But Sir, said I, this is not ridiculous at all. 'Why no (replied he), why should I always write ridiculously?—perhaps because I made these verses to imitate such a one, naming him:
Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,
Wearing out life's evening gray;
Strike thy bosom, sage! and tell
What is bliss, and which the way?
Thus I spoke, and speaking sigh'd,
Scarce repress'd the starting tear,
When the hoary Sage reply'd,
Come, my lad, and drink some beer[1].'
I could give another comical instance of caricatura imitation. Recollecting some day, when praising these verses of Lopez de Vega,
Se a quien los leones vence
Vence una muger hermosa
O el de flaco averguençe
O ella di ser mas furiosa,
more than he thought they deserved, Mr. Johnson instantly observed 'that they were founded on a trivial conceit; and that conceit ill-explained, and ill-expressed beside.The lady, we all know, does not conquer in the same manner as the lion does: 'Tis a mere play of words (added he), and you might as well say, that
If the man who turnips cries,
Cry not when his father dies,
'Tis a proof that he had rather
Have a turnip than his father.'
And this humour is of the same sort with which he answered the friend who commended the following line[2]:
Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free.
'To be sure (said Dr. Johnson),
Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.'
- ↑ Boswell records the making of these verses. The third line runs: 'Smite thy bosom,' &c. 'Boswell. "But why smite his bosom, Sir?" Johnson. "Why to shew he was in earnest" (smiling).' Hoary, on Boswell's suggestion, he changed into smiling, 'both to avoid a sameness with the epithet in the first line and to describe the hermit in his pleasantry.' Life, iii. 159. See ib. ii. 136, n. 4, for another parody.
- ↑ 2 In Brooke's Earl of Essex. Life, iv. 312, n. 5.
This
