'SAM. JOHNSON.'
'P.S.—We passed two days at Talisker very happily, both by the pleasantness of the place and elegance of our reception.'
[721] Johnson (Works, viii. 409), after describing how Shenstone laid out the Leasowes, continues:—'Whether to plant a walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn where there is an object to catch the view; to make water run where it will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen; to leave intervals where the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the plantation where there is something to be hidden, demands any great powers of mind, I will not inquire: perhaps a surly and sullen speculator may think such performances rather the sport than the business of human reason.'
[722] Johnson quotes this and the two preceding stanzas as 'a passage, to which if any mind denies its sympathy, it has no acquaintance with love or nature.' Ib. p. 413.
[723] 'His mind was not very comprehensive, nor his curiosity active; he had no value for those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated.' Ib. p. 411.
[724] In the preface to vol. iii. of Shenstone's Works, ed. 1773, a quotation is given (p. vi) from one of the poet's letters in which he complains of this burning. He writes:—'I look upon my Letters as some of my chef-d'auvres.' On p. 301, after mentioning Rasselas, he continues:—'Did I tell you I had a letter from Johnson, inclosing Vernon's Parish-clerk?'
[725] 'The truth is these elegies have neither passion, nature, nor manners. Where there is fiction, there is no passion: he that describes himself as a shepherd, and his Neaera or Delia as a shepherdess, and talks of goats and lambs, feels no passion. He that courts his mistress with Roman imagery deserves to lose her; for she may with good reason suspect his sincerity.' Johnson's Works, viii. 91. See ante, iv. 17.
[726] His lines on Pulteney, Earl of Bath, still deserve some fame:—
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'Leave a blank here and there in each page To enrol the fair deeds of his youth! When you mention the acts of his age, Leave a blank for his honour and truth.' |
From The Statesman, H. C. Williams's Odes, p. 47.