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Johnson thus described him to Mr. Malone: 'Sir, he lived in London, and hung loose upon society.' The concluding paper of his Rambler is at once dignified and pathetick. I cannot, however, but wish that he had not ended it with an unnecessary Greek verse, translated also into an English couplet[1]. It is too much like the conceit of those dramatick poets, who used to conclude each act with a rhyme; and the expression in the first line of his couplet, 'Celestial powers,' though proper in Pagan poetry, is ill suited to Christianity, with 'a conformity[2]' to which he consoles himself. How much better would it have been, to have ended with the prose sentence 'I shall never envy the honours which wit and learning obtain in any other cause, if I can be numbered among the writers who have given ardour to virtue, and confidence to truth[3].'
His friend, Dr. Birch, being now engaged in preparing an edition of Ralegh's smaller pieces, Dr. Johnson wrote the following letter to that gentleman:
'To Dr. Birch.
'Gough-square, May 12. 1750.
'Sir
'Knowing that you are now preparing to favour the publick
- ↑
Αὐτῶν ἐκ μακάρον ἀντάξιος εἵη ἀμοιβή.
'Celestial powers! that piety regard,
From you my labours wait their last reward.'A modification of the Greek line is engraved on the scroll in Johnson's monument in St. Paul's (Post, Dec. 1784).
- ↑ 'The essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my own intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity. . . . I therefore look back on this part of my work with pleasure, which no blame or praise of man shall diminish or augment.' Rambler, No. 208.
- ↑ I have little doubt that this attack on the concluding verse is an indirect blow at Hawkins, who had quoted the whole passage, and had clearly thought it the more 'awful' on account of the couplet. See Hawkins's Johnson, p. 291.
'How sweet in sleep to pass the careless hours,
Lull'd by the beating winds and dashing show'rs.'
Ib. No. 117.