A POSTSCRIPT TO "RETALIATION"

[After the Fourth Edition of Doctor GOLDSMITH'S Retaliation was printed, the Publisher received a supplementary Epitaph on the Wit and Punster Caleb Whitefoord. Though it is found appended to the later issues of the Poem, it has been suspected that Whitefoord wrote it himself. It may be that the following, which has recently come to light, is another forgery.]

HERE JOHNSON is laid.

walk;

Have a care how you

If he stir in his sleep, in his sleep he will talk.
Ye gods! how he talk'd!

sound,

What a torrent of

His hearers invaded, encompass'd and-drown'd!
What a banquet of memory, fact, illustration,
In that innings-for-one that he call'd conversation!
Can't you hear his sonorous Why no, Sir!" and
"Stay, Sir!

Your premiss is wrong," or "You don't see your way, Sir!"

How he silenc'd a prig, or a slip-shod romancer! How he pounc'd on a fool with a knock-me-down

answer!

But peace to his slumbers! Tho' rough in the

rind,

The heart of the giant was gentle and kind:

What signifies now, if in bouts with a friend, When his pistol miss'd fire, he would use the butt-end ?

If he trampled your flow'rs, like a bull in a garden, What matter for that? he was sure to ask pardon; And you felt on the whole, tho' he'd toss'd you and gor'd you,

It was something, at least, that he had not ignor'd you.

Yes! the outside was rugged. But test him within,

You found he had nought of the bear but the skin;
And for bottom and base to his anfractuosity,
A fund of fine feeling, good taste, generosity.
He was true to his conscience, his King, and his

duty;

And he hated the Whigs, and he soften'd to Beauty.

Turn now to his Writings. I grant, in his tales,
That he made little fishes talk vastly like whales;
I grant that his language was rather emphatic,
Nay, even-to put the thing plainly-dogmatic;
But read him for Style, and dismiss from your
thoughts,

The crowd of compilers who copied his faults,-
Say, where is there English so full and so clear,
So weighty, so dignified, manly, sincere?

So strong in expression, conviction, persuasion ? So prompt to take colour from place and occasion? So widely remov'd from the doubtful, the ten

tative;

So truly and in the best sense-argumentative?

You may talk of your BURKES and your GIBBONS so clever,

But I hark back to him with 66
a JOHNSON for
ever!"

And I feel as I muse on his ponderous figure,
Tho' he's great in this age, in the next he'll grow

OT to be tuneless in old age!

NOT

Ah! surely blest his pilgrimage,

Who, in his Winter's snow,

Still sings with note as sweet and clear

As in the morning of the year

When the first violets blow!

Blest!—but more blest, whom Summer's heat, Whom Spring's impulsive stir and beat,

Have taught no feverish lure;

Whose Muse, benignant and serene,
Still keeps his Autumn chaplet green
Because his verse is pure!

Lie calm, O white and laureate head!
Lie calm, O Dead, that art not dead,

Since from the voiceless grave,

Thy voice shall speak to old and young
While song yet speaks an English tongue
By Charles' or Thamis' wave!

CHARLES GEORGE GORDON

"RA

ATHER be dead than praised," he said,
That hero, like a hero dead,

In this slack-sinewed age endued
With more than antique fortitude!

"Rather be dead than praised!"

Shall we,

Who loved thee, now that Death sets free

Thine eager soul, with word and line
Profane that empty house of thine?

Our pain

Nay, let us hold, be mute.
Will not be less that we refrain ;
And this our silence shall but be
A larger monument to thee.