SUPPOSED POSTHUMOUS WORK OF DR. JOHNSON'S.
An Ode written April 15, 1786.
St. Paul's deep bell, from stately tower,
Had sounded once and twice the hour—
Blue burnt the midnight taper;
Hags their dark spells o'er cauldrons hewed,
While Sons of Ink their work pursued,
Printing "the Morning Paper."
Say, Herald, Chronicle, or Post,
Which then beheld great Johnson's ghost,
Grim, horrible, and squalid?
Compositors their letters dropt,
Pressmen their printing engines stopt,
And devils all grew pallid.
Enough! the spectre cried, Enough!
No more of your fugacious stuff,
Trite anecdotes and stories!
Rude martyrs of Sam. Johnson's name,
You rob him of his honest fame,
And tarnish all his glories.
First in the fertile tribe is seen
Tom Tyres, in the Magazine,
That teazer of Apollo!
With goose-quill he, like desperate knife,
Slices, as Vauxhall beef, my life,
And calls the town to swallow.
The cry once up, the dogs of news,
Who hunt for paragraphs the stews,
Yelp out "Johnsoniana!"
Their nauseous praise but moves my bile,
Like tartar, carduus, camomile,
Or ipecacuanha.
Next Boswell comes, for 'twas my lot
To find at last one honest Scot
With constitutional veracity;
Yet garrulous he tells too much,
On fancied failings prone to touch
With sedulous loquacity.
At length, Job's patience it would try,
Brewed on my lees comes "Thrale's Entrie,"
Straining to draw my picture;
For she a common-place book kept,
"Johnson at Streatluim dined and slept,"
And who shall contradict her?
Thrale lost midst fiddles and sopranos,
With them plays fortes and pianos,
Adagio and allegro.
I loved Thrale's widow and Thrale's wife
But now, believe—to write my life!
I'd rather trust my negro.
I gave the public works of merit,
Written with vigour, fraught with spirit,
Applause crowned all my labours;
But thy delusive pages speak
My palsied powers, exhausted, weak,
The scoff of friends and neighbours.
They speak me insolent and rude,
Light, trivial, puerile, and crude,
The child of pride and vanity.
Poor Tuscan-like improvisation
Is but of English sense castration,
And infantine inanity.
Such idle rhymes, like Sybil's leaves,
Kindly the scattering winds receive—
The gatherer proves a scorner.
But hold! I see the coming day!
The spectre said—and stalked away,
To sleep in Poet's Corner.