rust
herself even into the bosom of Johnson himself, from whom we could
scarcely have looked for such images as are to be found in the following
stanzas.

By gloomy twilight half reveal'd,
With sighs we view the hoary hill,
The leafless wood, the naked field,
The snow-stopp'd cot, the frozen rill.

No music warbles through the grove,
No vivid colours paint the plain;
No more with devious steps I rove
Through verdant paths, now sought in vain.

Aloud the driving tempest roars,
Congeal'd impetuous showers descend;
Haste, close the window, bar the doors,
Fate leaves me Stella and a friend.

Sappho herself might have owned a touch of passionate tenderness, that
he has introduced into another of these little pieces:

--The Queen of night
Round us pours a lambent light,
Light that seems but just to show
Breasts that beat, and cheeks that glow.

His Latin poetry is not without a certain barbaric splendour; but it
discovers, as might be expected, no skill in the more refined graces of
the Augustan age. The verse he quoted to Thomas Warton as his favourite,
from the translation of Pope's Messiah,

Vallis aromaticas fundit Saronica nubes,

evinces that he could be pleased without elegance in a mode of
composition, of which elegance is the chief recommendation. If we wished
to impress foreigners with a favourable opinion of the taste which our
countrymen have formed for the most perfect productions of the Roman
muse, we should send them, not to the pages of Johnson, but rather to
those of Milton, Gray, Warton, and some of yet more recent date.

It was the chance of Johnson to fall upon an age that rated his great
abilities at their full value. His laboriousness had the appearance of
something stupendous, when there were many literary but few very learned
men. His vigour of intellect imposed upon the multitude an opinion of
his wisdom, from the solemn air and oracular tone in which he uniformly
addressed them. He would have been of less consequence in the days of
Elizabeth or of Cromwell.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] Bull's Fifth Sermon.
[2] In a note to Johnson's Works, 8vo. Edition, 1810, it is said that
this is rendered improbable by the account given of Colson, by
Davies, in his life of Garrick, which was certainly written under
Dr. Johnson's inspection, and, what relates to Colson, probably from
Johnson's confirmation.
[3] Nichols's Literary Anecdotes