while we talked.—When we went into Wales together, and spent some time at Sir Robert Cotton's at Lleweny[1], one day at dinner I meant to please Mr. Johnson particularly with a dish of very young peas. Are not they charming? said I to him, while he was eating them.—'Perhaps (said he) they would be so to a pig[2].' I only instance these replies, to excuse my mentioning those he made to others.
When a well-known author[3] published his poems in the year 1777: Such a one's verses are come out, said I: 'Yes (replied Johnson), and this frost has struck them in again. Here are some lines I have written to ridicule them: but remember that I love the fellow dearly, now—for all I laugh at him[4].
Wheresoe'er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new:
Endless labour all along,
Endless labour to be wrong;
Phrase that Time has flung away;
Uncouth words in disarray,
Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.'
- ↑ Life, v. 435.
- ↑ In a marginal note on this Mrs. Piozzi writes:—'meaning because they were too little boiled.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 295.
- ↑ Thomas Warton, who published a volume of poems in 1777. On Sept. 18 of that year Boswell records: 'Dr. Johnson observed, that a gentleman of eminence in literature had got into a bad style of poetry of late. "He puts," said he, "a very common thing in a strange dress, till he does not know it himself, and thinks other people do not know it."' Life, iii. 158.
Hume in his History of England (ed. 1773, v. 492, vi. 195) says:—'Several writers of late have amused themselves in copying the style of Spenser; and no imitation has been so indifferent as not to bear a great resemblance to the original: His manner is so peculiar that it is almost impossible not to transfer some of it into the copy … Raleigh is the best model of that ancient style which some writers would affect to revive at present.' See also Beattie's Essays on Poetry and Music, ed. 1779, p. 226.
- ↑ For Warton's estrangement, which 'Johnson lamented with tears in his eyes,' see Life, i. 270, n. 1.
were to fight Dash." Dash was a large dog, and Presto but a little one. The laugh this innocent observation produced was so very loud and hearty that Madam, unable to stand it, quitted the room in such a mood as was still more laughable than the boy's pertinent remark, though she muttered, "it was very impertinent."' Croker's Boswell, ed. 1844, x. 37.
When
