so much
in intercourse with the brightest men of what has been called the
Augustan age of England; and that he shewed a degree of eager curiosity
concerning the common occurrences that were then passing, which appeared
somewhat remarkable in a man of such intellectual stores, of such an
advanced age, and who had retired from life with declared disappointment
in his expectations.

An instance at once of his pensive turn of mind, and his cheerfulness of
temper, appeared in a little story which he himself told to Mr. Langton,
when they were walking in his garden: 'Here (said he) I had put a
handsome sun-dial, with this inscription, _Eheu fugaces!_[206] which
(speaking with a smile) was sadly verified, for by the next morning my
dial had been carried off.'[207]

'It gives me much pleasure to observe, that however Johnson may have
casually talked,[208] yet when he sits, as "an ardent judge zealous to
his trust, giving sentence" [209] upon the excellent works of Young, he
allows them the high praise to which they are justly entitled.
"The _Universal Passion_ (says he) is indeed a very great
performance,--his distichs have the weight of solid sentiment, and his
points the sharpness of resistless truth."'[210]

But I was most anxious concerning Johnson's decision upon _Night
Thoughts_, which I esteem as a mass of the grandest and richest poetry
that human genius has ever produced; and was delighted to find this
character of that work: 'In his _Night Thoughts_, he has exhibited a
very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections
and striking allusions; a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility
of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour. This is one
of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhime but
with disadvantage.'[211] And afterwards, 'Particular lines are not to be
regarded; the power is in the whole; and in the whole there is a
magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese plantation[212], the
magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity.'

But there is in this Poem not only all that Johnson so well brings in
view, but a power of the _Pathetick_ beyond almost any example that I
have seen. He who does not feel his nerves shaken, and his heart pierced
by many passages in this extraordinary work, particularly by that most
affecting one, which describes the gradual torment suffered by the
contemplation of an object of affectionate attachment, visibly and
ce