Well try’d, through many a varying year,
  See Levet to the grave descend,
Officious, innocent, sincere,
  Of ev’ry friendless name the friend.

Yet still he fills affection’s eye,
  Obscurely wise, and coarsely kind;
Nor, letter’d arrogance, deny
  Thy praise to merit unrefined.

When fainting nature call’d for aid,
  And hov’ring death prepar’d the blow,
His vig’rous remedy display’d
  The pow’r of art, without the show.

In mis’ry’s darkest cavern known,
  His useful care was ever nigh,
Where hopeless anguish pour’d his groan,
  And lonely want retir’d to die.

No summons, mock’d by chill delay,
  No petty gain, disdain’d by pride;
The modest wants of ev’ry day
  The toil of ev’ry day supply’d.

His virtues walk’d their narrow round,
  Nor made a pause, nor left a void;
And sure the eternal master found
  The single talent well-employ’d.

The busy day—­the peaceful night,
  Unfelt, uncounted, glided by;
His frame was firm—­his pow’rs were bright,
  Though now his eightieth year was nigh.

Then, with no fiery throbbing pain,
  No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke, at once, the vital chain,
  And freed his soul the nearest way.

[a] These stanzas, to adopt the words of Dr. Drake, “are warm from the
    heart; and this is the only poem, from the pen of Johnson, that has
    been bathed with tears.”  Levet was Johnson’s constant and attentive
    companion, for near forty years; he was a practitioner in physic,
    among the lower class of people, in London.  Humanity, rather than
    desire of gain, seems to have actuated this single hearted and
    amiable being; and never were the virtues of charity recorded in
    more touching strains.  “I am acquainted,” says Dr. Drake, “with
    nothing superior to them in the productions of the moral muse.”  See
    Drake’s Literary Life of Johnson; and Boswell, i. ii. iii. iv.—­ED.

EPITAPH ON CLAUDE PHILLIPS, AN ITINERANT MUSICIAN[a].

Phillips! whose touch harmonious could remove
The pangs of guilty pow’r, and hapless love,
Rest here, distress’d by poverty no more,
Find here that calm thou gay’st so oft before;
Sleep, undisturb’d, within this peaceful shrine,
Till angels wake thee, with a note like thine.

[a] These lines are among Mrs. Williams’s Miscellanies:  they are,
    nevertheless, recognised as Johnson’s, in a memorandum of his
    handwriting, and were probably written at her request.  This Phillips
    was a fiddler, who travelled up and down Wales, and was much
    celebrated for his skill.  The above epitaph, according to Mr.
    Boswell, won the applause of lord Kames, prejudiced against Johnson
    as he was.  It was published in Mrs. Williams’s Miscellanies, and