When, lo! by jealous Juno's fierce commands,
Two dreadful serpents come.
"All naked from her bed the passionate mother lept
To save, or perish with her child,
She trembled, and she cry'd; the mighty infant smiled:
The mighty infant seem'd well pleased
At his gay gilded foes,
And as their spotted necks up to the cradle rose,
With his young warlike hands on both he seiz'd."
The stretching forth of the child's hands he found in Pindar and Cowley; his "smiling" in Cowley alone, for there is no trace of it in the original. While speaking of Gray, one scarcely likes alluding to that great whetstone, Dr. Johnson; for certainly the darkest shade on his well-merited literary reputation arises from his unjust, ill-natured, and unscholarlike criticisms upon a poet whose sole transgression was to have been his cotemporary. But Johnson eulogises Shakspeare, as did Gray, and I cannot help thinking that he, as well as Gray, was indebted to Cowley: e.g. Johnson writes: