may appear trifling to remark, that he has made the letter o, in the word virgo, long and short in the same line:  “Virgo, virgo parit.”  But the translation has great merit, and some admirable lines.  In the odes there is a sweet flexibility, particularly—­to his worthy friend Dr. Lawrence; on himself at the theatre, March 8, 1771; the ode in the isle of Skie; and that to Mrs. Thrale, from the same place.

His English poetry is such as leaves room to think, if he had devoted himself to the muses, that he would have been the rival of Pope.  His first production, in this kind, was London, a poem in imitation of the third satire of Juvenal.  The vices of the metropolis are placed in the room of ancient manners.  The author had heated his mind with the ardour of Juvenal, and, having the skill to polish his numbers, he became a sharp accuser of the times.  The Vanity of Human Wishes, is an imitation of the tenth satire of the same author.  Though it is translated by Dryden, Johnson’s imitation approaches nearest to the spirit of the original.  The subject is taken from the Alcibiades of Plato, and has an intermixture of the sentiments of Socrates, concerning the object of prayers offered up to the deity.  The general proposition is, that good and evil are so little understood by mankind, that their wishes, when granted, are always destructive.  This is exemplified in a variety of instances, such as riches, state-preferment, eloquence, military glory, long life, and the advantages of form and beauty.  Juvenal’s conclusion is worthy of a christian poet, and such a pen as Johnson’s.  “Let us,” he says, “leave it to the gods to judge what is fittest for us.  Man is dearer to his creator than to himself.  If we must pray for special favour, let it be for a sound mind in a sound body.  Let us pray for fortitude, that we may think the labours of Hercules, and all his sufferings, preferable to a life of luxury, and the soft repose of Sardanapalus.  This is a blessing within the reach of every man; this we can give ourselves.  It is virtue, and virtue only, that can make us happy.”  In the translation, the zeal of the christian conspired with the warmth and energy of the poet; but Juvenal is not eclipsed.  For the various characters in the original, the reader is pleased, in the English poem, to meet with cardinal Wolsey, Buckingham stabbed by Felton, lord Strafford, Clarendon, Charles the twelfth of Sweden; and for Tully and Demosthenes, Lydiat, Galileo, and archbishop Laud.  It is owing to Johnson’s delight in biography, that the name of Lydiat is called forth from obscurity.  It may, therefore, not be useless to tell, that Lydiat was a learned divine and mathematician in the beginning of the last century.  He attacked the doctrine of Aristotle and Scaliger, and wrote a number of sermons on the harmony of the evangelists.  With all his merit, he lay in the prison of Bocardo, at Oxford, till bishop Usher, Laud, and others, paid his debts.  He petitioned Charles the first to be sent to Ethiopia, to procure manuscripts.  Having spoken in favour of monarchy and bishops, he was plundered by the puritans, and twice carried away, a prisoner, from his rectory.  He died, very poor, in 1646.