the
best. The _Life_, indeed, like the rest of the _Lives of the Poets_, is
a lazy performance. It is not the strenuous work of a young author eager
for fame. When Johnson sat down, at the instance of the London
booksellers, to write the lives of those poets whose works his employers
thought it well to publish, he had long been an author at grass, and had
no mind whatever again to wear the collar. He had great reading and an
amazing memory, and those were at the service of the trade. The facts he
knew, or which were brought to his door, he recorded, but research was
not in his way. Was he not already endowed--with a pension, which, with
his customary indifference to attack, he wished were twice as large, in
order that his enemies might make twice as much fuss over it? None the
less--nay, perhaps all the more--for being written with so little effort,
the _Lives of the Poets_ are delightful reading, and Pope's is one of the
very best of them. {59} None knew the infirmities of ordinary human
nature better than Johnson. They neither angered him nor amused him; he
neither storms, sneers, nor chuckles, as he records man's vanity,
insincerity, jealousy, and pretence. It is with a placid pen he pricks
the bubble fame, dishonours the overdrawn sentiment, burlesques the sham
philosophy of life; but for generosity, friendliness, affection, he is
always on the watch, whilst talent and achievement never fail to win his
admiration; he being ever eager to repay, as best he could, the debt of
gratitude surely due to those who have taken pains to please, and who
have left behind them in a world, which rarely treated them kindly, works
fitted to stir youth to emulation, or solace the disappointments of age.
And over all man's manifold infirmities, he throws benignantly the mantle
of his stately style. Pope's domestic virtues were not likely to miss
Johnson's approbation. Of them he writes:

'The filial piety of Pope was in the highest degree amiable and
exemplary. His parents had the happiness of living till he was at the
summit of poetical reputation--till he was at ease in his fortune, and
without a rival in his fame, and found no diminution of his respect or
tenderness. Whatever was his pride, to them he was obedient; and
whatever was his irritability, to them he was gentle. Life has,
amongst its soothing and quiet comforts, few things better to give
than such a son.'

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