For Nature formed the Poet for the King.
JOHNSON’S SYMPATHIES.
It was perhaps accidental that during the years 1745-6 Johnson’s literary work seems to have been almost suspended. ‘That he had a tenderness for that unfortunate house’ (of Stuart, said Boswell) ‘is well known, and some may fancifully imagine that a sympathetic anxiety impeded the exertion of his intellectual powers, but I am inclined to think that he was, during this time, sketching the outlines of his great philological work.’ It is not certain that Johnson was the author of the following lines, which appeared in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ for April 1747, but his fond habit of repeating them, ‘by heart,’ is some proof of his sympathy with the Jacobites named therein; and their publication demonstrates that the Government respected hostile opinion when it was becomingly expressed.
On Lord Lovat’s Execution.
Pity’d by gentle minds, Kilmarnock died;
The brave, Balmerino, were on thy side;
Radcliffe, unhappy in his crimes of youth,
Steady in what he still mistook for truth,
Beheld his death so decently unmovèd,
The soft lamented and the brave approvèd.