to a friend, and whispered him, 'What say you to this?--eh? flabby, I think.' BOSWELL. Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 279), says:--'Smith's voice was harsh and enunciation thick, approaching to stammering. His conversation was not colloquial, but like lecturing. He was the most absent man in company that I ever saw, moving his lips, and talking to himself, and smiling in the midst of large companies. If you awaked him from his reverie and made him attend to the subject of conversation, he immediately began a harangue, and never stopped till he told you all he knew about it, with the utmost philosophical ingenuity.' Dugald Stewart (Life of Adam Smith, p. 117) says that 'his consciousness of his tendency to absence rendered his manner somewhat embarrassed in the company of strangers.' But 'to his intimate friends, his peculiarities added an inexpressible charm to his conversation, while they displayed in the most interesting light the artless simplicity of his heart.' Ib. p. 113. See also Walpole's Letters, vi. 302, and ante, ii. 430, note 1.
[82] Garrick himself was a good deal of an infidel: see ante, ii. 85, note 7.
[83] Ante, i. 181.
[84] The Tempest, act iv. sc. i. In The Rambler, No. 127, Johnson writes of men who have 'borne opposition down before them, and left emulation panting behind.' He quotes (Works, vii. 261) the following couplet by Dryden:--
'Fate after him below with pain did move, And victory could scarce keep pace above.'
Young in The Last Day, book I, had written:--
'Words all in vain pant after the distress.'
[85] I am sorry to see in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. ii, An Essay on the Character of Hamlet, written, I should suppose, by a very young man, though called 'Reverend;' who speaks with presumptuous petulance of the first literary character of his age. Amidst a cloudy confusion of words, (which hath of late too often passed in Scotland for Metaphysicks,) he thus ventures to criticise one of the noblest lines in our language:--'Dr. Johnson has remarked, that "time toil'd after him in vain." But I should apprehend, that this is entirely to mistake the character. Time toils after every great man, as well after Shakspeare. The workings of an ordinary mind keep pace, indeed, with time; they move no faster; they have their beginning, their middle, and their end; but superiour natures can reduce these into a point.