Johnson's Life and Genius.
��It is a mortifying reflection, that Johnson, with a store of learning and extraordinary talents, was not able, at the age of thirty, to force his way to the favour of the publick. Slow rises worth by poverty depressed*. 'He was still,' as he says himself, ' to provide for the day that was passing over him 2 .' He saw Cave involved in a state of warfare with the numerous competitors 3 , at that time struggling with the Gentleman's Magazine ; and gratitude for such supplies as Johnson received, dictated a Latin Ode on the subject of that contention 4 . The
Urbane, nullis fesse laboribus, Urbane, nullis victe calumniis,
put one in mind of Casimir's Ode to Pope Urban :
Urbane, regum maxime, maxime Urbane vatum.
The Polish poet was, probably, at that time in the hands of a man who had meditated the history of the Latin poets 5 .
��1 'This mournful truth is every
where confess'd ; Slow rises worth by poverty
depress'd.'
Johnson parodied the first line in the following verse :
- Yet hear, alas ! this mournful truth,
Nor hear it with a frown ; Thou canst not make the tea so
fast As I can gulp it down.'
Letters, ii. 113, n. 3.
2 ' Much of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease ; much has been trifled away ; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me.' Works, v. 49.
3 The chief rivals, according to Hawkins (p. 90), were 'a knot of booksellers, the proprietors of the London Magazine' He adds (p. 92) that ' the check which the increasing demand for the Gentleman's Maga zine gave to the sale of its rival was
��so great as to throw back no fewer than 70,000 copies on the hands of the proprietors.' To make up this vast number he must have added together the surplus copies of many months, if not years. Cave was libelled as a madman. By way of reply he merely reprinted in his own Magazine the most scurrilous of the attacks.
4 Life, i. 113.
5 Ante, p. 365.
'Casimir Sarbiewski, whose name has been Latinised into Sarbievius (1646). His contemporaries con sidered him as the greatest rival of Horace that had appeared, and he received a gold medal from the Pope, who made him his laureate. Many of his works were translated into English by Dr. Watts.' Morfill's Poland, p. 278.
Johnson describes him as 'a writer who has many of the beauties and faults of Cowley.' Works, vii. 39.
Guthrie
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